Page 43 of Silver Linings
I reach out my hand and hook my finger into the belt loop on her overalls before she can get too far away from me. With asharp tug, I pull her back and use my opposite hand on her hip to spin her towards me. She looks up at me with confusion.
“I don’t want to call it.”
Without thought or hesitation, I crash my lips down onto hers.
Shock quickly melts into enthusiasm as she leans into me, fingers digging into the tops of my jeans, brushing bare skin to tug me closer. I groan into her mouth from the slight graze as my lips move against hers in a fervent rhythm. Running my tongue against the seam of her mouth, I beg for an entry she grants in earnest, and I delve in deep and fast.
I’ve never tasted anything as sweet as Silver James, and it makes me dizzy. Every moment since I met her has been a powerline of our collective currents, building and buzzing, bringing us to this moment, drawing us closer together until we lit up with electricity.
I slip my hand up through her silken tresses, tilting her head back with my thumb under her chin to deepen the kiss. I nip on her lower lip to test and tease, and she lets out a soft moan that makes me half-hard in an instant.
Stroke for stroke, she meets me in challenge, rolling her body against mine in a need to be closer, and it’s a desire I’m more than happy to assuage. I hook her arms up around my neck and reach underneath her thighs to hoist her up around my waist before depositing her onto the counter behind us.
She lets out a soft squeal at the sudden movement, but I swallow it with another bruising kiss, stepping into the space between her legs and resting my hands possessively on the tops of her thighs, squeezing and stroking. I kiss a path down her jaw and onto her neck, lavishing the pulse point at the base, feeling it thunder against my attention. Silver rolls her body against my hardening length in retaliation, forcing me to grunt out against her neck.
“You’ll be the death of me,” I growl, breathing rapidly.
I hear her chuckle in my ear right before she bites down on my lobe, nearly buckling my knees, and I pepper drugging kisses on a path back toward her mouth. Our hands leave paint marks on each other’s bodies, clothes—the counters.
I’ve spent weeks trying to push her away, and I can’t remember why. The taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin burning against my palm, it feels like we were always meant to end up here. Like a moth to a flame—unavoidable. I want toburnin her light.
With the most monumental effort of my life, I take one last, long pull from her mouth, and she whimpers at my retreat. Forehead flush against hers, we try to catch our breath and fail. I’m smiling softly like an idiot as I lean forward, unable to help myself, and steal one more long kiss.
After a moment, Silver breaks the silence. “What’s your guilty pleasure?” Her fingers play with the ends of my hair in a maddening rhythm.
You, I think. “Great British Bake Off.”
She pulls back and looks at me with amusement.
“Such a mystery, Mr. Wells.” Mirth lines her gaze. “Though I do suppose Paul Hollywood is kinda foxy.”
I toss my head back, laughing loudly, and when I look back, she’s smiling at me with a sort of wonder.
I think I’d do anything to keep her looking at me like that.
twelve
. . .
I don’t wantto call it.
Those gruff words and Hendrix’s rough hands on my body have been playing on a loop in my head since last night. My skin tightens at the memory of his lips moving against mine, and I find myself zoning out far more than I’d care to admit.
This is going to be a problem.
I can’t remember a time when a kiss distracted me well into the next day—scratch that,ever. With past hookups, it’s been an in the moment feeling, we say our goodbyes, and I don’t think of it again. But with Hendrix, I can’t seem tostopthinking about it.
I had thought I just needed to get him out of my system, but one fleeting moment has turned into an all-consuming derailment of my day. It’s alarming how I’m feeling today post hot-as-hell make out against the very counter I’m leaning on.
I recall in visceral detail the way his mouth felt slanted over mine. How his palms felt running up my thighs, callused and confident. The sounds he elicited that I’ve never heard myself make, withanyone. Desperate and wanting, like if I didn’t get more of him, closer to him, I would regret it.
I’m feeling what I can only assume are butterflies, smiling down at wood stain swatches for the floors and stair banister, when the shop phone trills out a loud ring that makes me jump out of my skin. The fact that no one ever calls here should have been my first indicator that the store was in the red and reminds me that I need to call the phone company and get the account transferred under my name and update our devices.
“Brownstone Books, how can I help?” I chirp into the phone.
“Hi, honey.” All the blood drains from my face, and a pulsing drumbeat starts up in my head.
This is the second time my mom’s called me in just a few weeks, and her persistence is starting to put me on edge. I can’t even begin to fathom what she could want outside of money—hopping from town to town and never settling in one place can get expensive, after all. But she always went to Nan with that sort of request. It seemed to be the one thing she wasn’t interested in burdening me with. Child abandonment and its subsequent trauma was okay, though.
