Page 67 of The Last Kind of Kiss
Just walking around today was a struggle. I wouldn’t be surprised if photos of me looking like I had a grade-A wedgie surfaced later this week. Bristol made sure to get me back for tying his hands, and he executed his revenge perfectly. I’m fucking addicted to him. And I know that’s a bad thing—especially because he remains emotionally unavailable—but that sex was life-changing.
I tuck the middle of my bottom lip between my teeth, feeling my belly sour with some indelible feeling…and it’s not hunger. Helooks so at ease cooking. This giant, Olympian god towering over the stove—with his shirt practically vacuum-sealed and stretched over knitted back muscles—doing the most mundane task in the entire world. This famous, world-renowned hockey player is spendinghistime cookingmedinner, and domestication has never looked so hot.
He swipes his index finger through some of the brown, herb-speckled marination, gathering a globule before sticking it out for me to try. I pause for a moment—more out of shock than hesitation—and slowly lean forward to envelop his finger with my lips, sucking off the honey and garlic sauce with a timid flick of my tongue. Bristol’s eyes are unwavering, so unfathomably dark beneath the fluorescent lighting that I lose sight of the rings of his irises completely. Something visceral weighs down his upper eyelids, turning an affectionate gaze into an animalistic glare, and he looks about ready to disregard dinner altogether and feast on me instead.
A throaty noise rides out on a hushed exhale, and I’m not sure where I find the confidence, but I take his finger a little deeper into my mouth, clocking every twitch of his jaw through my lashes. His arm tenses for a split second, his head tips back in pleasure, and I’m going to need to rein in the hormones if I want to keep this dinner civil.
With my face as hot as that stainless-steel pan, I eventually extricate his digit, embarrassment and lust forming one hell of a concoction in my belly. Every time I look at him, smell him,touchhim, I’m retracing my steps and falling head over heels again, despite cautioning myself not to revisit the motheaten pages of a tumultuous past.
And to my utter surprise, Bristol doesn’t look the least bit off-put by my amateur finger blowjob.
“Fucking hell, Lils,” he grounds out, lapping up the saliva I left on his forefinger, his voice steeped in desire—much like thecloves of garlic simmering in an amber pool of rich, umami flavoring.
Blush rouges my cheeks. “It tastes good.”
Bristol—stupid Bristol—with his loaded, dimple-showing smile, just stares at me like I said something of actual substance. “Youtaste good,” he whispers under his breath.
I’ve been conservative with how I’m sitting—considering this dress is a slip away from showing him my lace thong—and as conspicuously as I can, I squeeze my thighs together.
If I wasn’t so incapacitated by his compliment, Old Lila would’ve come in with a real ballbuster like, “You ask me to taste your mystery sauce again and the only thing that you’ll be tasting is blood,” or, you know, something along those violent lines. But she’s MIA.
There’s a beat of silence that falls over us like a pall, and Bristol comes to his senses before turning back to the stove, busying himself with flipping over the browning slabs of meat. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to act. I feel like I’m some schoolgirl with a crush.
He was great with my mother, and it was clear she liked him given how many times he made her smile. He was just the right amount of charming, actively listening to her stories and regaling her with some of his own. It makes it that much harder for me to confront whatever it is I’m feeling for him.
And I remember everything I said to him after I passed out on his cock the other night.
But the worst part?
I still mean every word I said.
Bristol bends down to get a Tupperware of precooked rice out from the fridge, and then he grabs two plates from the cabinet above him, along with some lemon wedges and a few sprigs of thyme. While he’s working on making everything presentable, I decide that the least I can do is make someconversation, even if there’s a ninety-nine percent guarantee I’ll word vomit.
“My mother loved meeting you,” I pipe up from behind him, plucking at a loose thread on my sweater dress.
Even though I can’t see his face, I can hear his smile in his words. “I loved meeting her too. It’s incredible what she does. I can’t imagine the emotional strength it takes to work with animals. She’s sacrificing her time and efforts to help those dogs find a forever home, and I think that’s the most admirable thing anyone could do in their lifetime.”
I wish Bristol could’ve met my mom in the conventional way—after months of us dating and a flood of pestering texts from her about meeting myrealboyfriend. But it didn’t work out like that. We’re still not a couple.
I hated lying to my mother. She asked us a few questions about ourfakerelationship—to which Bristol answered with unquestionable confidence—but she didn’t want to bore us with an interrogation. It was the first time I’ve seen her in months, and I feel like an emotional wreck. I feel like a child again, running to my mother for safety—running to my mother to absorb all the hurt and pain moldering inside me.
When my fingers tug too hard, a crater forms in my favorite dress. “Yeah, she’s amazing.”
Bristol stops moving for a second, and his upper back shifts with a deep breath before he repositions his body to face me. “Lila, I…” He trails off, then drags a hand down the side of his face. “I have to ask you something.”
I perk up a bit, hope feathering through my chest with a warmth reminiscent of a sun-kissed summer afternoon. “Yeah?”
Whatever Bristol wants to ask me isn’t easy for him to articulate, and I’m starting to worry that maybe I should be prioritizing fear rather than far-fetched hope.
His lips gather into a frown, and the contours of his face castdark shadows that malform his naturally calm demeanor. “When we were on the yacht for the photoshoot…and you panicked after they called your name…whatreallyhappened out there?”
Oh. That’s not what I was expecting him to ask me. I’d kind of forgotten all about that whole incident. I didn’t tell him before to spite him, but now, there’s no animosity between us.
My legs stop kicking as my fingers abandon the self-dug hole in my dress. My lungs are on fire, burning as if I’ve inhaled mouthfuls of saltwater, and I’m drowning all over again in my own insecurities, my fears, the all-around guilt for not confiding in him when he’s offered to take some of the weight off my shoulders.
I feel the panic ambush me with a tightness in my chest that’s too thick to dispel, like my heart’s been fossilized in sticky, impassable sediment. “Sometimes I panic about how I look in front of the camera. I think the nerves about it being my first big photoshoot were getting to me, and it didn’t help that you were looking like an oiled-up Hercules.”
The punchline falls short.
