Page 60 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

My brain? Gone. Replaced with soft jazz and the urge to throw my panties into the nearest fountain.

Every time his fingers slide even a centimeter lower, I forget what oxygen is. And then he dips me, not dramatically, just enough to make my dress slide a little, enough to make the air thicken, and I gasp.

His lips are at my jaw. Barely there. Not kissing, not quite. Just...hovering.

“I could devour you,” he says. “But I’d rather make it last.”

I make a noise that is absolutely illegal in at least five states.

He chuckles. Bastard. His thumb brushes the base of my spine like a punctuation mark.

We keep dancing, even though the song changes. Even though my knees are officially out of commission. Even though every part of me is chanting ‘kiss me kiss me kiss me’ while he just… waits.

Edgar Templeton, the man who can make not-kissing feel filthier than anything I’ve ever done in the dark.

He pulls back, just a fraction, enough for our eyes to lock. “Still hungry?” he asks, low and wicked.

“For you? Starving,” I whisper.

His smile is pure sin wrapped in manners. “Then let’s go somewhere quieter.”

The fantasy dissolves into reality with the grace of a well-cut vest and the promise of something thoroughly indecent on the horizon.

Edgar tilts his head just slightly, eyes fixed on my mouth like he’s considering whether it’s art or ammunition. “I shouldn’t,” he says, thumb brushing my lower lip like it’s a lit fuse.

“But you’re going to,” I whisper back as my fingers curl into his lapel.

And he does.

He kisses me like the moment deserves gravity. There’s nothing rushed, just the unbearable tension of practiced restraint finally snapping. His mouth is warm and firm, reverent at first, then filthy in the way only a man who’s read every forbidden Victorian love letter and once autopsied a poet could manage.

His hand slides into my hair. His other stays at the small of my back, anchoring, claiming, possessing.

I could die here. Right here in the park under twinkle lights, tongue-deep in a man who smells like sandalwood and expensive grief.

But then…

“Oops!” The shriek pierces the moment like a candy-coated nail gun. There’s a dramatic gasp, the flutter of too much perfume, and the sickening realization that Cookie has landed in a heap at our feet.

“Oh no,” she says, all wide eyes and crocodile innocence. “I tripped. You were in the way, Jennifer.”

My kiss-dumb haze vanishes. I stare down at her, curled on the pavement like a wounded poodle in leopard-print heels.

“Really?” I say flatly. “You staged a pratfall because I got kissed?”

She scrambles upright with Broadway-worthy flair, brushing off imaginary dust and wounded pride. Her eyes shine like freshly Windexed malice. “I just think it’s interesting,” she announces, voice lifting for the crowd, “how every man around you ends up missing.” Her smile is tight. Fake. Carnivorous. “Even Derik.”

People turn. Heads tilt.

My fists clench. I am seconds from dragging this woman across the bandstand by her knockoff pearls.

Edgar’s hand closes gently over mine. Redirecting. “She’s not worth it,” he says low. “But I am.”

I stare at him. At Cookie, still preening like she just performed a social service. At the eyes around us. And then I laugh. Just loud enough for Cookie to flinch.

“You’re right,” I say sweetly. “She’s not worth the bail money.”

We walk away without looking back. His arm finds my waist again, and I let it. Let him guide me out of the light and into something darker, quieter, and infinitely more dangerous.

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