I wanted to feel that again. Putting my no-kissing-guys-first rule aside, I started to lean in and he stayed put, waiting for me to come to him. “There’s no one here to get jealous over this kiss,” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t need an audience,” I whispered back.
I moved in slowly, inching my way closer to him, letting the anticipation grow.
Chapter 10
Have I ever mentioned that red is definitely my favorite color now?
But just before I kissed him, he said, “Limone, wait.”
Wait? What? I straightened back up.
“I understand that you have issues with men.”
“Right now I do!” What was his deal? I mean, other girls kissed toads to find a prince. I kissed a prince and he started acting like a toad.
“I don’t want you to feel like you’re making a mistake.”
That did it. I let go of him and felt sadness well up inside me over my constant poor decision-making. I plopped myself down on the bed next to him. “You’re right. I always get into these meaningless hookups with guys who say everything I want to hear but then never call me again. They think love is a four-letter word, and I’m dumb enough to pretend that getting physical means they’ll magically change. I’m getting too old for it. I like myself too much.”
“I like yourself too much, too.”
I let out a laugh that was edged with unshed tears. “There’s something to be said for respecting yourself and waiting until you think it’s right. Kat’s never had to feel this way, and I envy her that. Passion just gets you into trouble. I think I’d rather have a man who treats me well than a passionate physical relationship.”
He cupped my cheek with his hand and turned me toward him. “There’s no reason you can’t have both.”
Yeah, right. I wanted to laugh or maybe cry again. That hadn’t been my experience, ever. “You were right, though. I don’t want to use you just to make myself feel better.”
“I have no problem whatsoever with being used in any fashion you see fit.”
If he didn’t stop, I was going to start sobbing when this laughter became a hundred percent tears. I couldn’t keep it at bay for much longer.
His hand moved to the back of my head, and his gaze was focused on my mouth. “Now that we have decided that I won’t feel used and you shouldn’t feel bad, it seems to me that when a man and a woman are alone together, in his room, on his bed, that there’s only one logical outcome.”
“It is possible for a man and a woman to be alone together and not kiss.” My breathing had quickened, and I could hear his rapid, short breaths too.
“That may be true for some people, but we’re attractive.”
I closed my eyes, loving the funny and indescribable things his touch did to my insides.
“I’ve actually been wondering if that first kiss was a fluke. It registered on a magical scale.”
That made me open my eyes, where his heated, intense gaze caught me and made me willing to do whatever he wanted. Like if he wanted to club me over the head to take me back to his cave, I would have let him. “Magical?”
“If I’d been a frog . . .”
“You would have turned into a prince?”
Then his mouth was finally, finally on mine. Gently claiming, promising. I had that tantalizing, floaty sensation mixed up with my adrenaline and endorphin cocktail. If I could have bottled that feeling, I would have been a millionaire.
He was tentative and soft, and usually a kiss like that just seemed sweet and nice, but there was nothing sweet or nice about his kisses. They were hot and—what word had he used?—magical. Definitely magical. He gave me every opportunity to pull away.
Instead I wrapped my arms around him and deepened the kiss. Which he had no problems with as he responded in kind.
There was a mindless need, and I felt and knew nothing but his kiss and his touch. His kisses grew deeper and firmer, and then needier. My heart beat faster than a hot knife cutting through butter, every sensation heightened, every touch explosive. It seemed like we had been kissing for hours, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. He finally let me breathe, and I was glad my lungs remembered how to work, even if all I could manage was short, shallow breaths.
He lowered me back onto his bed, and I went willingly, loving the feeling of his weight against me. He moved his lips along the column of my throat, giving me chills at every spot where he stopped to plant a kiss, stroking the other side of my neck with his hand. I felt his hand move from my neck to the top button of my shirt.
And despite my decision earlier to keep things casual and under control, they were very serious and very out-of-control, and I wanted them that way.
I dragged him back up to my lips, not able to have him away from me for even a second longer.
“Why is everybody kissing all the time now?”
We broke apart and sat straight up to see his seven-year-old sister, Serafina, standing in the doorway. She had her hands on her hips and looked disgusted. I felt mortified. If she had walked in only a few minutes later, she would have found something very different and probably traumatizing.
“Serafina!” I said. My mind was not currently capable of any other words, but her presence was like a bucket of ice water being dropped on top of me. My mind cleared, and I realized how quickly things had escalated, and what exactly I had been doing.
And who I had been doing it with.
“Kat asked me and Chiara to find you, so that she could ride over with you to the match. I’m going with Mamma and Papa.”
She walked back out of the room, leaving the door wide open.
Dante rested his forehead on my temple. “I’d say that qualified for a worst-timing-ever award.” The he captured the bottom of my earlobe with his mouth, and a series of fireworks exploded up and down my spine.
Somehow I managed to pull myself clear. It wasn’t easy.
He went still. “What is it?”
“We can’t do this. I can’t kiss you and . . .” And not have it lead to more. I liked him too much as a person and a friend. Even if he said I could use him, he meant more to me than that.
I couldn’t tell him that. He’d insist I was being ridiculous and that we were just having fun. That I shouldn’t take things so seriously. I’d probably let him talk me into picking up where we’d left off.
But how would I ever change if I kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over again?
“I’m sorry.” It was the only pathetic thing I could say before I left.
My eyes darted over to the crew who silently filmed us. “What kind of favor?” I somehow mustered up the courage to ask. I hoped he didn’t take any detours down memory lane like I had.
He had to whisper in my ear so that the mikes didn’t pick up our voices. I told the shivers running across my skin to stop. “Meet me at midnight out in the gazebo. I want to talk to you about what you’ve discovered about the other girls.”
It had started off romantic and ended up some place practical. Which is good, I reminded myself. The crew finally let us go home, and Dante kissed me good-night on the cheek, and it felt like he had branded me. I had to consciously refrain from touching where he had kissed me. I thanked him and headed upstairs.
Half of the remaining girls waited in my room. “So? How did it go?” Genesis asked.
“It went fine. We had a nice time,” I told them as I kicked off my shoes. I started to unzip my dress and realized that everyone had gone silent and was staring at me. “What?”
“Are you really not going to kiss and tell?” Jessica R. asked.
“There was no kissing and so no telling.” Their expressions looked like a cross between disappointment and relief. “Look, Genesis and I already have an arrangement, and maybe we should make one as a group. If somebody does kiss him, nobody talks about it. It will just hurt everyone’s feelings.”
Several of the girls nodded. I said it like I was concerned about the group’s feel
ings, which I was, but the honest truth was that I didn’t want to hear about somebody else making out with Dante. I knew what he was capable of, and I didn’t want to imagine him doing all of that with someone else. I decided not to consider the reasons why too closely.
I wished Abigail was in the room, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. She couldn’t wait to tell us about what she’d done with Dante. Which reminded me that I needed to ask him about it when I saw him later.
Yawning, I told everyone I needed to turn in. I took off my makeup, got into some yoga pants and a T-shirt, and climbed into my bed. Someone in one of the production rooms turned off the overhead lights, plunging the room into darkness. Just a couple of hours until I had to sneak out.
Normally I would have been worried about falling asleep, especially since today had felt emotionally exhausting. But I was so afraid that I would fall asleep that I was wired and ready to go. The party girls downstairs were doing their nightly falling-down-drunk routine, and I had already decided to head to the first-floor bathroom and climb out the window instead of trying to get past them.
But by midnight, most of them had fallen asleep on the couches and floor. One girl was even lying on the kitchen island. I didn’t want to risk anything, so I followed my bathroom escape plan. It was a low window, making it easy to get out.
I had a blanket wrapped around me, although I didn’t need it. It wasn’t cold. It would have been back in Colorado.
Dante was in the gazebo, lying on a blanket and propped up by a bunch of pillows. He had something in his hand that looked like paper. He stood up when he saw me coming and smiled, making my heart thud uncontrollably.
I am engaged, I am engaged, I am engaged.
Right when I got to him, I accidentally stepped on the edge of my blanket, propelling myself forward. He caught me, thanks to his athletic reflexes. And nicely formed biceps. And . . .
“Are you clumsy because you’re finally starting to fall for me?”
I straightened up, ignoring the jolt that made my pulse go haywire. As far as he knew, I had zero feelings for him. So presumptuous. A little bit right, but presumptuous. “As if. I am not clumsy—and how long have you been waiting to use that line?”
“A while now. You’d be surprised by how few opportunities I’ve had to use it.” He always managed to make me laugh, even when he irritated me.
“I got these photos for us to go through,” he said. He was holding a head shot of each remaining contestant. “It took some convincing, and based on the look I got, I don’t want to know what the PA thought I needed them for.”
He sat back down, and I took a spot across from him. Sitting next to him was just asking for trouble.
“First one. Jessica.”
“Jessica R.,” I corrected him. “She wants to be a model, and she’s on the show because she thinks it’ll make her famous. Even though it almost never, ever does. Every time somebody thinks they’re the exception I want to be like, Here’s a lance, there’s a windmill, have at it.”
“Literary humor,” he said. “I like it. So, not here for the ‘right reasons.’”
“Definitely not.”
The next picture was of the emotional Jen L. “Hair extensions. So fake.”
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle blonde.”
I hit him with one of the pillows while he laughed, fending me off. “I may color my hair, but it is all mine. It is totally different.”
“Oh, obviously,” he agreed.
“Next picture.” I ground the words out, ignoring his fading laugh. He held one up.
“Ashley S. She’s meaner than a skilletful of rattlesnakes. She keeps trying to insult me, but I don’t respond. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed woman. There’s no sport in it.”
He looked puzzled. “But she always seems so nice.”
“I’m sure she does. She’s not.”
“And there’s the other Ashley.” I pulled her picture out of the group. “She giggles at all of your jokes, and we both know there has to be something wrong if someone laughs at your jokes.”
“You laugh at my jokes!”
Yes, and there was something very wrong with me because I was getting married in a few weeks and I was here at midnight with another man in a gazebo thinking impure thoughts, and having more fun and feeling more alive than I had any right to.
“Tiffany.” He held the picture up so I could see it.
“Let’s just say science isn’t her forte. Like Grandma Lemon would say, cute as a button, and nearly as smart as one.”
“You’re saying she’s dumb?”
That seemed so mean. “Dumb is probably too harsh a word. Suggestible, maybe? Logically flexible, perhaps?”
“Science isn’t my forte either. Our final year in boarding school Rafe took my final science exam for me.” I swear, half my holiday in Monterra had been filled with stories about all the times Rafe and Dante had switched places and the mischief they’d caused.
“Where were you?”
That devilish gleam was back. “Indisposed.”
Translation? With a girl. Of course. “It isn’t just that she isn’t great at science. If her brains were dynamite, she still wouldn’t be able to blow her nose. She literally thinks the moon is made of cheese.”
His eyes got big. “Pass.”
I thought so.
I took the stack of pictures from him and showed him Michelle’s head shot. “She’s, um, bubbly.”
“I don’t want bubbly. I’d like a noncarbonated woman.”
Abigail’s picture was next. Even a two-dimensional rendering of her made me frown. “You should just send Darth Abigail home.”
“The producers love her. I made an agreement with them to keep her around in exchange for getting to choose who stays and who goes. She creates drama with everyone, which keeps the audience at home watching. They keep telling me there are three people the audience will remember—the girl who wins, the girl they wanted to win, and the villain. It wouldn’t be much of a show if we sent the villain home.”
I wondered if I specifically asked him to send her home, if he would. I suspected he might. Just to make me happy. He was a really good friend, even if he couldn’t be a great boyfriend.
“Speaking of the devil, did you kiss or do other stuff with her?”
He had that teasing smirk on his face. “Define ‘stuff.’”
Of course he would have to make this hard. “You know what ‘stuff’ is.”
“I do know what ‘stuff’ is. I am a fan of ‘stuff.’”
“So, did you?”
He stayed silent for a moment, like he was trying to figure something out. “No,” he finally said. “I didn’t kiss her or do ‘stuff’ with her.”
Ha! I knew she was lying. Dante might be a manwhore, but I had always hoped he had some standards. It was nice to find out I had been right. I grabbed the next head shot. “Cece is pretty in an obvious kind of way.” I flipped the picture around to face him. “If you like that sort of thing.”
He took the head shot from me to study her more closely. “That is annoying. I much prefer having to really search for something to find attractive about a woman.”
“Be serious!” I laughed. We’d never get this done if we just kept cracking jokes. I thumbed through the next few pictures. “Did you specifically request shallow and dumb women?”
“They asked, but I told them I didn’t care who they chose. Because you’re the only woman I want to be with.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, making me stifle a giggle.
“You mean today?” Now it was his turn to laugh.
Then his face went serious. “I am joking about wanting to be with you. Because I could never live with a hoarder like you.”
“I am not a hoarder! I am sometimes disorganized in my personal life with a small side of slob.”
“Small side? Where did you find your shoes this morning?”
I glared at him. “In my closet, thank you ver
y much.”
“And the other one?”
I had to hesitate, knowing the truth would give him way too much satisfaction. But if I lied, he’d know it.
“The backyard.” He laughed so loud I worried he might wake up the entire house. I was going to shush him myself, but he had that look in his eyes when I leaned toward him, the one that made my knees go hollow, and so I refrained.
He took the remaining pictures back from me. “What about Lisa?”
I was glad he put us back on task. “She spent most of one evening telling me about her last relationship without a pause. She kept saying, ‘I don’t even know how to describe it,’ and yet she spent two hours doing just that. So boring. Like, if I wanted a sleeping aid I’d pop an Ambien.”
“She’s out. I need someone that I can talk to the way that you and I talk.” His intense, hot gaze was back. “Do you sit and talk with him like this?”
No need to clarify who “him” was. I wanted to say yes. I opened my mouth to say yes.
But I realized it would be a lie. I loved talking to Sterling, but it wasn’t like this. I often watched what I said with Sterling. I let whatever stupid thing I was thinking fall out of my mouth when I was with Dante. I had a connection with him that I’d never had with anyone else.
Including my fiancé.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I said, pointing to the pictures, but also referencing what was happening in that moment. I was turning out to be a huge fan of avoidance. “Grandma Lemon always says not to treat other women disrespectfully because it gives men ideas. But when I’m with you, apparently I have no filter.”
He put his hand on my knee, and I never knew knee-touching could give you goosebumps. “I like that you’re honest with me. Right now I’m pretty sure you’re the only person on this entire show who’s telling me the truth.”
Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra) Page 10
