Page 77 of What's in a Kiss?

“No, but Mr. Saltzman thought you were the best. Before you showed up, I was the captain. Then suddenly, I was the co-.”I meet his eyes. “I was pretty mad at you for a lot of high school,” I say, dropping my sex-growl, dropping the High Life, telling it like it was. “You were just... everywhere. And I thought, back then, that you were trying to outdo me.”

“Outdoyou?” He sounds stunned. “I was trying to be near you, to breathe the same air as you. I wasn’t trying to compete with you. I was trying to competeforyou. I was trying to get you to notice me.”

“I noticed you,” I whisper.

“And then there was that one night,” he says.

“That changed things,” I say.

“Prom.”

“I thought you were going to kiss me on the curb,” I say.

Jake flinches slightly, still trying to play the game, trying to inhabit the reality I’m painting—one where we didn’t kiss, one where we parted ways. His face darkens as I watch him imagine it. His whole life if that kiss hadn’t occurred.

“Not kissing you, Olivia,” he says in an earnest, impassioned, breathy voice, “was the biggest mistake of my life. The only saving grace...”

There’s a long pause while we stare at each other.

“The only saving grace...” I offer to him again.

“Is that if I’d kissed you at eighteen, I wouldn’t have known what to do with you.”

“What are you saying, Jake?”

“I’m saying that ten years later, I knowexactlywhat to do with you.”

My body thrums as I take Jake by the lapels. I stare into his eyes, heart racing, knowing—at last—that this is it. I lean inslowly, then all at once, and kiss Jake Glasswell like I should have done ten years ago.

When our mouths meet, I understand. The way his lower lip fits between mine. He tastes salty from his drink. He smells like a rainforest. His hands know where to hold me and how firmly. Though my eyes are closed, Isee. How this kiss changed everything. How love launches ships and world religions. Kissing Jake Glasswell is that good, that right. Across every universe, in every distant crease of time, this is the kiss against which to judge all others.

We don’t make it out of the bar before his mouth is on my neck, his teeth sinking into my skin, my hands all over him. We tumble through the lobby, crashing into a coat rack, not giving half a damn as we careen past the front desk.

“Olivia!” a bright British accent calls. “Are you alright?”

I turn and see who dares interrupt us. “Not now, Eddie Redmayne!” I call and pull Jake’s mouth to mine.

“Did you get a room?” Jake gasps. I take his tie and tug him toward the stairs that lead to the suites above the pool.

“Wait,” he says, stopping one step beneath the one I’m on.

“What?” I almost shout because I can no longer wait. Not if he left his card at the bar. Not if he needs to grab some sort of contraceptive. Not if the hotel’s on fire.

But it turns out the holdup is that Jake noticed the color of the panties I’m not wearing, and he needs to push me against the wall and put his hands and his mouth all over me.ThatI can stand here all night waiting for.

“Let’s go,” he says, and I’m seeing stars as he pulls me toward the hall.

Somehow I manage to find my key card, and then Jake lifts me up and takes me toward the bedroom, pausing in the living room to give Gram Parsons’s chin a scratch.

“Hi, buddy,” he says, and I love him for not questioning why I brought a dog to our tryst, why I couldn’t leave him alone in that big house without us all night.

Jake throws, and I mean throws, me on the bed. The black dress with buttons running up the center becomes a shred. The rip it makes between Jake’s hands is the hottest sound I’ve ever heard.

As I lie beneath him, fully naked, and his gaze holds mine, I thank God we waited. I pull him to me, yank his tie over his head, unbutton his shirt, and feel that first drop of hot muscled skin on mine. I can’t believe we’ve only been married for five days. Because this feels like a lifetime of making love.

He drops between my legs and puts his mouth on me, gently tugging until I twist the sheets and scream. As his tongue finds every sensitive fold, I feel how well he knows me. Like he’s the one who drew the atlas of my pleasure. He takes his time, letting me feel how much he likes this work, letting me sink into an ever deeper state of bliss. Then the pressure of his mouth changes, warm and wet and right there on the very center of my clit, and all at once Jake brings me to a gasping orgasm, the likes of which I’ve never known. And intend to know better from now on.

I lie in sweaty ecstasy as he comes up next to me, kissing a path up my side. We’re still and basking, tracing shapes on each other’s arms, and then I’m greedy to give him what he just gave me.

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