Page 12 of The Last Kind of Kiss
Bursts of light sizzle like flares on the edges of my vision, accompanied by obnoxious shouting from the paparazzi lining the red carpet, and all the competing flashes imprint blots of red against the inside of my eyelids. Jesus, I’m going to go blind. And it’s surprisingly not from Bristol’s hideous and gag-inducing appearance.
In fact, I want to find his stylist and slap them across the face for making him look so…not ugly. His face is clean-shaven, and his hair is coiffed back with just the right amount of volume to it, a singlewill-make-all-the-women-go-crazystrand drooping over his forehead.
His cheekbones are as enviably angular as they’ve always been, and that ninety-degree jawline of his is sharp enough to probably cut through felled timber. His eyes—usually a light whiskey shade in the daytime—assume a dark color reminiscent of coffee grounds, tracking my every movement with the intensity of a stalking predator. And his pillowy lips tease me with thememory of a single taste—a taste that makes the bottom half of me throb in a way that puts women back hundreds of years. Also, don’t get me started on that fucking suit of his.
He’s dressed in a classic black suit and tie, which would ordinarily be boring on any other guy, but on him, it’s a whole different story. It hugs his broad, mile-wide shoulders, emphasizing the ridiculous amount of muscle mass he’s gained from playing hockey. Damn those hidden traps lying in wait, roiling with masculine energy that entices me like a moth to a flame. The rest of him is primed to perfection, with his juicy ass squeezed into tight-fitting pants. He’s—in nicer words—perfect. In my words, the spawn of Satan who makes me want to gargle glass.
We pause every so often to pose for the paparazzi, and a balding man down front demands that we move closer together for the picture. Right now, we’re saving room for Jesus. If we move any closer, I’ll be inhaling his cologne and touching him in places I wouldn’t poke with a ten-foot pole. But Bristol pulls me into his hard body, showcases a megawatt grin that—I’m not exaggerating—makes a few of the female paparazzi swoon, and rests his hand intimately on my exposed hip. Since my dress is backless, he’s practically got a one-way ticket to Skintopia, and he takes advantage of my forced compliance by running his thumb in circles on my bare, lower back.
I hate it.
And I hate it even more that his touch is calming. I’m like a dog wagging its tail when you scratch it behind the ear, and I couldn’t be more ashamed. I doubt the rictus smile pasted to my face reaches my eyes, but it must be convincing enough because we get ushered closer to the ornate double doors with the velvet overhang.
“I know you’re mad,” Bristol acknowledges, as if my angerhasn’t been flashing like a neon sign above my head this entire time.
“Gee, I wonder what gave you that impression.” Indignation torpedoes through me, and it dawns on me how hard it’ll be to curb my emotions around him. Not just for the night, but for the duration of this job. I’m a vessel brimming with unadulterated hatred, waiting for the tiniest ember to self-destruct and blow up everything in my path…and the kill switch is right in Bristol’s hands.
He gives a weak snort. “Your body language, for one.”
“You’ve been staring at my body?”
“Hard not to when you’re wearing a dress like that.”
Don’t blush at that, Lila! That’s a pathetic line. He’s probably used it on hundreds of girls before you…and after you. You’re better than this. Fight off the freaky Bristol hormones trying to infect you!
Unamused, I gesture to him. “Just FYI, this whole nice guy act isn’t going to work on me. Just because we’re stuck working together doesn’t mean I’ll forgive you.”
Even with my hand acting as a makeshift barricade between us, he inches the tiniest bit closer, spiting me, staring down at me from his six-foot-two vantage point. With my heels, we’re close enough in height that I barely have to tip my head up to look at him, and I challenge him with a glare colder than ice.
Instead of the blood-boiling laugh I was expecting, Bristol’s expression sobers. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Lila,” he confesses, his arm twitching momentarily by his side, like he’s refraining from reaching out and cupping my face. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop fighting for it. I’m going to make things right, and if it takes this entire campaign, then so be it.”
“Oh, you can work as hard as you want, but some empty apologies and elaborate gestures aren’t going to sway me. You made your choice. Deal with the consequences.”
I go to turn and march triumphantly into the galawithoutsome dead weight hanging off my arm, but his hand seeks my wrist and halts me.
His bravado is hauntingly low, thick with a rasp that’s programmed to make the hairs on my neck stand up. “I am dealing with them. Fuck, Lila. I deal with them every time I look at you. Every time I hear your laugh and remember that I’m not the reason for it. Every time I see you smile and wish it was directed at me.”
For a moment, my heart squeezes in agony. Regret lingers in the coal pits of his eyes, felt so strongly that it reverberates through my own body and nearly buckles my knees. I don’t rip my arm away from him, which should’ve been my first instinct. He almost bypasses my password-encrypted walls and garners sympathy from the darkest, deepest depths of my belly. But as fast rising as that sympathy is, it’s smothered when rationale kicks in and instructs me to break contact.
I wrench free from his grasp, our private argument sidelined as more models arrive. Even though the fresh air is frigid, it feels suffocating, sitting heavily on my chest like a twenty-pound dumbbell. I can’t shake it either—this fear that leeches to the curve of my spine. It takes me back to the night he broke my heart. Not just broke butobliterated. Blew a hole right through it and dispersed every fragment to the ends of the fucking earth.
“Good,” I snap, and maybe it’s the hunger making me extra bitchy tonight, but I fire off another rage-fueled cannon in Bristol’s direction. “Live with knowing that another man’s making me laugh and making me smile and making me scream his name when I come.”
The sad reality is that there’s noother manin my life. I just said it to piss him off. And did it work?
He freezes, and it’s not because of the coincidental breeze that just so happens to slink in a figure-eight around us.
You bet it fucking did.
“You’re seeing someone?” he asks in equal parts shock and jealousy, a muscle in his jaw flexing.
“Sure am,” I lie, digging my grave even deeper by tacking on a demure smile. A part of me fears the repercussions, but the other part of me basks in joy at the anger written all over his face.
Something in him changes, as easily flipped as a light switch. The conversational tone of his voice descends into a rumble in his throat, and suddenly, regret simmers to the surface.
Shit. Should I have said that?
Of course you should’ve! Give him a taste of his own medicine.
