Page 6 of After Our Kiss

“Exactly like that.”

Turning the bottle in my hands, I considered my next question. “Thank you for this. Will you... come back and bring me more?”

He moved again, his body taking up enough of the mattress that he rubbed against my thigh. I twitched, putting my hand down nervously—it landed on top of his. Those fingers were thick with strength a teenager shouldn't have. I wanted to believe it was caused by something innocent like yard work.

Conway didn't pull away.

I did.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, clasping my hands in my lap.

“Don't be.” His voice was creamy enough that I could have rubbed it into my skin or coated it on my tongue. This hot beacon inside of me was new—it flared at the richness that Conway brought to my world. “I'll bring you food when I can. It's the least I can do.”

****

On month number three, he didn't just bring food.

He brought me a book.

Flicking on a small flashlight, Conway exposed the pages to us both. “It'sThe Call of the Wild,” he said.

I knew the book. I'd read it before, but I grabbed it like I'd never seen such a treasure. A book was something todo.I'd been craving mental stimulation.

Together we read, and quickly, I learned that Conway loved books as much as I did- maybe more. He knew this one by heart. In the hours when we were alone and I was untied, we huddled in the single beam of light, moths drawn to a flame, and we read about a cold wilderness that was more appealing than my prison.

Sometimes, we sat on the floor. Other times, we lay pressed together at our elbows on the mattress. Like this, Conway would hold the book above us, allowing me to aim the light. If I wobbled, it would bounce off the mirror and blind us. It made us snort with laughter. It was so stupid; I adored it.

Conway made me feel safe. Normal. Lying together like this, I could feel his wiry muscles; take deep pulls of his musky scent. He reminded me a lot of Thornton, the kind master in the book. Did that mean I was Buck, the dog that'd been fished away from his comfy world and thrown into icy madness?

Picturing myself as a bold animal made stronger by a comforting hand like Conway's turned me fuzzy. It was a good feeling and a weird one.If I'm Buck, then Facile must be The Man who beats him with a club until he breaks.

One evening, Conway brought a new book.

“It's calledThe Valley of the Horses,” he said, sitting lotus-style on the bed. I was doing light jumping jacks in the flashlight's halo. If I didn't move around, I'd grow weaker. It was what Facile wanted—for me to change into a figment of my former self—so I railed against it.

Lately, the awful man had taken to coming into my room during the day. All he did was stare at me with his infuriating smile. Waiting for him to dosomethingwas part of the torture.

“Come and sit down,” Conway said, his eyes flashing in the dark. He was watching me with more intensity than usual. His eyes held a laser focus that turned his pupils into tiny specks. “Read this with me.”

I sank beside him and took a swig from the lemonade he'd brought. “This is book two of a series,” I said, reading the inside of the cover. “You don't have the first?”

He shifted side to side. “After my mother died, Dad brought us here. He didn't want any of her things. I managed to sneak off with a few of her books, but not all of them.”

“Oh.” I shut the book gently. “I'm so sorry, I didn't know about your mom.”

Shrugging his wide shoulders up, Conway took the book from me. “I haven't read this one yet. I thought you'd like it, though, because it has horses.”

I bit back a giggle. “Do you think girls naturally like horses or something?”

To my amazement, he blushed red up to his temples. “I didn't mean...”

I brought our bodies closer together on the mattress. “Shut up and read it to me.” He regarded me with one eyebrow arched. “For your information, I actuallydolike horses. Don't rub it in.”

We read together in the shadows, his voice low, emotive. At times I'd take over so that, soon, we were seamlessly tearing through the pages. It was a book about a hard world and what it takes to survive, much likeThe Call of the Wild.

We didn't know it was also a romance.

Both of us laughed nervously when the characters began to fall for each other. It wasn't until they began having descriptive sex that our voices went tight in our throats. Conway was reading, and suddenly, he just stopped. “What's wrong?” I asked, knowing full well.

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