Page 41

SASHA ANSWERED THE door in that same awful Hawaiian shirt from yesterday, and yellow swim trunks.

His hair was down, curling around his face in half-moon twists.

It was shaggier than I realized, and a lot wilder, too, which must have been why he’d kept it so short while in Renegade.

Bad boys with springy dark curls? He’d been misjudged since the beginning.

“Bird?” he murmured, blinking, as he glanced back at the clock in the foyer, and then at me. It was well past nine, and way too late to be making house calls. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes—I mean, I think,” I replied, nervous. Why was I so nervous? I twirled a lock of hair around my finger anxiously. I hadn’t braided it back yet, though I’d walked so long in the wind it was probably a wild, knotted mess by now.

“She’s in the green dress,” his thoughts whispered against mine. “Why is she so flushed? She looks so good.” And there were bits of other things, the way he wanted to slip his fingers beneath the shoulder straps, how he wanted to unzip me with his teeth—

Which just made me flush more.

His voice, on the other hand, was purposefully neutral. “Where’s your date?”

“Home, probably.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but thought, “How badly did he fuck up?”

He didn’t , I replied. “I realized it wasn’t going to work out.”

“Ah.” He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the doorframe. “Why are you here, bird?”

I started up the steps, my heart in my throat, butterflies so vicious in my stomach. “I heard you …” I began, one foot in front of the other.

He watched, silent.

When Van touched me. Another step.

Sasha’s mind was empty. But his dark eyes were drinking me in. From the curve of my breasts in this dress, to the slope of my neck, to the bow of my lips. I didn’t need to hear his mind to know what was in it.

“And I realized … I wanted to be on that date with you.”

He inclined his head a fraction. “That sounds like it could be messy.”

“I know.”

“And complicated.”

I nodded. Held his gaze. “Yes.”

“And terrifying.” His gaze, hot and tense, fell to my lips.

I shook my head. “No. Not terrifying. Not with you.” With one last step, I reached the top. “I think—I think I want something messy and complicated with you, Sasha. I think I want that very much.”

And I wanted so much more. I wanted to fold his fingers through mine, and I wanted to tear out the space between us, and I wanted to lose myself in the color of his eyes. I wanted to spend more afternoons at the Marge with him, and I wanted to spend nights at the Revelry, and I wanted—

I wanted so much .

“Do you?” I asked, hopeful.

He closed the distance between us, languid and graceful. It was so intoxicating, watching him move through the world, like he belonged in it just the way he was. He pushed my hair back behind my ears and cradled my face. “More than anything, bird.”

Then he bent down as I reached up on my toes, and we met with a kiss in the middle.

When our thoughts collided, it was different this time.

It felt like fireworks. The moment our mouths touched, I felt his want just as sure as he did mine.

I saw myself in his emotions, his jealousy of Van, his ache for another kiss every time he looked at my mouth, his satisfaction as he raked his fingers through my hair.

And he saw the way I wanted him to kiss me so hard I forgot my name, the way I wanted to curl my fingers through his loose hair, the way I wanted to write my entire discography about the color of his eyes.

He picked me up as I wrapped my legs around his middle, and he carried me up and into the beach house. He closed the door and set me down on the sideboard in the foyer. His hands slipped from my hair, fingers trailing down my back, and found purchase against my hips.

“I’d been thinking about this since the first time,” he said, kissing the side of my neck. His tongue tasted my skin there, his teeth skimmed across it. His head was full of how I tasted and how good I smelled—like rose water and sea salt ice cream. “You’re addicting, like candy.”

“I wish you’d told me,” I said, trying to speak coherent sentences when my brain just wanted to be putty. You taste like coffee.

“I want to devour you.”

I want you to.

He grunted in agreement and brushed his hair out of his face. I liked it down. He grinned at that. “Not a fan of man buns?”

I took his face in my hands. “Please never say ‘man bun’ again with this mouth.”

“Can I do other things with it?”

“Be creative,” I replied.

He moaned. “Don’t say things like that, bird.”

“What? Why?”

At which he kissed me again, his voice whispering in my head, “It makes me like you more.”

Butterflies bloomed in my stomach. He liked me—Sasha liked me.

His kissed down my throat, pulling the neckline of my dress just so slightly apart to plant a kiss between my breasts. “I’ll dream up so many things to do to you.”

Oh, he was smooth. My heart felt like it was going a hundred miles a minute. “Do you have an example?”

He looked up at me, on his knees. His gaze was dark with all the thoughts pouring into my head, exactly what sorts of examples he’d demonstrate.

To which I only had one answer: Yes.

That twisty mouth of his curled into a smile as he stood, kissing me again so I felt his elation, his want, his audacity , and then he wrapped his arms around my thighs, and lifted me off the sideboard like I was made of feathers.

Through the doorway of the foyer and into the living room.

The entire house was nautical themed, yellows and blues and whites in perfectly staged placements.

He put me down on a navy couch, hovering on top of me, his knee planted between my legs.

His tongue played across my lips, then his teeth as he nibbled my mouth, and it was such a surprise—soft and then suddenly sharp—that I gasped.

It broke the spell.

“We should probably …” he began, though even as he said it, he planted a kiss on my cheek, and another on the side of my neck.

I did quick math in my head. And by quick math I mean that my head was absolutely empty of everything except where I wanted his mouth next. Pill.

“I have a condom in my wallet,” he thought as his mouth pressed against my neck, teeth against my skin.

“I love it when you talk dirty,” I said.

He laughed as he planted another kiss on my jaw, gravelly and raw. “Foreplay?”

“Asks the tease,” I chided.

He hummed, and it was a dark and raspy rumble. “What do you want me to do, then?”

“Kiss me,” I stated, and he stole one from my lips.

“Where else?”

“Here.” And I pointed to my cheek, and he kissed there.

“Where else?”

“Here.” I touched my neck, and he peppered kisses across the soft skin of my throat.

“Where else?”

“Here.” Against my breasts.

“Where else?”

“Here.” One on the soft of my stomach.

His dark, heated gaze turned up to me, as he waited on his next command.

And so I slipped my hand lower, lower. Here , I said, and he caught it in his and twined our fingers together.

That tricky, crooked mouth that Cosmo had once said was best suited for a smirk bloomed into a smile that fit his face so much better. “As you wish, bird.”

And the anxiety in my head, the panic in my belly, it all melted away.

There was just his mouth against me. His hands.

His body. The way his lips pressed against my neck.

The way his fingers slid under my dress, the calluses on his fingertips rough, making my skin prickle with gooseflesh as he slipped off my underwear and then inched my dress up.

He kissed the insides of my thighs, and the soft flesh just below my navel, and then he pressed his mouth against me.

I knew he had good diction in his singing, but his tongue made cunning work of the talent.

I stifled a moan, biting my hand, as he pulled one of my legs over his shoulder for better purchase.

“Take out your hand,” his voice growled in my head, and I did, instead reaching down to curl my fingers into his messy hair. “I want to hear you. Make me work for it.”

“Sasha.” I stifled a gasp.

He licked and nibbled in a slower, agonizing rotation.

His hands spread over my thighs, gripping tightly.

I squeezed my eyes closed, all the thoughts in his head in mine, bright and burning and present , singing into me in an ancient language of tongues.

I felt my whole body tense, desperate for that steady, unwavering climax, my fingers tightening around his hair, back arching, and then released in a heaven-sent gasp.

I felt, for the first time in months, that awful tension in my chest evaporate. My head was full of noise and empty of words, dizzy with his pleasure dancing with mine.

“You sound so sweet when you come,” he told me, letting my legs down. Kissing my neck again. My cheek.

I didn’t have a witty answer for that. I want to hear you, too , I thought, feverish, as my fingers picked at the hem of his shirt, pulling it up.

I traced my fingers over the scar on his abdomen. He shuddered at the sensitivity.

There were so many things I didn’t know about him. So many little nooks and crannies I hadn’t yet discovered. I want to know it all , I thought. Everything about you.

His eyebrows furrowed in uncertainty. “You might not like it.”

“Sasha,” I said to him, looking up into his gaze, “there is nothing about you that I won’t like. And if there is, I’ll just write a song about it.”

He chuckled, a smile crossing his mouth to mirror mine. “You’re the worst.”

“You like me anyway.”

“I do.”

And then he found the condom in his wallet on the coffee table and gently peeled off my dress the rest of the way and dropped it to the ground.

He knelt over me, eyes feverish and hair wild, his bulge hard against his boxers.

A thousand songs came into my head. A hundred perfect notes for love.

He saw me fully now. “What are you thinking?” I whispered, hesitant, because my panic was suddenly louder than his thoughts.

“How beautiful you are,” he replied, slipping himself into me.

“Let me show you.” And when he kissed me again, my head exploded with light.

So much light. Love for all the parts of me that I didn’t think anyone noticed.

The constellations of freckles on my shoulders, the divot of my hip bone, the scar just under my chin from when Mitch accidentally hit me with a Frisbee when I was seven.

And we pulled into each other again, and again, and again.

If we were a song, I would want to be this one.

The feeling of slow dancing when no one was looking, pressed cheek to cheek with someone who knew you better than you knew yourself.

I wanted this buoyant, breathless feeling in every lyric.

It didn’t feel like falling the way you did when love was quick and exotic.

No, it felt like finding a song you hadn’t heard in years played on a jukebox in an old music hall.

The feeling of the world stopping. Of hearts beating together.

The soft lull of a lovely moment, his lips against mine.

He smelled so good, like bergamot and fresh laundry, and his skin was so warm, his breath soft against my skin, matching mine.

It was so familiar that I had a hard time placing it, until I realized—it was the same feeling I felt when he was in my head.

Just there, just beside me. Not a dominating force, not overpowering.

But in harmony.

This was the song, and it sounded like love.