Page 50 of Love is Fake

I turn my head towards his to give him a ‘what do you think?’ look and it’s impossible to look away.

He threads his fingers in my hair and pulls me gently towards him, stopping just shy of his lips and forcing me to make the decision to close the distance between us. It’s a no-brainer; any intention I had of escaping him gets shot all the way down.

He kisses me until I forget to remember to care about anything except the way his lips feel against mine.

“You know, if this were a romantic comedy, me rear-ending you would be called a ‘meet-cute,” I point out, when I regain the power of speech.

“Yeah? Well if this were a romantic comedy I probably wouldn’t have been such an asshole to you.”

“You weren’t an asshole,” I hedge and Lennox gives me a ‘come on’ look, making me break out into a grin. “Well maybe a little,” I concede.

As we’re opening up to each other, there’s something else I want to know and I decide that now is as good a time as any to find out. “Why did you pretend you didn’t recognize me?”

A laugh rumbles in his chest. “You didn’t forget about that, huh? I was sort of hoping the champagne might have blurred that part of the night out.”

I roll my eyes, poking him in the side. “I had two glasses, not the whole damn bottle. So…?”

Lennox shrugs, looking uncomfortable, but his discomfort makes him even more endearing. “I guess it was easier to pretend I didn’t remember you because then I wouldn’t have to admit how cruel I was to you in high school,” he admits, quietly.

I shake my head, stroking his stubbled jaw as he suddenly looks so damn vulnerable. “You weren’t cruel to me,” I say. “Thepeople you hung out with were a different story. I’ll grant you that – but you were never mean to me.”

“I didn’t stand up for you, either. I just let it happen in front of me and apologized to you in private, because I was so damn worried about what other people would think of me.” Lennox shakes his head in despair of his younger self. “I’m not proud of the person I was.”

“You were eighteen,” I reason with him. “None of us were our best selves as teenagers. I know I sure as hell wasn’t.”

You’re way too nice for me, you know that?”

I wrinkle my nose at that word ‘nice’. It’s not the descriptor you want from the guy you’ve just had the best sex of your life with. And then the fact that I’ve just voiced the thoughts rumbling in my head makes me cringe.

“Thebestsex of your life, huh?” Lennox smiles like the cat who got the cream and my eyes widen at what I’ve just done.

I cover my face with the pillow because it’s the closest I can get to disappearing, but Lennox’s chuckle penetrates it with ease. Gently, he pries the pillow from my grasp, looking down at me with a mixture of amusement and warmth.

“You don’t have to look so pleased with yourself,” I grumble, still trying to avoid eye contact.

“Will you look at me, Izzy?” he asks. To be truthful, I would really rather just study the threads of the bedsheets because I’ve proven I am literally the least cool person in the entire world.

“Will you look at me if I tell you last night was amazing?” he asks, his voice husky in a way that makes me wet in an instant. “That it was the best night of my whole damn life?”

Those words shock me so much that I do in fact meet his gaze.

“There she is,” he breathes reverently as he traces the lines of my face. “You really are incredible, you know?”

I bite my lip to keep the surge of emotions his words have provoked at bay. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I tell him quietly and in an instant we’re on each other again.

My lips say all the words I’m not ready to tell him out loud just yet. And he kisses me with an intensity that makes me feel like the most desirable woman in the world.

His hand strays down underneath the sheet, cupping my breast and I moan against his mouth, my inner thighs already slick with wanting. I’m so ready for him. I reach out to stroke his shaft to find him hard as a rock and he groans as I touch him.

“Want you…so fucking much.” Lennox breathes against my mouth and the feeling is more than mutual.

It takes a few seconds for the insistent knocking on the door to penetrate the bubble of desire I’m floating in as we kiss and stroke each other.

“Izzy, you home?”

I let out a small chuckle as Lennox curses loudly at the sound of his friend’s voice.

“Remind me to kill Kai,” he mutters.

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