Page 79 of The Lovers
She knows this is my first time, but she trusts me, and that trust is a boost to my self-confidence. I can make her scream.
I want to.
My tongue touches her clit. She squeezes her legs in and a heady moan releases from her mouth. I’m lost in her taste, like it’s the most delicious, decadent dessert, and with every stroke of my fingers and every press of my tongue, I can feel her getting closer.
She slams her hands to the bed, her fists clenching, yanking, her body shaking.
And when she comes against my tongue, I feel it ripplethrough my own body—the most powerful, magnificent ocean wave.
She tugs me up to kiss her, and I taste the salt of tears on her skin. Her lips quake and she turns her face to bury it in my neck. I pull the blanket up around us, my own tears threatening to fall.
Her eyes find mine. “I missed you.” She brushes a tear from my cheek.
“Now you don’t have to.”
Ever again.
Chapter Thirty
Julia
I’ve already spilled two cups of coffee this morning and it’s not even ten a.m. My brain is a puddle of memory, reliving last night, wishing to go back in time and do it all over again.
Not to change anything.
Just to be there.
This second cup of coffee is spilling over a table on the restaurant patio where a massive breakfast buffet has been set up for all the guests, Love, Always staff, and other support staff—including Healer Arynne; the caterer, Javier; and everyone from Desert Roses, the floral designer for the whole event. Millie wanted to make sure the staff was feeling appreciated. I’m just grateful they’ll at least be fed before all the intensity of final-day prep gets underway. Hangry employees and romantic bliss do not mix.
Zoe rescues my Wedding Day binder from the pool of brown liquid as I jolt up, grabbing napkins from the buffet table to blot it. Fortunately this cup was less than halfway full and most of the caffeine now courses through my veins. Zoe returns with a plate, gesturing for me to drop the soaked napkins on top.
“Thank you,” I say. “Again.”
She chuckles. “I should probably not comment on your dreamy-eyed, head-in-the-clouds energy since you’re my boss—” She stutters at the word. A word I have scolded her for using many times before. I resist the urge, and she carries on. “But what the hell is going on? You’re acting like you took a Xanax.”
My shoulders shake as I chuckle, leaning back against the frame of the door. I can’t sit back down because I’m too restless. Like there are ants in my pants, or maybe it’s just that I want more of Kit in there.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say with a sneaky quirk of my lips. Her face scrunches in disgust.
“Liar,” she says, shoving the napkin plate into the hands of a passing waiter. “You’re acting like a woman in love, and that is something I honestly never thought I would say to you.” She stands beside me, surveying the patio. “No offense.”
I’m a little taken aback that Zoe ever thought about my lack of a love life, but my endorphin-filled brain is too happy to dwell on it.
“Maybe I’m just feeling like I can finally ease up tension on the reins,” I say, flicking my eyes to view her reaction in my peripheral vision. Her curtain of dark lashes pinches, just like her thick eyebrows.
“You’ve suggested this before and never followed through,” Zoe replies.
“There’s a first time for everything,” I say.
Right then, there’s an energy shift on the patio, and my eyes shoot in the direction I feel it coming from. Kit’s presence is the dawn breaking pink and purple against a clear blue sky. Her hair is tucked into a messy bun on top of her head; a few spiralingwaves dangle to brush the edge of her jawline. She’s wearing a loose, pastel pink cropped sweatshirt and some tie-dye leggings, tennis shoes and no makeup.
I left her in bed this morning and it was the hardest thing I’ve done all year.
After we had sex last night, we stayed on the outdoor bed until the cold air became more than we could take and we had to move inside. But we didn’t go straight to sleep. We talked like we’d never stopped talking, like time had folded in on itself and we were getting a do-over. The more I learned about her life since I’d last known her, the more I wanted to hold her close.
She told me about her parents splitting up, and how it felt like a cruel joke of fate when she first saw me here. She’d come to escape and instead she was given a karmic reunion.
She knows she’s good at what she does and she loves helping people feel like they are in control of their destiny. Even if all she is doing is confirming a truth that they already know. If she could get higher-end clients, she’d be able to turn that into more lucrative jobs, which would give her more time to develop ideas for static income.Maybe a tarot deck, she said,or a course for manifesting.
