Chapter 7 Reese #2
I stand on my tiptoes, eyes closing once again, and this time I do feel his lips against mine.
It's a short, soft brush of his lips against mine, a hint of mint from when he was chewing on gum earlier.
I whimper as he begins to withdraw, and before I can think better of it, I wrap my arms around his neck, holding him closer to me, and bringing our lips together again.
He falters for the briefest moment, but then his lips soften for me, parting, and I deepen the kiss. His fingers are at the nape of my neck. The next moment, his arm that's banded around my waist tugs me up against his body.
We're too lost in one another, that much is clear. The kiss goes on for so long that I can already hear how excited Mauve is going to be with the material we're giving the paparazzi to work with.
I wish I could care about any of that, but I can't because all that matters in this moment is how right it feels when my lips are locked with Zill's, how good it feels to be pressed against his body, where he's hard against me like.
.. Wait? I pull back from him slightly, confusion pulling my brows together.
"What's wrong?" Zill asks, his eyes brighter than I've seen them, his lips pink and swollen, his hair mussed from where I've tugged it out of its neat little bun.
"You're–" I'm cut off telling him he's hard by a loud whistling that has Zill's shadows shooting up around me like a curtain, just like they did at the restaurant.
"You say what's on your mind and I will make you regret it," Zill says, any hint of the man I know, the one who shares my apartment with me and is always pink-cheeked, is gone.
Replacing him is a voice to match the man who snarls and scowls at anyone near me.
I swat at the shadows around me, but they all weave themselves back together as soon as my fingers pass through them.
"Rude," I mumble under my breath, reaching through them to where I'm pretty sure Zill is standing. My hand finds his arm, and I squeeze it.
"One second, love," he says, his voice soft before the hardness returns, "Go back to your friends, and if any of them try what you just did, I'll tell your girlfriend where you were last weekend because it wasn't with your parents."
And now I'm extremely upset that I don't get to witness all of this happening. With as much reality television I watch, Zill should know I would love this kind of drama. He's also going to find out that he's going to make good on that threat, whether this guy and his friends bother us again or not.
It's not for a couple more minutes before the shadows fall, and then they're scampering right back up my body, clinging around my waist like they were before.
This time their presence feels even heavier, almost like they're all trying to touch me.
I really need to learn more about them. There are about fifty questions I have, all of them seeming like the most important, until I look up and see the pinched expression on Zill's face.
"What?" I ask, my eyes darting around the beach as if there's danger around or something else that would make him look so upset.
A few people are gawking in our direction, but that could be because they know who I am, they heard the exchange between Zill and some guy, or they're curious about the cloud of black smoke that's freely flowing around me.
Any of those is more than enough reason for people to have their eyes on us, plus there are still a dozen or so people with cameras, not even being stealthy, taking pictures of Zill and me.
"Nothing important," Zill says, as he shakes his head. "Just remembering that some people are awful."
"Oh, you have no idea. Though I'm sure it's worse for you since you're in their heads and everything," I tell him.
I reach up and wrap my hand around his bicep, the touch reminding me of what he said when I did it just a few minutes ago, how he called me love. It slipped easily from his lips, as if it were more natural than part of our ruse, but that could just be my wishful thinking.
Zill takes a deep breath. Something's bothering him more than the nothing he said it was.
I decide that asking about him being hard and calling me love aren't among the top priorities.
Besides, I should probably do some more research into Sombrans before just blurting out that he was hard and I thought he could only be like that for his bonded mate.
For all I know, it's involuntary, like when human guys sometimes just chub up.
I could be sexually harassing him, and that's just a bad look.
Yeah, I won't bring it up until I've done a bit more research.
"What's bothering you?" I ask him, squeezing his bicep.
He blows out a long breath before wrapping an arm back around me. "How would you feel about making a small detour?"
"Like before we go home?" I ask, unsure why asking to run an errand would be causing him so much distress.
"No, like right now," he says, giving me a sheepish look. "There's a woman down the beach who needs to go to a medical clinic. I don't feel right not telling her now that I know."
My eyes go wide, and I release his arm, pushing him as though I know which direction we need to be walking. "Go, go. I was going to tell you that I wanted to tell that guy's girlfriend before we left anyway. No one should have to put up with a cheater."
"I'll be quick," Zill says, linking our fingers together, leading me down the beach to where a group of college-aged kids is gathered.
He beelines it straight for a young woman sunbathing with a few other women. It's like she knows we're coming for her because she looks up at us and then over to some guy whose eyes are as round as saucers, his head already shaking.
"Hey man, none of us did anything!" he yells at Zill, who isn't dissuaded at all.
"Jaqueline?" Zill asks the young woman who's now pulling her cover-up on.
Her gaze shifts between us to where her boyfriend is still yelling at Zill that he did what he said.
Zill kneels low enough to exchange some words with her, ones I can't hear, but can easily guess with the way tears start to prick her lower lashes.
Red covers her face as she launches off the towel.
Her girlfriends stand and back her up. Either they're just ready to go to bat for her, or, having heard what Zill had to say, want blood as well.
"What the fuck, Tucker?" Jacqueline screams, bending down and grabbing handfuls of sand that she throws at the man. As far as retaliation goes, it's not the greatest, but since she's not really assaulting him, it's probably for the best.
"Okay, I'm done," Zill says, his mood much better now that he's gotten that out of the way. "Did you want to head back now or stay out here?"
"She's nothing, babe, I swear," Tucker pleads behind us.
"I think I want to stay out here a little longer," I tell Zill, leaning into his arm, wrapping my fingers around his forearm, and keeping him close.
We walk back down the coast, the sun beating down on us. My skin is in danger of burning if we stay out too long. I can't bring myself to care when being this close to Zill, being out in the open with him, is so nice.
"Will you tell me what he was going to do?" I ask after we've been walking in silence for a few minutes.
"I wasn't going to tell you," Zill says, his shadows tightening where they're wrapped around me before relaxing again. "But if you want to know, I won't keep it from you."
"On a scale from catcalling to jerking off on my bedspread, how bad was it?"
Zill looks down at me, something dangerous glowing in his eyes. "If it ever gets worse than catcalling, I have no plans of offering them any sort of compromise where they get to walk away."
My eyes widen at his declaration, and everything else from the day comes back in startling detail.
All of his care, all of his reactions, the way things feel so easy with him.
When I get home, I'm looking up Sombrans on my comm.
I'm getting to the bottom of all of this, because how Zill is acting on our very first day of fake dating feels very much like he's not faking at all.
I twist around, wrapping his arm around me, his hand crossing my chest to keep our fingers interlocked.
He doesn't do anything other than bite back his smile.
As much as I want to go back to the apartment right that instant, I want to enjoy this moment more.
So, I let Zill hold me close as we walk and walk and walk until we're both a little pink from the sun.