Page 48 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)

It’s the kind of kiss I’ve always dreamed about. The type you watch in movies and hope to experience one day for yourself, but after a while start believing that it’s all made up for Hollywood magic.

But, this kiss is not made up for Hollywood magic.

And neither are her lips, her hands, and her body pressing firmly into mine.

Her lips feel desperate at first as her nails run through my hair, down the back of my neck, like she can’t get as close to me as she wants or needs.

I stand there, too stunned to respond at first, and then, I give in.

When I do, her lips slow down against mine, pulling back enough to take her time, tasting my tongue slowly, running her fingers along my jaw, pressing her body into mine.

I cup her waist, squeezing her closer. Then when I know she’s not going to run, I drag both hands up her back and find her neck, the crook of her jaw, hooking my thumbs in that soft spot just in front of her ears to cradle her face in my palms.

Then our lips pause, less than an inch away, both of us panting like we’ve just completed a half-marathon over the course of the last ten years, and I force myself not to move. To let her bring herself back into me for more, or to step away, questioning everything.

This has to be her choice.

It has to be her wanting me as much as I have always wanted her in order for us to keep going.

For one solid moment and too many extra heartbeats, I think she might actually pull away.

Our breath mixes in the dark, crickets and waves suddenly coming back to life loudly in my ears — before all I can hear are my own thoughts screaming and cheering and wondering whether any of this is going to be okay.

Another ten seconds pass, but it feels like an hour. And then I feel her easing back from me, bringing both eyes up to meet mine.

She touches a few fingertips to her bottom lip, rubbing them absentmindedly, like she’s already remembering what it felt like to have my lips there just seconds ago.

“Silas, I—”

“Don’t,” I tell her, smiling gently, hopefully. “Don’t think about it. Don’t try to figure it out yet. Not right now. It’s just another moment that—”

“Shouldn’t be happening—” she whispers.

“But is,” I finish for her.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she says to herself more than me. But when our eyes meet again, she inhales sharply. “Fuck it,” she whispers on the exhale, then presses her lips back to mine, and I wrap my hands up in her hair.

One hint of doubt can ruin everything.

Turn our mess into something more. Something neither one of us will recognize.

I won’t let her question it.

Not now, not ever.

She responds by grabbing my belt with both hands, pulling me into her, hooking her arms behind my back, then dragging them up toward my shoulder blades.

My entire body turns to fire, wanting her, like the electric current that’s been simmering beneath the surface of my feelings for Jules has finally been allowed to reach maximum capacity.

Coursing through each and every vein beneath my skin.

Pulsing at her touch, shooting embers from behind my eyes.

As if something inside me has been lying dormant my whole life, waiting for this exact moment when she decides that it’s us.

I forget that we’re standing in the middle of a sidewalk in Italy.

Forget why we’re even here.

All I can think about is her arms wrapped around me, her lips pressed into mine.

I don’t want to feel anything else in this moment but her. Like she’s the only thing keeping me grounded in a hurricane.

Breathlessly, she backs up from me again, this time stooping down to grab the two lemons she dropped a moment ago.

“I — I can’t forget the lemons,” she says, picking them up, nearly laughing, like she doesn’t know what else to say.

She holds them up between us, blinking, but her face shifts into something new. She’s grinning, looking at me in the way I’ve always been too afraid to imagine.

It makes me laugh — knowing that my face must look the exact same way as hers.

“No, I wouldn’t want you to forget those,” I tell her, grinning too, taking another step toward this most beautiful woman in the world.

She drops the lemons to her sides and we each take another step. It’s neither her nor I closing the gap alone, but both of us doing it together, and our lips entwine again.

The lemons must be back on the ground because suddenly her hands are everywhere.

Pushing against my chest, wrapped around the back of my neck, pulling me closer to her, fingertips raking over my scalp, sending waves of yearning all the way down through my legs, bouncing off the pavement, and racing back up my body again.

She can’t hold still. Leaning against me, then arching her back, fisting my collar and yanking me to her, as if I will never be close enough.

She steps back but pulls me with her, until her back is up against the stone-wall path we’ve been following toward the hotel.

“Oomph.” She giggles and I love the feeling of her lips turning upward, smiling against my mouth.

I press against the wall, testing the strength of it before I lift her onto it, sliding her knees open just enough for my hips to fit between them. She squeezes them around me, pressing herself forward so we fit together just like we should.

“I’ve never wanted you to have a driver waiting so bad in my entire life,” she says, breathlessly.

“I swear to God I’ll have him here in the next three minutes. I’ll get a chopper. I’ll fucking teleport us to that hotel right now if you want me to.”

She looks around, as if trying to decide if the street is dark enough to take this a step further.

“How far is it?”

“Too far,” I say, grabbing her face between my hands. Knowing damn well that she might change her mind if we have to break this spell apart in order to get ourselves all the way back to a room. We came straight from the airport to Nonna Lisi’s so we haven’t actually checked in yet.

“There,” I tell her, pointing to what looks like a tiny Bed and Breakfast just a half a block away on the other side of the street. It’s not the Ritz, not even close. One of the lights is flickering under a dank, striped awning but I couldn’t care less.

“That’s our hotel?” she asks.

“It is now,” I say, grabbing her hand to pull her across the street toward it.

She plants her feet, holding me back, laughing.

“We can make it back to our bags, to the original hotel where our reservation is,” she says, looking amused.

“But—”

She turns me around slowly, rubbing her thumbs across my jaw.

Her eyes dart between mine, and for one gut-wrenching moment, I think she’s going to tell me that everything about this is a mistake.

That the spell has been broken. That the walk here was just long enough to bring her back to her senses.

I’m about to apologize for following her lead, forever thinking that this could be something and that we could be more.

But I don’t say a word. If all I have to remember her by is this kiss on a dark cobblestone street in Amalfi — then it will always be enough.

It will have to be, even though it never will.

“Jules, listen—” I start to say, hating myself before I can even get the words out.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” she says firmly, reading my mind.

“Are you sure?” I ask, still unsure whether I heard her correctly.

“I’m not changing my mind, and you better not either. I need you, Si. I think I need you as much as you need me. Another few blocks isn’t going to change that.”

I wrap my arms around her back and hold her, closing my eyes, feeling her heart beat wildly against my chest. Knowing with everything in me that I’ve never loved her more.

We somehow make it the rest of the way to our hotel another few blocks down the road.

Stopping every half block or so to kiss each other some more on the pavement, or up against a tattered stone wall, each time using more and more self-control to break ourselves apart before breathlessly speeding through another half a block down the road toward the solace of our hotel.

By the time we arrive at the front desk, her lips are pink and swollen. She places the two lemons we somehow managed not to forget on top of the counter.

“I believe my crew may have already checked us into the suite earlier and had our bags taken up. There should be a key waiting for us,” I tell the man behind the desk, keeping my eyes glued to Jules.

“Name?” the hotel attendant asks.

I hope this momentary blip in the momentum we had cruising down the sidewalk isn’t enough to break whatever is happening between us right now.

“Juliet Hart and Silas Davenport,” I say, trying to keep the impatient edge out of my voice. I grin over at her and place our passports down. She looks like the most gorgeously disheveled mess I’ve ever seen.

“Oh, yes. Here are your keys,” the man says, placing two key cards onto the counter. “And here’s the letter that was to be delivered to Ms. Hart upon arrival.”