Page 48 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

I don't remember deciding to move.

Maybe I didn't.

He doesn't stiffen or pull away.

Instead, his hand settles gently over my knee, warm and reassuring, like an anchor quietly dropped to the bottom of the sea.

I tilt my face toward his almost without thinking.

He looks down at me.

Then, with all the patience of someone who has never once needed to hurry, he kisses me.

It is slow.

Gentle.

Warm with coffee and butter and just enough hot sauce to make me smile against his mouth.

His hand slides from my knee to my jaw, his thumb resting lightly beneath my ear as though he is holding something infinitely more fragile than it appears.

There is such careful attention in that kiss.

Such reverence.

As though after an eternity of watching life slip through his fingers, he finally has permission to hold something instead.

And somehow...

Despite every warning instinct evolution ever gifted me...

We fit.

His hand trembles, just fractionally, when I thread my fingers with his. For the first time, it hits me that he might be more scared of this—of me—than I’ve ever been of anything in my squandered little life.

He kisses me once, then again, and the third time is not slow at all. There’s a hunger in him, patient coiling into urgent, as though he’s starved centuries just to taste this moment. His other hand cups the side of my face, thumb stroking a path beneath my cheekbone, memorizing each pore and flaw. I open to him, careless, greedy, and the kiss deepens—his tongue salt-sweet and devastating, all the lines of our bodies pressed close, molten and melting every old thing between us.

There is a moment’s hesitation, a vanishingly brief pause as he lets his forehead rest against mine. His eyes are black in this light, enormous, a night only I am allowed to fall through.

“Lavinia.” The word is prayer, warning, and plea. His voice is hoarse with restraint. “If you want me to stop, say it now. I’ve… gone a very long time without wanting.”

I laugh, just to prove I’m still the one choosing. “Show me how long,” I murmur, sliding my palm beneath his shirt, feeling the muscle tense and shudder under my touch.

He exhales a sigh, the kind that weights the air and pulls everything into its orbit. I tug at his shirt—he’s wearing one of those soft black henleys, sleeves rolled up haphazard—and he helps me, pulling it over his head in a single fluid motion. The light stutters across his shoulders, old scars mapped in pale relief over skin so warm it almost glows. I want to trace each one with my tongue, want to name every ancient thing that ever tried to hurt him and failed.

He watches me watching him. Smiles, shy and wolfish. “You are… very distracting.”

“If you think I’m distracting now, you should see me tomorrow morning before coffee,” I say, and we both laugh, and the sound knots something deep in him—his arms around my waist, lifting me, settling me in his lap like he is worried I might vanish if he doesn’t keep me somewhere solid.

We kiss again, clumsy this time, tooth and lip and the wildness of knowing, finally, what is allowed. His hands slide beneath my shirt, slow and reverent, thumbs sweeping the lower curve of my ribcage until I can’t remember why I ever needed air. He helps me out of the shirt, fingers careful at my collarbone, pausing as if to ask—is this all right? I answer by dragging his mouth down to the soft hollow between my breasts, and he buries his face there as though starved for heat, for anything real.

I want to undo him. I want to make him forget every ending he’s ever had to bear witness to.

He pulls back, breathing hard, and steadies my face in his hands. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispers.

I stroke his hair, letting the strands tangle around my fingers. “I want to find out.”

His eyes flicker shut. With trembling patience he slips off my bra, then looks at me as if he’s seeing the dawn and it’s the first one since the world began. He palms my breasts, thumbs circling delicately, then bends his head to take one nipple in his mouth. The wet heat of him is electricity down my spine, sharp enough to wring out a gasp, and I see the wordless satisfaction in his eyes when he hears it.