“That’s the third time you’re carrying me,” I murmur as I nuzzle Zane’s neck, already wanting more of him. I thought my memories deceived me, that I’d imagined the way he looked at me on prom night. Yet here he is, looking at me in that same way that makes my heart race.
“It’s the fourth time, actually,” he says, his voice so soft I’d have missed it if I weren’t so close to him.
I pull away a little to look at him, surprised. “Fourth?”
He nods and smiles. “Remember that time you fainted in chemistry class? I think we were about fifteen? I don’t think I’ve ever leaped over a desk that quickly. I caught you before you hit the ground and carried you to the nearest clinic.”
“What?” I don’t remember that at all. The only thing I recall is waking up with my parents hovering over my bed, worried sick. He never mentioned it, and neither did they.
“I fainted because I hadn’t eaten in over a day, but come to think of it, I never saw our chemistry teacher again. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”
Zane tenses. “If I’m not mistaken, you asked him if you could take a few bites of your protein bar, and he told you no.”
That’s not an answer, and he knows it. “How long?” I ask, my voice breaking. I don’t even have to finish that sentence for him to understand what I’m asking.
He looks away as he gently places me on top of my messy sheets, my bedroom bare except for the mattress he joins me on. Zane sighs as he lifts the duvet and covers both of us before turning to face me, his arm propped up on his elbow. There’s something infinitely sexy about having Zane Windsor naked in my bed, the sheets low enough to expose his ripped torso. It’s sexier still to look at him and know he’s mine.
“I don’t remember a time you weren’t the center of my universe, Celeste. When we were kids, you were my rival, my nemesis — someone I’d been told I could never be friends with, couldn’t trust. The warnings just intrigued me further, and the more I learned about you, the more interested I became. You were always one of the few people who could actually compete with me and win more than half of the time. Besides, you never cared about my surname. In fact, you despised me for it, but because of that, you saw the real me. You never cowered in fear around me, nor did you try to impress me. I lived in a world that had a preconceived idea of who I was supposed to be, except for when I was with you.”
He sighs and brushes my curls out of my face. “I don’t know when that interest turned into a rivalry as bad as ours was, or when that turned into more. All I know is that I don’t remember a version of me without you. I realized I had feelings for you when we were sixteen, but by then, the dynamics of our relationship had been set in stone, and I’d given you too many reasons to hate me. I didn’t know how to undo the damage I’d done, and each time I tried, it’d backfire and you misunderstood. When you left… god, I missed you so much, but at the same time, I hoped it’d result in a blank slate. I imagined us running into each other again and burying the hatchet. You’d look at me, and for once, there’d be no hatred in your eyes.”
I reach for him, the tips of my fingers trailing over his temple and down to his jaw. His eyes fall closed, and he tilts his head, leaning into my touch. “What do you see when you look into my eyes now?” I whisper.
His lashes flutter, and my heart begins to race when his lips form a sexy smirk. “Something that gives me hope, Celestial.”
He pulls me toward him, and I go willingly, surprised by how well we fit together, how safe I feel in his arms. Nothing has ever felt more right. “Zane,” I whisper, my heart heavy. “We should… we should have that talk.”
“I know,” he replies, his hand burying in my hair. “Give me just a little more of you before we have a conversation that’ll be tough for both of us.”
I drag my nose up his throat, and he sighs happily when my lips brush against his. “Mine,” he whispers, before kissing me leisurely, re-igniting the flames in my body.
Zane moans as he rolls me onto my back and settles between my legs, his cock hardening rapidly. He looks at me like I truly am a goddess, and I can’t get enough of it.
My eyes widen when he lifts himself up on his forearms and pushes up against me, drawing an involuntary whimper from my throat as he teases me with the tip of his cock. The way it brushes against my clit when he moves his hips just a little has me desperate for more, and his smile tells me he knows it.
“Tell me we’ll make this work, against all the odds,” he implores.
I thread my hand through his hair and look into his eyes, unsure. “This is the most irrational thing I’ve ever done, Zane. Everything points to this ending in tears — our families would never accept it, we run competing companies and that’ll cause friction in our relationship, and then there’s our past. I’m worried a small part of me only wants you because it makes me feel powerful to see how much you desire me. It soothes the girl you tore down for years, and I’m not sure that’s enough. It isn’t a stable foundation, and I know I should walk away, but I just… I can’t, and I’m not sure why.”
He shifts his hips, and I bite down on my lip to suppress a moan. I have no doubt he’s doing this on purpose — he’s reminding me how perfect we could be, and he’s succeeding.
“Celestial, I’m grateful to have a chance with you at all, even if it is because it makes you feel empowered. No one needs to know, my sweet goddess. This thing… it can just be ours, if that’s what you want. I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Celestial, so long as you let me be yours.”
My heart skips a beat, and he smiles at me shyly, looking so vulnerable that all I want is to hug him tight and reassure him in whatever way I can. I never should’ve let our argument drive us apart, shouldn’t have taken so long to decide whether I could trust him. I gently trace the edge of his face with my fingertips, earning myself a soft sigh from him.
“It doesn’t matter how we got here, Celeste. All that matters is where we go from here. We have a history of not communicating and misunderstanding each other, and we can’t let our future be ruled by that too.” He leans in and presses a soft kiss to my forehead, his gaze pleading. “I already have our past working against me, so I have to work twice as hard now to make up for that. Tell me you’ll work with me by talking to me. Please, Celeste. I know us being together isn’t going to be easy, but if we don’t communicate with each other, we don’t stand a chance at all. I can’t go through this again with you, the insecurity and going weeks without talking to each other because we just don’t know how to do anything but argue.”
I’ve never seen him look so earnest. “I’m in my head a lot, and I have a habit of not discussing things until I’ve worked through them in my mind… but I’ll try, Zane.”
“Is that a vow?” he asks, his tone betraying his desperation. He truly wants this with me, doesn’t he?
I gently cup his face, my heart pounding wildly. “I vow to communicate as best as I can, Zane, and I vow to look beyond our past and toward our future. My feelings for you scare me, to be honest. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t feel so strongly about you when most of the memories we share aren’t pleasant, but despite it all, I…”
He smiles at me when I can’t quite find the words to describe how I feel. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Me too.” I exhale shakily when he drops his forehead to mine, our bodies pressed together. “We don’t have to complicate things right away, Celestial. All those things we fear? They don’t have to be a factor right now, not yet.”
I nod in relief. “Let’s figure out if we’re good together before we tell our families. You know as well as I do that all hell will break loose if our grandparents find out. We already have so much stacked against us. While we figure out if we can withstand everything that being together entails, we should keep it quiet.”
Zane smiles, and the way he looks at me makes my heart skip a beat. “Tell me, Celestial. Does this mean I get to call you my girlfriend now, even if it’s only in private?”
I’ve never thought of Zane Windsor as cute, but that’s exactly what he is in this moment. Still sexy and powerful, but perfectly adorable too. It strikes me then, that this is a part of him that’s only mine.
“Only if I get to call you my boyfriend,” I whisper, unable to keep the smile off my face. I don’t want to let the past torment me any longer, not when I can have this instead.
Zane rolls his hips in response, desire flashing through his eyes. “Fuck. Say that again. Tell me what I am to you.”
He’s so hard, and the angle he positioned himself is the best kind of torture. It makes me want to push him until he loses control and takes me hard and fast. “Zane Windsor,” I murmur. “My boyfriend. It sounds a bit juvenile, doesn’t it?”
He pushes the tip of his cock against my clit and rocks back and forth in the most teasing way, grinning when I fail to suppress my moans. “It does sound juvenile,” he whispers. “But if I have it my way, you’ll be calling me something else entirely soon enough.”
I frown in confusion, but he merely shakes his head and drops his lips to mine. “You took my first kiss and my first time, and now you’re my first girlfriend. How many more firsts will you take? I’ll give them all to you if you want them.”
Before I can even reply, he slips the tip into me, making every one of my thoughts fade away, until all I can think about is the way he’s making me feel.
Zane Windsor might end up becoming my downfall, but what a way to go.
