FAYE
It’s not every morning that you have a dream where you’re the hostage of a morally gray pirate and he abandons his life of crime to travel the world with you on his ship. And it’s a great dream, a great dream that just so happens to be interrupted by a sulfurous smell that’s either the product of burnt food or an electrical fire. So when I’m forcefully pulled from my dreamscape, I wake up in a pool of sweat and gasp for air like people do in movies after they’ve had a terrible nightmare.
There’s a scream—not high-pitched enough to be feminine but shrill enough to be classified as a scream. My eyes immediately skip to Kit’s figure standing by the doorway, and I’m hit with that burning odor again, strong enough to probably sear some of my nose hairs.
“What are you doing?” I screech, using the back of my hand to mop up some of the sweat on my forehead.
“Why did you wake up like you were having a demon exorcised out of your body?”
I glower. “Did you not smell whatever’s burning?”
Kit’s cheeks turn pink, offsetting the sable color of his hair, which is somehow perfectly unkempt without looking uncombed.
Then I notice the tray that’s at the edge of the bed, complete with two dishes full of eggs, fruit, hash browns, a pile of blackened discs, a glass of pulpy orange juice, and a single flower vase. My heart and pulse chug in time with one another, and I find myself sinking in abounding adoration for the man in front of me.
“You cooked this for me?” I ask incredulously, moving my back higher up against the headboard.
“I tried,” he chuckles, placing the overflowing tray in my lap. “The black things are supposed to be pancakes.”
My eyes wilt, and there’re probably some tears in there somewhere. “Kit, you didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to. I’m just sorry that the pancakes are as hard as pucks.”
“Nobody’s ever done something this nice for me.”
Kit’s expression pains for a moment, like he’s fully taking in the gravity of my admission, but it vanishes as quickly as it came, giving leeway to a puckish smile. “Get used to it. We have a full day ahead of us.”
I start to nibble on some of the cubes of cantaloupe. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m taking you on a date,” he says, grabbing one of the strawberries and popping it into his mouth.
“I thought you had practice today.”
“Woke up early and went down to the rink by myself. I’m dedicating the rest of the day to you, Princess. No phones, no distractions, no responsibilities.”
I swallow, and that damn piece of fruit sticks in my throat on the way down. “What if someone sees us? What if—”
Kit immediately grabs my hand, and he wreathes his fingers around mine, squeezing slightly. “I don’t care, okay? Nobody’s going to see us. I mean, they will, but they’re going to mind their own business. Speculation isn’t worth anything these days. The guys know that. Your brother knows that.”
I exhale abrasively. “I just…I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“Hey,” Kit murmurs, using his other hand to caress the side of my face. “You know I’d take a lifetime of trouble in return for a day with you, right?”
“I know.” I do. I guess I’m still coming to terms with everything that’s happened these past few days.
It’s unreal being with someone like Kit—someone I’ve had a crush on for so long and believed that it was unrequited. And we’re not even…together together. Not to mention that even though we’re only halfway through July, school starts at the end of August, which means I’ll be on the other side of the country by then. This is everything I’ve ever wanted, and yet, I don’t really have it. It feels like I’m living a lie. A heavily layered lie.
“I don’t want you worrying about anything today, okay? We can do whatever you want. And if the paps happen to be a pain in the ass, I’ll kindly tell them to fuck off.”
“Whatever I want?” I ask, playfully batting my eyelashes.
He stares at my lips unabashedly, those dark, depthless eyes of his scouring me like I’m his prey. “Possibly.”
I stab a chunk of cheesy eggs with my fork, shoving it to the side of my cheek as I chew. “So no naked skydiving?”
Kit lets out a low whistle as he pretends to contemplate me. “Hey, hey. Let’s not be rash now.”
I move the tray off my legs. “You’d seriously go skydiving?”
“If we were naked and stuck together? Obviously.”
“So what I’m hearing is that you’ll do anything if it involves getting naked?”
“No, Faye. I’d do anything you’d ask me to. Getting naked is just a bonus.”
Dear God. The proximity, the body language, the sweetness sliding off his expert tongue like silk. I’m overheating under the covers.
I reach for the glass of orange juice to quell the sudden dryness in my mouth—all while under Kit’s watchful stare, mind you—and I accidentally overpour past the seam of my lips. Liquid drips down my chin and collects at the neckline of my white sleep shirt, doing an excellent job of turning the fabric translucent.
Stupid nerves. Stupid Kit and his clever innuendos.
My hand flounders around for the nearest napkin, but I don’t even make contact before Kit’s mouth is on my neck, licking a clean stripe through the sticky liquid. One corded arm is braced against the wall, right next to my head, and the other is working the strap of my top down my shoulder.
“Oh, God,” I groan, feeling him lave attentively at my skin. I rake my fingernails down his back and use him as a handhold, marinating in the morning smell of him—his natural scent before he covers himself in cologne.
His lips move down my throat to the shelf of my collarbone. I’m pretty sure there’s barely any juice there.
My lower half squirms, pressure and warmth building at the juncture of my thighs. “Kit…”
“Stop talking.” He sucks on my collarbone, flicking his tongue over the taut flesh, and my back arches off the headboard, inadvertently giving him a face full of my now-bare chest.
A string of moans leaves me, but I’m too aroused to try and quiet them. Kit purrs like a motorboat as he traces the bridge of his nose down the curve of my tit, and he stops at my nipple, giving it a quick lap before closing his mouth around it.
Fuck. He’s treating my body like an altar, and I’m about to come before I’ve even finished breakfast.
My breath puffs out, and there’s a rise of panic in my voice. “Won’t we miss…whatever it is…we have to do…?”
Kit’s teeth pull gently on my nipple as a high tide of lust washes over me—one that makes my toes curl and wipes my mind clean. I dig my fingers deeper into his back, hating the fabric that’s currently preventing me from gaining any traction.
“We have all the time in the world,” he mumbles against my skin, subsequently pressing a kiss to the tender flesh of my breast.
A girl could get used to this…at least for the summer.
For the past ten minutes, Kit’s kept me blindfolded, and not in the way I like. He has a surprise for me, which generates all sorts of anxiety. Kit’s an all-or-nothing kind of person. He never does anything half-assed. So either he’s treating me to a romantic lunch or he’s constructed some kind of flash mob to happen downtown.
When the car comes to a stop and the engine dies down, I blindly fumble for the door handle, allowing Kit enough time to run over to my side to open it for me. He helps me find my footing, leading me to God knows where—and probably erecting some weird stares from the people around us.
“Are we almost there?” I ask, only slightly freaking out at my lack of control over the situation.
His rich chuckle allays some of my panic.
“We’re here.”
The cloth covering my eyes falls away, and once my vision adjusts to the change in lighting, I’m welcomed by the sight of a Barnes & Noble, outlined in a golden aureole, luster glinting off the dark green awning. It’s humongous, with wide-paneled windows and two grandiose entrances at the front, garnished with brick supports that stretch all the way to the sky.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, shock and giddiness duking it out in the curve of my ribs, right where my heart is struggling to pump.
“I’m going to buy you whatever you want,” he tells me, a body-melting grin skidding across his lips.
I squeal and drag Kit toward the building. This officially takes the cake for the best day of my life. Maybe even above when I got accepted to UPenn. I’ve never struggled financially compared to my peers, but I definitely don’t have enough extra money to spend on stacks of paperback books.
The minute I step into heaven, I follow the smell of new books like a cartoon character follows the aroma of a freshly baked pie. And just as I thought, the inside is just as stunning as the outside. Mile-high bookshelves swerve to form labyrinths of untold stories, pages that have yet to yellow from age or become distressed from use.
Kit’s eyes practically bulge out of his head as he realizes what he just agreed to, and I make a beeline for the romance section, entirely ready to spend the rest of the day hoarding as many books as possible.
I titter. “Regret it?”
He snorts. “Please. How many books could you need?”
“That sounds like a challenge,” I muse, arching my brow, a sinister gleam in my eyes.
I walk down the aisle with Kit trailing behind me like a lost puppy, and I drag my finger along the mismatched spines.
“You do realize you’re saying that to the person who’d buy you a house, right?”
And Kit’s doting act saps me of my smart mouth, warming every inch of my body in a bonfire-turned-wildfire. I’m convinced he’s dead set on making me blush every time I’m around him.
It feels like asphalt clots my throat. “You wouldn’t do that.”
He steps into me with his intimidating body, making my back go flat against one of the shelves, so close to me that I can see the nuanced truth in his eyes. “You’re right, I wouldn’t do that,” he whispers. “I’d only do it if you agreed to live with me.”
My thoughts go astray, and it feels like all the air’s been plucked from my lungs. He didn’t…he couldn’t possibly mean that. We’re not even dating. No matter if he meant it or not, though, I’m still at a loss for words.
“You…”
“I mean it, Faye.”
God, I want to kiss him so badly right now. I want to cling to him and never let go. And I lean in just an inch, to where our lips would touch if I pushed forward anymore, but the silhouette of a person on the fringe of my peripheral reminds me that I can’t go there. All of these empty promises—they’ll remain empty.
I quickly pull away from him and reroute my gaze, feigning interest in a hardback cover that’s embellished with different illustrations of wildflowers. I want to tell him he can’t say stuff like that, but I’m not sure if it’s because of some self-preservation instinct taking over or not. I need to remind myself that I’ll face inevitable heartbreak at the end of the summer.
We don’t say anything to each other for a good five minutes, with me either pulling books out and placing them in Kit’s outstretched arms, or me pushing them back in and moving on to the next shelf. I can feel his eyes on me the entire time—which is part of the reason I try to keep my body turned away from him.
I’ve already amassed an impressive pile of books, and I hear one being flipped open as I continue to browse.
“A werewolf and an orc romance story? Really?”
I turn to find Kit waving a book with an inappropriate cover around, and even though I’m used to consuming smutty romances in public, I prefer a less conspicuous cover. The naked—by werewolf standards—protagonist is lovingly embracing his equally naked orc mate, with one loincloth somehow covering both of their private parts.
“I was under the impression that this trip would be free of judgment,” I mutter, crossing my arms over my chest.
He readjusts his grip on my stack of books. “I just didn’t think you’d be into…”
“Smutty monster romances?”
“Like…do they have the same anatomy as humans?” he asks louder than the conversation warrants.
“I’m not discussing this in the middle of Barnes & Noble with you.” I inch further down the aisle to a less populated part of the bookstore, all while Kit lags behind me and continues with his endless arsenal of questions.
“Does it take place in the real world? Do people know about their existence? Or is it more of a fantasy world where humans don’t exist? What’s the main conflict in the story? Does it revolve around their relationship, or are there some weird monster laws in place that forbid the coupling of interspecies relationships?”
As annoying as Kit usually tends to be, I have to admit that I’m amused by how interested he seems.
“It depends. They can take place in the real world or in a fantasy world, sometimes even on home planets. And the conflict varies depending on the author. Some authors write books that don’t have conflicts—it’s just a hundred pages of marathon sex. Other authors go really in-depth about there being some kind of competition among mates or some kind of love-hate angle that has the protagonists in a push-pull situation.”
I expect him to snap back with a witty remark, but he doesn’t. In fact, his face becomes crestfallen, and his voice thins.
“Like us.”
My wandering hand—hovering over a Regency romance—freezes. My stomach froths with regret, and a sick taste cakes the back of my mouth. A push-pull situation. Kit’s all the way in, he’s made that clear from the beginning. I’ve been the one on the fence about everything. I’ve been so caught up with how this unpreventable separation might affect me that I haven’t even thought about how Kit would feel. I keep finding more reasons to not be with him, because setting myself up for disappointment is better than having it blindside me out of nowhere.
He’s working so hard to make this work, and I’m…doing nothing. I’m letting what could possibly be the best relationship just fall through my fingers. Instead of enjoying each other’s company for the past month, we’ve been stuck in this revolving door of will-they-won’t-they. I have a little over a month left with him. I’m done feeling guilty every time we kiss. I’m done making myself feel sad over what I’m going to lose instead of happy over what I have.
“Not like us,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m sorry that I acted like you—this—was expendable to me. It’s not. You’re not. I’m all in, Kit. Whatever happens, I’m not going anywhere.”
Goddammit. I want to kiss him right now. I want to show him how much he means to me. Because I am all in. Kit Langley’s the only man in the world who holds the key to my heart, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to be telling him I love him before the summer is over. And telling someone I love them romantically was never on this year’s bingo card.
Love rallies inside me. “And I forgive you for the party.”
“You do?”
“I do. But I don’t expect the princess treatment to stop any time soon.”
“Never,” he promises.
