Chapter 28
kiss
BELL
“Can I kiss you?”
“I’m…” I had to swallow a few times. “I’m not back. I’m just helping. And we shouldn’t….”
“I didn’t ask if we should.” Boone’s eyes dropped to my mouth. “I asked if we could.”
Silence. This wasn’t the loft bed. Our genitals weren’t even touching. But somehow the air between us was even more charged with electric desire and, I guess, the smell of my arousal.
“We shouldn’t,” I tried again.
“I didn’t ask if we should,” he said again.
“But we shouldn’t,” I insisted.
“Sugar, I didn’t ask if—”
He didn’t finish that sentence.
Because I kissed him.
Or he kissed me.
I didn’t know who moved first, just that the clippers and scissors clattered to the floor, and suddenly, his mouth was on mine, and his hands were everywhere, and I was climbing into his lap like I’d caught whatever mind fever made him think that us two doing this was remotely a good idea.
Boone’s mouth devoured mine, but our tongues worked together, delving and tangling.
His hands weren’t just on my hips anymore. They were under my shirt, palming the breasts I never bothered to put in a bra these days, kneading my bottom through the leggings.
“Fuck, you smell so good,” he growled against my lips. “Let me help you. Let me touch you, sugar, please.”
I didn’t understand what he meant. He was already touching me.
But then he said, “Like you thought Zion was going to do before he told you he was better with his mouth.”
And that’s when I realized what he was offering.
I was so turned on, clit throbbing because I hadn’t been just touching him but rocking myself into the heavy log of the erection that I could feel behind his cargo shorts.
This was touching, touching, touching. But all my senses were zeroed in on that throbbing part of my body, so in need of relief.
And Boone knew it. Could smell my desires—even the ones I hid from myself.
But…
“I won’t go inside,” he vowed, as if sensing the reason behind my hesitation. “I’m just going to make you feel good. Let me. Please just let me touch you, sugar.”
There were no words… no words for how it felt to have a Herculean statue fervently beg you for the privilege of touching you.
I wish I could describe the rush that went straight to my head.
And made the “Okay” drop out of my mouth in an exhale of surrender.
His mouth captured mine again.
Then, suddenly, I wasn’t just grinding against his erection, I was grinding against his erection while his hand slipped beneath the waistband of my leggings.
Zion had been right. Boone was very capable with his hands.
One gripped my hip, kept me anchored against him, while the other rubbed circles over the top of my mound, grazing my throbbing button on each pass.
Fire… fire… fire.
He was supposed to rescue people from those.
But my skin was boiling from his touch, and the deep licks of his tongue into my mouth only made it worse.
I gasped into his lips, and he swallowed the sound, kissing me deeper, hungrier.
Now I was touching him, too.
My hands found his shoulders, his chest, his hair—the hair I’d just cut and combed, probably messing it up again, but I didn’t care.
The friction, the heat, his fingers digging into my ass—gripping me tight so I couldn’t slide away as I rocked against his erection and pushed into his rubbing hand. Too much. I fell out of the kiss with a long moan.
“Yeah, let me hear you, baby.” Boone’s gripping hand slid up to the back of my neck. Pulled me forward so I could moan against his neck. “Don’t hold back.”
That was one invitation I didn’t need. The loud moans tore out of me, running from the fire he kept stoking inside.
“That’s it,” Boone murmured. “You’re so beautiful. So fucking perfect.”
The orgasm exploded inside of me, melting me down to bone.
I came with another cry I couldn’t hold back, shuddering against him, my whole body clenching and releasing.
My nails scraped against his t-shirt, trying to find my way out of the blaze, but there was no way out. Just through. I burned and burned.
Until I sank against him with nothing left.
“Boone… Boone…”
I didn’t know why I was saying his name. It just kept falling out of my mouth as I lay collapsed against his wide chest.
Boone removed his hand, and for a perfect, crystalline moment, everything that was wrong in my life burned away.
And then reality came crashing back in, faster than it ever had before.
Oh god. What did I just do?
The room tilted at the enormity of my inability to control my actions.
“Bell?” Boone’s hands were still on my hips. “You okay, sugar?”
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t get enough air.
My throat closed. Ravik was right. I was still a mess, unable to adult correctly for even a week.
A ringing filled my ears. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t—
“Hey, hey.” Boone’s voice cut through the spiral, rough and worried. “Look at me. Just breathe with me, okay?”
I shoved away from him instead, stumbling backward off his lap.
“I can’t do this with you.” My voice broke. “I can’t keep doing this. Saying one thing, and doing another.”
“Bell, it’s okay. You’re okay.” He stood slowly, hands up, like I was a spooked animal. “Nobody’s mad. Nobody—”
“I told Ravik I didn’t want anything.” The words tumbled out, shaky and desperate. “I said I didn’t want anything from any of you. But I keep on taking when I know it’s a bad idea. And he’s going to know that he’s right about me, because you cannot not tell him.”
“Bell, what are you talking about?” Boone jumped to his feet.
“Me! I’m talking about me!” I raged at him. I was shaking now. Full-body tremors I couldn’t control. “I’m trying to make you see who I really am.”
“How?” Boone shook his head. “By acting crazy after we finally had that breakthrough?”
“Boone…” I flared my eyes at him because how did he not understand? “I am crazy. Not brave. Broken! And unfixable! So please, just stop trying with me.”
Boone flinched back.
“Don’t,” he croaked, as if I’d gut punched him. “Don’t ask me to do that.”
So I didn’t.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out as broken as me. “I’m so sorry, Boone.”
Then I just left.
Behind me, Boone called my name like an angry plea. But I was already out the door.
I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t look back. Couldn’t breathe.
I just ran.
Until I got back to the cottage and slammed the unlockable door behind me.
Still shaking.
Through the window, I could see the bear cubs I was working on—eyeless but smiling, like this was all a game.
Poison… all I had to do was follow the smell of rot.
What was I doing?
Ravik was right.
Better me was a pipe dream. I was never going to figure this out. Never going to get up the courage to face Holly and Noelle, much less give them their wedding presents.
A new impulse rose, dark and dank as a swamp.
I yanked open the back window door and lugged the smaller one-cub statue into my weak arms.
The wood was warm from the afternoon sun, and the bear cub’s cute little smile mocked my inner storm.
I needed to throw this into the lake. Get rid of the evidence that I ever tried to reclaim a dream I should have given up thirty years ago. Then come back to do the same with the other one.
Drown this art. Drown my dreams.
Boop! Boop-dee-boop-boop-boop! Boop! Boop-dee-boop-boop-boop!
The phone I’d left on the metal chair went off just as I was trying to gauge whether I’d need to drag the cub to the lake shore or hurl it from the deck.
I scrunched my forehead, the cloud of fury at myself dissipating when I saw the name rolling across the device’s screen: BMP MERCANTILE.
Was this one of the jobs I’d applied for, finally calling me back?
I carefully put down the bear cub and answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello.” The voice on the other end of the line was professional. Male. Unfamiliar. “Is this BW, the sculptor?”
I froze.
Sculptor. No one had ever called me that or just by my initials since college, when I’d made a habit of carving BW into every piece I completed.
Still, I managed to reply, “This is she. May I ask who’s calling?”
The answer to that question made my mouth drop open.
Surely, surely, I was hearing him wrong. My head filled up with a new kind of steam.
“Say what now?”