Page 38 of Love, Academically

Fervent (adjective) fer·vent

Lila

Who was this magical man who had bought the most beautiful alien flowers and surprised her with tickets to see The Queen?

“Rhys, you shouldn’t have.”

“Have you already seen this tour? I wasn’t sure…” he trailed off.

“No, no, I haven’t,” she said quickly. “Jasmeet didn’t want to go and Maddy didn’t reply. I was going to go by myself, but by the time I got round to getting tickets, they were all sold out.”

“I see,” he said, the muscle in his jaw ticking.

“This is absolutely perfect,” she breathed and she could feel the sheen of wetness over her eyes. Reaching up on her toes, she pressed a quick kiss to his stubbled cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I mean it. I really appreciate it.”

Jasmeet had made it very clear she would never put herself through two hours of Susie Dent and Jason never would have taken her.

But here was this stoic Welshman, who sometimes wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, leading her down the road to go and see her hero talk about words on stage. She squeezed his arm.

“When did you get these? They’ve been sold out for ages,” she said. A pink flush crossed his neck.

“I got them before we went to my family thing. I was going to give them to you after as a thank you, but I didn’t get round to it,” he said, weaving them through the quiet throng of word lovers, all heading to see their leader. “Then I thought it would be nice to go together.”

She looked at him curiously, again. He actively wanted to spend time with her, doing things that she wanted to do, regardless of how boring he’d find it.

Lila’s stomach tightened, because this feeling wasn’t supposed to happen.

This feeling of being wanted, of someone thinking about her and what she would like.

It was strange and new, and she loved it.

And it was Rhys who made her feel like that.

Rhys Aubrey, who was watching her like she was the only person in the entire world at that moment, waiting patiently for her to say something.

She didn’t trust her voice because of the hot swell of emotion clogging her throat, so she just nodded with a weak smile. After a frown flickered across his face, he grinned and tugged her along.

“Come on. Let’s soak up all of Susie Dent,” he said.

A giggle came from her throat, followed by a sinking realisation that if Rhys Aubrey kept being thoughtful and kind and looking damn sexy in his clothes, then she was going to be in trouble.

The past year and a half had taught her that she didn’t need a man in her life, she didn’t need anyone for a goddamned thing, but perhaps she wanted one.

Perhaps a full night of discovering just what was under Rhys’s clothes and how every inch of him tasted was exactly what she needed to get him out of her system.

One night of hot, rampant sex and she’d be done.

Lila was a terrible liar, even to herself.

Susie Dent was EVERYTHING.

But it was the man sat next to her who stole her attention.

No matter how many hilarious origins of words Susie posited, Lila had one eye on Rhys.

He filled the fold-down velvet chair in the theatre, but kept his elbows and knees in, so as not to hog the entire space with his maleness.

She had never seen anyone so aware of their body and the impact it had on people in his vicinity.

Rhys laughed in the right places (a huff of air and a low rumble from his chest), nodded when he found something interesting, and smiled knowingly when he caught her staring at the crinkle of skin by his eyes when he narrowed them in concentration.

The intermission came and went. Lila gave herself a stern talking-to when Rhys went to the toilet, because this was not about stupid emotions or stupid feelings.

But all that went out of the window when Rhys came back, balancing the biggest tub of bubblegum ice cream and three different bags of chocolate in his arms, because they didn’t have cookies and I didn’t know which you liked so I got all of them for you to choose.

What a sweet, thoughtful man. Sweet, thoughtful, and damned hot in that shirt with the sleeves rolled up just below his elbows.

What was it about the movement of muscle in men’s forearms?

Well, not ‘men’, just Rhys, because she had never noticed the way the muscle tightened when he lifted his water to his lips (condensation running down the bottle like a frigging Diet Coke advert from the 90s) in any other man before.

Halfway through the second act, Rhys shifted in his seat, angling towards her a little and reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together. Tilting his head towards her, he raised his eyebrow in a ‘is this okay’ kind of way.

It was more than okay. In fact, holding Rhys’s hand made her feel like a teenager again, aware of every slide and movement of their palms together.

Rhys sat back in his chair with a satisfied hum and drew circles on the sensitive part of her palm with his thumb.

Well, if that wasn’t a wave of heat straight to her core. How was even this sexy?

Lila glanced at the man holding her hand.

His lips were tipped up in a small smile as he listened to Queen Susie wax lyrical about ‘thunderplump’ (19th century, to be so rained on so as to be soaked).

He’d brought her flowers, he’d driven, he’d taken her to somewhere she wanted to go, he was holding her hand.

It was like he had read The Idiot’s Guide to Going On A Date and was ticking off the checklist slowly but surely, making sure he covered all bases, and Lila’s heart squeezed.

It was hard to reconcile this version of Rhys with the one that so candidly told her that he wanted to fuck her. Her face grew warm and she shuffled in her seat, earning her a frown from Rhys and a mouthed ‘are you okay?’ She nodded quickly and turned her attention back to Susie Dent.

“That was the most amazing show, Rhys,” Lila said, again, in the car as they drove home. “Thank you so much.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said, pulling out onto a main road.

“I didn’t know about kennings, like ‘wave-horse’ for boat or ‘sky-candle’ for the sun. And Susie Dent is just so beautiful, the absolute best.”

Lila pressed her lips together and gripped her hands tightly in her lap as she caught Rhys’s grin out of the corner of her eye.

“Sorry, I’m prattling on and waving my hands about like a lunatic.” But she couldn’t help adding, “from the word ‘luna’, moon.”

An amused laugh burst from his chest. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I like hearing you talk.”

No one had liked hearing her talk about what she loved before.

Jasmeet and Maddy would generally listen, but they weren’t that interested.

Jason would roll his eyes and ignore her when she tried to talk to him about pretty much anything that she enjoyed.

Eventually, she stopped. His comments wore away at her, making her more and more black and white.

She was a secondary character in her own life with Jason.

“You like hearing me talk?” she whispered.

“Yeah. Surprised me as well,” he replied, his eyebrow rising.

This time, it was her who reached for his hand settled on the gear stick and slid her fingers in between his. If he kept up with this, then she was dangerously in trouble of letting her heart get a little bit carried away here.

This was just leading to sex.

She didn’t need a relationship.

It wasn’t long before his big swanky car was pulled up behind teeny-tiny Petunia and he was opening her door and walking her to her front door. Like a gentleman.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Rhys,” she said, facing him like a teenager in an American film. She half expected her parents to be twitching at the front-room curtains. Not that they ever did that when she was an actual teenager.

“Me too,” he said, taking a small step towards her so she had to tilt her head up to look at him.

Slowly, as if he was testing her boundaries, he lowered his mouth to hers.

Her eyes fluttered shut as his lips pressed against hers in a soft kiss.

Then he was gone, stepped back from her, hands shoved in the pockets of his well-fitting jeans, distinctly tight around the crotch area.

He looked at her, all wickedness and anticipation, waiting for her to make the next move.

“Thanks, Rhys,” she said, unlocking the door. “Bye.”

She shut the door without looking back over her shoulder.

Lila stood behind her front door, hands braced on the wood for a count of three before she wrenched open the door. Rhys was still standing there, hand still stuffed in his pockets, head down, but she could see his cheek curve with the hint of a smile. He looked up at her in surprise.

Grinning, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him in through the front door, kicking it shut behind them. Then they were a tangle of ferocious kisses as he pushed her over the wayward shoes to press her against the wall.

“Rhys,” she whispered. His hips moved against hers and he dropped hot, wet kisses down her throat. “Did we do it all?”

He pulled back from her, his lips red and swollen and eyes half-closed. Her hands were still threaded through his hair.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his hands on her ribs.

“Did we do everything you wanted on the date that you’d planned?” she asked, running her fingers across his cheekbone. A bashful smile crossed his lips and he glanced at her lips, wet from his mouth.

“Yes,” he said, hands sliding onto her hips. “Is this okay?”

His jaw tightened, holding back and waiting for permission and she loved it. She had the power here, and she knew that he would do whatever she wanted, whether that ended up with sex or not.

“God yes,” she said and crushed her lips to his again, not giving him time to reply.