Page 5 of The Kiss Keeper
“Have you ever kissed anyone?” she asked.
He swallowed hard. “Have you?”
She smiled into the darkness. “I asked first.”
Her kiss keeper chuckled, and the nervous edge in his voice disappeared.
“No, I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
Relief calmed her frayed nerves. If she were a terrible kisser, at least, he wouldn’t know.
“Should we do it?” she asked, now the one swallowing back her trepidation.
“I think we have to. You know, the legend and all that.”
She nodded. “We don’t want to upset Otis.”
“And my balls,” he blurted.
“Your what?” she threw back, not sure she heard him correctly.
Her kiss keeper shifted his weight. “The guys said that if I didn’t kiss you, my balls would shrivel up into raisins, and for the rest of my life, my voice would sound like I’d sucked in a lungful of helium.”
She pressed her lips together, trying to hold back a laugh, but even her dry mouth couldn’t restrain her reaction.
“That’s not part of the legend,” she said with a giggle, then rested her forehead against his chest. He felt nice. Solid. It was as if the world could shift off its axis, and they’d remain untouched, cocooned in darkness and the Kiss Keeper’s protection.
“It’s not?” he asked, and she could feel his heartbeat slow.
“No.”
“Thank God,” he answered in a relieved breath, then stilled. “But the whole never finding your soul mate stuff, is that true?”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s the way I’ve always heard it.”
“And I can’t look at you? That’s part of it, too,” he questioned.
“If you see me, the story goes that I’ll be trapped at the bottom of the well—which may be a better alternative to high school—but it would probably suck when it rained.”
“Or snowed,” he added.
“It’s probably best if I remained on the surface of the planet.”
Her kiss keeper chuckled again, and his kind voice smoothed out the last of her frayed nerves.
“You’re funny,” he said as his thumb moved back and forth across her collarbone. An unconscious movement, but she liked it, nonetheless.
Nat steadied herself. “You’re nicer than I’d expected.”
While her gaze was met with a blanket of darkness, thanks to the blindfold, she could sense that he was smiling.
“You are saving me from a life of tiny testicles and talking like a choir soprano. So, I kind of owe you,” he answered with a gentle lilt to his words, confirming his grin as the air grew heavy with anticipation.
A fizzy buzz, ripe with sweet anticipation, replaced the trepidation in her chest. “We couldn’t have that,” she answered, her breaths growing shallow.
This was it. She was about to have her first kiss.
With her hands pressed to his chest, she felt his heartbeat, strong and steady, as the sound of their breathing slowed, and their breaths mingled in the night air.
