Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
“Okay,” I say. “Good night.”
He pulls back a little and blinks. Oh, fuck. His eyes are such a hypnotizing shade of blue in this low light. The man and his intensity dazzle me. There’s no other word for it. And the expression on his face, like how dare I. “I’m not finished yet, Lilah.”
“Well, did you want to move it along a—”
“No.”
“I swear, you’re just like a toddler sometimes. No seems to be the only word you know tonight.” I sigh. “When Shane kissed me on the cheek, it really was more of a there-and-gone sort of thing.”
“What about Gael?”
“He may have lingered a little.”
Alistair just grunts. Then he stops playing and angles his head and covers his lips with mine. Giving me a firm and insistent closed-mouth kiss. Chaste, but not really. His eyes are closed, and his dark lashes are so long. A vein of tension seems to be running through him, stringing him out from head to toe. Because his hands are curled into fists and hanging by his sides too. Just like mine.
He doesn’t stop or take a step back or any such thing. He just keeps kissing me. And this kiss is asking me a question. No. It is pleading with me. I open my mouth the smallest amount, and I can feel his smile rather than see it. His hands cup my face and his tongue traces over my bottom lip and whoa. Off we go. My eyelids slide closed and my mind spins in dizzy circles. We have most definitely moved beyond friendly kissing.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth and toys with mine. Teasing and inviting and turning me on. It is all so hot and good. He tastes faintly of beer and mostly of warmth. Not a flavor I would have recognized before, but here we are. I can’t explain it, but he’s everything. He’s just everything. I don’t know when my hands went rogue. They are, however, pawing at him like there’s no tomorrow. How shameful. The thrill of running my fingertips over his warm skin. Over his stomach and around his sides and up the strong lines of his back. I want to mark him with my nails just a little. Just enough to leave a reminder that I was there.
A sound of pure need comes from deep in his throat and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My skin is electric and alive. Everything low in me squeezes tight in want. My vagina is a total traitor. Catching my breath seems to take forever.
“You lied, Ali. That was not a simple kiss on the cheek. Not even a little.”
He rests his forehead against mine and says, “We could still fuck tonight. Now. Right now.”
“No. I want to do this right. It matters to me.” My heart is galloping inside my chest. Just running right out of control. I push him back and pull myself together. “I’m leaving. I’m going home. I mean it this time.”
“Just to check I have made myself absolutely clear. I don’t want you to have sex with someone else. Let me give you what you want. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re really leaving?”
I nod.
His face is now a careful blank. As if he’s reined in his hunger. But his lips are swollen and damp from me. Then he says these words like a promise: “Stay near the light by the gate where I can see you. We’ll continue this tomorrow.”
14
Friday
My grandma Inge rests in a cemetery half an hour from my parents’ house. Mom visits regularly to share the tea. I was young when Grandma passed, and I don’t really have many memories of her. Just of the scent of lavender from her perfume. But she and Mom were close. Mom still likes to talk to her as if she were here.
“You explain the photos of you with the prince,” says Mom, arranging the bouquet of wildflowers I bought in the stone vase attached to the headstone. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I sit on the grass beneath another clear blue California sky. Last night with Alistair shook me. I can’t even think about what comes next on my wish list. There are bruises from lack of sleep beneath my eyes. If lying awake making up imaginary conversations that will most likely never happen were an Olympic sport, I would be representing the country in no time. My state of mind is also evident from my outfit—safe and comfortable old clothes. Like the oversize hoodie from senior year. It’s seen me through it all: relationship breakups, series binges, and everything in between. But beneath my homely clothing, my legs and pits are freshly shaved, and every inch of me has been lotioned. “He’s not a prince. Though I don’t see that it’s anybody’s business what his parents’ relationship was exactly.”