Page 31 of The Rest is History
As if he’s wrestling internally.
As if he’s digging deep.
Drawing strength.
The hand on my face slips under my hood and curls around the back of my neck. Tighter this time. His hand warmer. His touch more desperate. Almost as if he’s no longer comforting me and, instead, he’s reassuring himself.
‘I thought you were fucking hurt.’ He says the words on an exhale, his voice low and rough. ‘I thought?—’
But I don’t find out what else he thought, because he lowers his face to mine.
Our foreheads press.
Our noses brush.
Our breaths mingle.
And Charlie Vaughan kisses me. There’s force there, but his lips don’t press into a taut line. They’re soft and pillowy, and the knowledge of how they feel is more miraculous and yet worse than the ignorance, because I can’t un-feel them. Can’t un-feel the rough abrasion of his stubble against my chin as his jaw shifts. Learning me. Finding the best angle.
I gather enough strength in my arms to grab at the rich damask sleeves of his doublet as I kiss him back. I need that lower lip of his. I want to pull it into my mouth between mylips. To tug at it with my teeth. I want the warm, wet heat of his tongue invading my mouth. I want?—
He jerks back, his eyes twin blue pools of disbelief, his breath coming fast.
‘Jesusfuck. I didn’t mean to—God.’
I stare at him like the dummy I am. I’d just been getting used to the idea that Charlie Vaughan was kissing me before he pulled back and expressed—what? Disbelief?Horror?
‘I’m so sorry.’ He’s leaning on this phrase way too heavily. He pulls himself off me and runs his eyes over my body. I must be a sight, still plastered to the wall, lips smarting from a far-too-brief kiss, my eyes probably half-crazed (ghosts and fleeting, unexpected kisses will do that to a girl) and my boobs heaving as I attempt to catch my breath.
I gather the remnants of my self-respect and push off the wall. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Come on. Let’s go find the others.’ He’s turned away from me before he’s finished the sentence. I’m dismissed. Already. ‘And don’t go down there alone again.’
CHAPTER 13
Charlie
Iwish I could shrink closer towards Tess at The Mitre Hotel’s bar and enjoy a quiet, civilised conversation about Anne Boleyn’s importance in promoting and protecting writers of heretical texts in England in the 1520s and ‘30s.
Instead, I find myself hemmed in, surrounded by a giddy cluster of Charlie’s Angels (definitely notmyname of choice for the esteemed women who play my queens).
They’re all in high spirits, except for one.
All joking rowdily and knocking back rosé, except for the one who sips her drink quietly.
She’s the one I can’t get out of my mind.
The one I’m employing every fibre of self-control I have not to look at.
The one who, when I cave and glance in her direction, alternates between staring into her wineglass and shooting furtive looks at me. Looks I can’t decipher.
The one I kissed earlier, in a moment where fear flared before abating as relief took its place, and the resulting insanity had me break every rule in my book and take the tiniest crumb of what I’ve wanted from her for months now.
My mouth on hers.
My hand around her neck.
My fingertips on her skin.
