by Staci Hart
I should have run from Lila Parker at the first notice of that feeling. I should have let her go, having done my duty to distract her. But instead, I’d heedlessly indulged.
I hoped it wouldn’t be my undoing. And I wished I cared if it was.
Half a step, and her ass was propped on the desk. I broke away to press hurried kisses down her neck, lips closing, tongue sweeping to taste the sweet remnants of cake. The weight of her breast filled my palm as I licked a path to the hem of her bra, to the peak of her nipple, the silk like second skin. Her fingers tightened in my hair, a sigh of pleasure, the link of her thigh around my waist. A thunk as a heel hit the ground.
My fingers trailed all the way down her leg to grasp her heel in my palm. I lifted, spreading her legs wider, fitting myself between them with a promissory grind of my hips. She gasped at the contact, and up I kissed to take those lips again while my hands relieved her of her bra, then, with a shimmy of her hips, her panties.
“Off,” she breathed, tugging at my shirt.
Holding her still with my hips, I leaned back and shucked it, tossing it somewhere behind me.
When I looked down, the moment stretched, the details sharpening, collected in a breath that felt like an eternity. Lila stretched back on the desk, elbows propping her up. Her eyes were hot and hungry, scanning the breadth of my chest to my belt and back up, snagging my eyes and holding them. Her neck, white and long, her messy hair, bright as crimson. Her breasts heaving, the curve of her waist beckoning, the circle of her thighs around my waist, that sweet rippling of flesh that awaited my touch.
She was, undoubtedly and without question, the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, and not for the many ways I’d just cataloged. She was beautiful for the way she looked at me, with adoration and respect, with deference and worship. She was beautiful for the softness she only gave to me, for the slivered crack in her armor she’d shown me with trust.
She was beautiful because she was mine. In that moment, the woman who gave nothing gave herself to me.
To me.
And that gift would not be squandered.
Without thought or purpose beyond her body, I dropped to my knees and spread her thighs, tracing the flesh with eager fingertips. A ravenous desire swept through me, and I opened my mouth to appease it, dragging my tongue along the path my fingers had taken, drawing her in with a sweep of salt and sensuality. And with every drag of my tongue, she rose, thighs tight, hips bucking. But I gave her no reprieve. Instead I drove her on, eyes closed, my purpose singular. And I was rewarded in full. With a hard pull of my tongue and the shift of my chin, she came like thunder, a cry on her lips and a tremor of her body against mine.
The moment she eased, I broke the connection to stand and unfastened my belt.
She reached for me, bringing herself to sit with what looked like all her strength, and when I was free of my pants, I filled her arms, met her lips in a kiss of desperation and desire, her tongue sweeping my lips to taste herself there.
Her hand slid down my chest, around her thigh locked to my waist, to close around the length of me and guide me to her heat. The shock of sensation forced an instinctive flex. A second, and I filled her, not stopping until I could go no further.
Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, breath to breath, neither of us moved, not for a long moment stacked with thudding heartbeats. And then she kissed me, and there was no choice to be made.
A roll of my hips, a grinding wave, her lips on mine, her hands on my face. I pulled her thigh until my arm cradled her shin, her knee at my shoulder, opening her up to give me room. And I took that space, filled it up. Everything about her was an exploration, her body, her mind, the enigma of her demanding. Commanding. I didn’t want to lose the feeling, the sheer devotion and understanding of her rareness. I wanted to appreciate her with the wholeness I felt, the reckless game we played muted in that moment. There was only her and me and the exotic feeling of discovery.
With every thrust, my awareness shrank, receding like the shoreline before a hurricane. But with the whisper of my name and the pulse of her drawing me deeper, there was no holding on. Only abandon as the storm surged, and I was lost without a care, swept away and erased for a long, weightless moment.
We came down on the wave, bodies and lips and hands slowing but not stopping. Just slipping into a languid, lazy kiss that required the sum of us to complete. And we obliged.
It was me who broke the kiss, leaning back to look down at her. To admire the flush in her cheeks and neck, the shine of her swollen lips. I held her jaw, thumbed the bottom swell, my own lips tingling at the phantom sensation of connection.
Those lips smiled idly as her arms circled my neck, fingers twiddling my hair. “That was maybe the stickiest fuck of my life.”
“Then you haven’t been living.”
The sweetest laugh slipped out of her, quiet and adoring. “I’m filthy.”
“I like you filthy. Although …” I leaned back farther, inspecting her dramatically. “You know, I think I cleaned you up pretty good. Oh, wait,” I said, angling for her neck. “Missed a spot.”
She giggled, neck arching to cradle my face as I took a moment to taste her neck once more.
When I leaned back again, my eyes traced her face as my hand smoothed her stiff hair, and she sighed happily, the sound hitting me deep in my chest.
“You did it again,” she said.
“Did what?”
“Made me forget every bad thing in my life.”
“I told you that’s my specialty,” I said with a sideways smile and a bottomless longing.
“You did. I just didn’t expect you to be so good at it.”
“I don’t do anything halfway, Lila.”
“No, you sure don’t,” she said softly. “Neither do I.”
Suddenly the moment was too much, too real. And so, I kissed her, held her face in my hands and washed it away. We didn’t need to speak it. I didn’t need to know anything beyond that this was good and right, and that the girl beneath me was broken and unready for more than this. And that combination was dangerous as dynamite.
When I backed away, she mewled, her hands trailing my arms as they moved away like she didn’t want to let me go.
“Come on,” I said, snagging her hand to pull her up. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“If I have to.” She pouted, but when I scooped her into my arms, she squeaked, grabbing me around the neck, hanging on like I didn’t have her on lock.
“You have to,” I insisted as I carried her to the bathroom. “Because I’m about to fuck you in that fancy bed, on those fancy sheets, and nobody wants to sleep on cake.”
She chuckled, settling her head into the crook of my neck. I pressed a kiss to her forehead, savoring the moment, not wanting to let her go.
I didn’t want to let her go. One day soon, I’d have to.
For the first time in my life, I wished I was something else. Something more. Ambitious and successful and rich. Powerful. I wished I was the kind of man Lila wouldn’t just fuck.
I wished I was the kind of man she’d keep.
15
An Arrangement
KASH
The door to the greenhouse opened, and I glanced up, looking for Lila.
At the sight of my father, my skipping heart tripped and ate it.
“Don’t look so disappointed,” Dad said with the tilted smile he’d passed down to all the Bennet men.
“I’m not disappointed,” I lied, steering my cart of seedlings to the fresh bed we’d turned over.
A noise of dissent was the maximum of his argument. “What time is Lila supposed to be here?”
I paused, a tray of plants in hand, my eyes narrowing on him as he approached. “Who told you? It was Luke, wasn’t it?”
“Nobody told me, son. I have two eyes, a couple ears, and something between them, you know. Doesn’t take much more.”
With a frown, I knelt at the bed and kept my eyes on my hands as
they got to work.
“How serious is it?” he asked.
“It’s not.”
When I noted his stillness, I glanced up at him. His face said he knew better.
“It’s not,” I insisted. “We have an … arrangement.”
“You see each other an awful lot for whatever this is to be just an arrangement.” There was no accusation—he stated it as if he were noting the color of marigolds.
And he wasn’t wrong.
I’d spent the better part of two weeks pretending like Lila and I had some sort of handle on the rules. Nights apart almost immediately dissolved into hours spent texting. Then sexting. By the beginning of the week, they’d disappeared completely.
And then, there were the dates.
But they weren’t dates, not technically. Was Chinese takeout a dinner date? Not by my standards. But sitting across the bed from Lila, her hair piled on top of her head, wearing nothing but my Hoeing Ain’t Easy T-shirt with duck sauce on her chin felt like a date. When I wiped the sauce off and she leaned over her takeout container to kiss me, it felt like a date.
And last night, the last rule went straight out the window.
I’d spent the night with Lila.
We’d woken up in a tangle, her body curled into mine, my arms around her like a vise. To see her in the morning light, sleepy and smiling and so goddamn lovely did nothing to convince me this was casual.
It was anything but casual.
And I didn’t know just what to do about that.
“Your mother knows,” Dad said. When my face shot up, he clarified, “Well, she suspects. You haven’t been in before midnight in weeks. And last night, you didn’t come home. You can’t imagine she wouldn’t have noticed.”
“I’m a grown man. I can sleep where I’d like without having to tell my mother.”
“Which is why she hasn’t said anything. To you, at least. Seems to be all she wants to talk about to me. I reckon she knows I know and is fishing. Haven’t told her you’ve been sneaking off with Lila or she’d have already orchestrated a formal dinner to rope you both into.”
Sticky discomfort rose within me. “It’s not serious. Certainly not serious enough for Mom to get involved.”
“Try telling her that.”
I snorted a laugh.
“You’ll have to tell her at some point. If this keeps on, I mean. She’s driving herself crazy trying to figure out who you’re seeing and is convinced it’s Verdant.”
My discomfort was replaced by aversion. “Verdant? Really?”
He shrugged. “She’s the last girl you went out with, by your mother’s knowledge anyway. You know how she is. It makes her feel better to assume. Gives her comfort in having an answer, even if it’s false.”
“There’s no point in telling her. Let her wonder.”
“You say that now. How about when she’s snooping around? Or eavesdrops on your siblings? She’s gonna find out. If you tell her, you might be able to contain the blast.”
At that, I full-on laughed. “Sure. Maybe I could bail out the ocean with a bucket while I’m at it.”
We shared a chuckle just as the greenhouse door swung open again. But I wasn’t rewarded with Lila like I’d hoped.
Instead, I found Ali Gibson with a smile on her face and a swing of her hips.
I rose slowly as she approached. Dad was still as stone.
“Kash,” she said, that smile broadening. “I hope you don’t mind my coming straight back. The new girl said it was all right.”
“Wendy,” I provided. “I didn’t know you were in town,” was the only other thing I could think to say as she reached me, stretching onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to my cheek.
I resisted the urge to put three feet and my father between us.
“Oh, it’s a quick trip, just here for work,” she said. “God, how have you been? It’s been too long. When was it … August?”
“July.”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s right. Just after the Fourth. I can’t seem to get away from Boston much these days, what with my caseload. There’s always someone needing to be proven innocent,” she said, as if being a defense attorney made her an altruist.
“How are things here? I thought I saw Jett on my way back. I didn’t know he was back at Longbourne.”
“Everyone is, even Luke. They all came to roost when we needed them.”
She clutched her designer handbag with a font smile. It was blood red too, that smile, and I wondered how much money she was wearing from toe to top, figuring even that tube of red lipstick cost the equivalent of a decent steak dinner.
“You Bennets always did stick together. Tell me more over dinner.” The hopeful note coupled with the slightest curl at the corners of those lips I’d once dreamed would be mine told me all I needed to know. Not that there was any question. Ali only came around in one-night increments.
“Hate to disappoint, but I’ve got plans tonight.”
She pouted, the expression reminding me of a time years ago and the girl she’d once been. She was just as beautiful as she’d always been—tall and blonde and flawless, with a soft, kind face I’d once believed was incapable of anything but virtue. But I noted that beauty and my old familiar feelings with an unfamiliar detachment, a separation I hadn’t realized had come to pass. She wasn’t quite as tall as Lila, and though their hair wasn’t the same color, I compared the two, noting Lila’s was a little longer, shinier. Where Ali had velvety-brown doe eyes, Lila’s were crisp and bright with wit and determination. But Ali had never made me laugh the way Lila did. I’d never felt seen and appreciated by Ali like Lila did
A cold shock of realization shot up my spine.
My detachment was no fluke. It was simply that Ali wasn’t Lila.
My second realization was how very much trouble I was in.
“I leave in the morning, so I can’t offer a rain check. Are you sure you can’t spare some time tonight?” she insisted quietly, stepping closer to touch my forearm. “Even if it’s late. You know I don’t mind.”
I opened my mouth to decline with my own insistence when the door opened again, revealing the woman I’d been waiting for all day.
Her smile fell, her gait stalling, eyes collecting data from me, then Ali, then Ali’s hand on my arm.
My heart climbed up my ribs like a ladder. “I’m sure.”
When Ali saw Lila, her face shifted with understanding. “I see,” she said with curtness I’d expected and sadness I hadn’t, though I wasn’t dumb enough to assume that sadness had anything to do with her feelings. Not feelings of her heart at least. “Sorry again for barging in. Maybe next time?”
“Maybe,” I answered, unable to reject her so blatantly in front of an audience.
Ali stretched again to brush a harmless kiss to my cheek. Harmless to me, at least.
Lila had come to a stop behind Ali. She was pristine, standing tall and unfazed and smiling that smile she wore at work. Such as to say, it was all a facade, from head to toe.
“I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?” Lila asked in her diplomatic wedding planner’s tone. “I thought we had an appointment today, but if we need to reschedule—“
“No need,” Ali said. “I was just leaving. Good to see you, Kash.”
I couldn’t say the same, so I offered a nod and prayed she’d just go already.
With a final assessment of Lila—who endured it with the grace of a goddamn angel—Ali granted my wish.
For a moment, Lila and I stood in silence.
“You have lipstick on your cheek,” she noted clinically, but her own cheeks flushed, belying her calm exterior.
“Wish it was yours.” I stepped into her, snagged her hand. Pressed a kiss of my own to her rosy cheekbone, encouraged when she let me, though she cut a look to where my father tilled soil, his eyes on his hands with the casual solitude of someone who was blissfully alone.
“Come with me,” I whispered, tugging her toward the storage basement.
/> Down the steps we went, the sound of her heels echoing off the concrete. The moment we were free of them and nestled in the near darkness, I turned her, cupped her face, and descended for a kiss in a single motion. Surprise stiffened her lips, but in a heartbeat, they yielded, softened, opened to meld to mine. We were a knot of arms and legs and heavy breaths before either of us knew it, and for that brief stretch of time, nothing needed to be said or decided or discussed. It was just the simple truth of her and me.
But such moments weren’t meant to last, and when that one ended, all the things we hadn’t said slid between us once more.
“Lila, I—”
“Please, don’t explain,” she insisted. “We aren’t together. We’re not exclusive. You don’t owe me anything, not even her name.”
It was hurt that came first in a flash of pain, then a sinking sadness. “Maybe not,” I said, tucking her hair behind her ear, “but I’m gonna tell you all the same.” A flicker of a smile and a warming of her eyes told me all I needed to know. “That was Ali, a girl I used to date.”
“An ex-girlfriend?” She frowned, confused. “I didn’t know you had any of those.”
“I don’t. Not many at least. Ali always calls when she comes to town.”
She drew a slow, resolute breath that drew her straighter. “I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do. She came to ask me to dinner, and I declined.”
Bravely, she said, “Kash, you don’t have to do that.”
“Didn’t think you’d ask me to. I declined because I’d rather be with you.”
“But … I don’t want to stop you from seeing who you want.”
It was a lie—I saw it as plainly as she’d offered it.
On a chuckle, I said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted me to go out with Ali.”
The color rose in her cheeks again. “No, I can’t say that I do.”
I tilted her face so I could look her square in the eye. “I’m not seeing anyone else, and I don’t want to. Do you?”
