Chapter 20
Twenty
M ia was unprepared for the way Tori kissed. With nothing but her mouth on hers, she’d dismantled her fiber by fiber. Tori made her feel thoroughly ravaged and painfully desperate with the way she used her tongue. Slow and deep and penetrating, she’d set the pace and Mia was helpless to do anything but follow.
When Tori pulled away to talk, it took all of Mia’s self-control not to whine. Not to beg Tori to keep kissing her until there was nothing left of her but an aching hollow of need. To let her bask in the rush.
“This doesn’t feel real,” Tori confessed against Mia’s famished lips.
Tori held herself over Mia when all Mia wanted was to have Tori’s full weight on her again. Wanted the barrel tiles to dig into her back and Tori to moan into her mouth. But the pleading in Tori’s voice made Mia ignore the shocking amount of arousal making her underwear stick to her body.
“How long have you wanted to kiss me?” Mia asked while tracing the collar of Tori’s T-shirt before drifting up her elegant throat.
At her touch, Tori closed her eyes as if to shut out all her other senses. Her lips parted in invitation when Mia ran her fingers along the back of her neck, and it took all of Mia’s willpower not to lunge for her mouth again.
“I don’t want to make things weird,” Tori replied, eyes half-lidded.
Mia chuckled and made a fist in Tori’s hair. “Tori, for fuck’s sake, I just mauled you.”
Tori bit her bottom lip, head tipping back into Mia’s touch, and Mia forgot how to breathe. Forgot everything but the sharp angle of Tori’s jaw and the way her lips parted like she was waiting for her. Like she was silently begging for Mia to kiss her again.
“You can’t imagine how many nights I stayed awake wondering what would happen if I were brave enough to tell you…”
Mia’s heart raced when Tori’s eyes, brimming with devastating emotion, landed on hers again. “Tell me what?” Mia’s breathless question was barely above a whisper.
Tori shook her head. There was a world locked behind her dark eyes, and Mia would trade anything to be let inside.
“Please, don’t run away from me,” Mia pleaded. “Talk to me.”
Tori’s hesitation was heartbreaking. How could she be so afraid of her? Did she really believe Mia would hurt her on purpose?
Mia held Tori’s face with both hands to stop her from looking away again. “I want to know, Tori. I want to know everything you’re thinking,” she swore. “There’s nothing you could ever say that would push me away. So, please? Don’t shut me out.” She let one hand slide down Tori’s tense jaw and over her neck before pressing the center of Tori’s chest. “I want to know everything happening in here,” she promised with Tori’s racing heart vibrating against her open palm.
“I wanted to tell you,” Tori admitted, entire body trembling like she was truly afraid. Like even now, she feared Mia would shove her off when all she wanted was to bring her closer.
“I’d play out all these scenarios that might happen if I was brave enough to tell you I liked you.” She swallowed hard and shut her eyes tight. “To tell you I had all these feelings I didn’t understand,” she added, voice covered in hairline fractures. Spider cracks on glass.
Mia felt the trembling in Tori’s voice like a fissure in her own chest. Desperate to ease Tori’s doubt, to convince her she wasn’t in mortal danger, Mia sat up. Planting one foot on the roof, she hooked her leg around Tori. Pulling Tori half onto her lap, she circled her arms around her waist and held her as close as the awkward position allowed.
“I’m so sorry I left you so alone with all of this,” Mia whispered when she lifted Tori’s chin so she’d bring her gaze back to her. “I can’t imagine how awful that was.”
When Tori looked at her, eyes brimming with unshed tears, Mia was overcome with an instinctive urge to reach for her sword. To stand between Tori and the fire-breathing dragon in her mind. To slay the monster filling Tori with dread. But all she had were useless hands and an inability to change the past.
“But every time I thought about telling you, I imagined you looking at me like I was a creep just waiting to get out of the friend zone.” She furrowed her brow, silently begging Mia to believe her. “I never wanted you to look at me like I was taking advantage of your friendship because I would never?—”
“I know,” Mia promised when Tori’s voice finally broke and a tear rolled down her face. “Tori, I could never think that.” She reached up and wiped it away with her thumb, wishing they weren’t on the stupid roof so she could hold her properly. “You have always been incredible to me.” Mia’s chest ached with desperation. She needed to obliterate Tori’s sadness. Needed to consume it all. “Even if I didn’t want to see where this might go, I would never, ever think of you as anything but perfect.”
“Perfect,” Tori repeated with her stuffy nose and raw throat and tone that screamed yeah right . “I’m not?—”
“You’re perfect to me , Tori,” Mia pleaded when she was almost sure she meant perfect for me. “In my life, I’ve never met anyone like you. The way I have missed you all these years?—”
“I’m so sorry about how I handled that,” Tori said with a brand-new wave of shame and regret marring her beautiful face. “I’m not proud of how I acted. I never meant to hurt you. I just—my feelings were so intense and I didn’t see any other way out but this total detox.”
Mia bit back the solution that seemed so obvious to her. You could have just told me. We could have figured it out together.
It wasn’t what Tori needed to hear. Mia understood it was easy for her to say that with the certainty that she’d never reject Tori. Never cast her aside. Even if she didn’t feel a flutter in her stomach at her touch, if she really only had friendship to offer, nothing would have changed. They would have figured out a way forward together. But Tori couldn’t have known that.
“You’re breaking my heart,” Mia whispered, forehead pressed to Tori’s. “I don’t know exactly what I would have said then, but I never would have willingly given you up.” She rubbed slow circles on Tori’s back, hoping to soothe her silent crying. “And we can’t go back no matter how badly I wish we could,” she admitted to herself, too. “But we’re here now, and?—”
“And you’re still straight,” Tori interrupted when she pulled away, drying her face with her shirt sleeve while she chuckled.
Mia leaned back, both eyebrows raised. “Umm… I’m pretty sure I just put my whole tongue in your mouth, Victoria.”
“Yeah, but?—”
“ Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you can’t slap labels on other people,” she teased, reaching for Tori’s hand to interlace their fingers.
Tori’s flushed face turned serious, as if she’d only just realized that Mia had initiated their kiss. “What are you saying?” she asked for once instead of making an assumption.
Mia took a deep breath. She actually had no idea what she was saying, but looking at Tori’s lips, she knew she wanted to kiss her again.
“I don’t normally look at other women and feel things,” she admitted, “but when I’m with you…” She squeezed Tori’s hand and wished there were more words in the English language. Not that she knew how to convey her feelings in her shitty Spanish, either. “No one has ever made me feel what you do. It’s intense and raw.” She shook her head. “I’m such a fucking mess right now, and my feelings for you are, like, trapped in the brambles of all this stuff that has nothing to do with us.”
Tori tried to slip out of her hand. “Mia, you don’t have to?—”
Mia responded with a death grip, keeping her in place. “Tori, I need you to hear me when I say this,” she pleaded, chest constricted and stomach heaving with the panic of losing something before she’d held it. “I want more than anything to see what this is.” She squeezed Tori’s hand and channeled the intensity of her conviction into her fixed gaze. “I’m just so afraid to hurt you. And not because I don’t know how strongly I feel about you.” Her heart seized with the memory of so much loss. “Things just break despite my best efforts.” She tried so hard not to cry. “Holding another person’s heart in my chest… I don’t know if I can. Especially yours.”
“Are you just saying that to let me down gently?” Tori’s brows knit together, heavy with open anxiety. Like she couldn’t bring herself to believe this was real.
Instead of snapping that Tori must be nuts, Mia surged forward, pressing Tori onto her back and straddling her waist. She captured Tori’s mouth with hers, trying to drown out the doubt with every kiss. Trying to make Tori understand that her fears had nothing to do with questioning what she felt for Tori and everything to do with the wreckage of her own life.
Tori gripped Mia’s hips. Held her tight. Steadied her. After feeling like a runaway hot-air balloon for so long, Tori’s confident touch was grounding. It made Mia want to run headlong into the feeling, even as she was terrified of ruining it, of crushing it the way a greedy touch could ruin a butterfly’s wing.
“You’re incredible,” Mia whispered against Tori’s mouth before running the tip of her tongue along her full bottom lip to coax her mouth to part. She was hooked on Tori’s kiss. On her incredibly soft lips and sinful tongue and sultry sounds.
Mia pulled back before getting lost in the lust thundering through her body. “You’re so smart and generous and stubborn and loyal and strong and really fucking hot.” Tori’s dark gaze was trained on her like she was going to object, but Mia barreled forward with a lump in her throat and knot in her stomach. “I don’t deserve you. And I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you because things always shatter in my hands no matter what I do.” She couldn’t stop the regret that punched her heart when she confessed, “Because I don’t get to be this kind of happy.”
“Who the hell told you that?” Tori reached for her face with both hands. “Mia, you’re all love and colors and bravery. You’re fierce and funny. How could you think?—”
“Tori.” Mia’s voice cracked under Tori’s warm gaze. “I’d never forgive myself if I broke your heart,” she rasped, vision blurring.
Unexpectedly, the corner of Tori’s perfect mouth quirked into a little smile. Like Mia being a disaster was adorable. “Lesser women have come and gone. None of them ever had the power to hurt me.” She pulled Mia down to her mouth, breath warm and lips hypnotic when they grazed hers. “You could ruin me and I’d still beg you to try.”
“Fuck,” Mia groaned against Tori’s mouth before she kissed her again.
Tori’s lips were scorching. Her kiss slow and devastating and unraveling. Mia melted into it, lost to the heat, the pull, the staggering weight of wanting. Tori kissed her like she had imagined this a thousand times before and had perfected the way she’d take Mia apart.
Mia let herself go and thanked the universe for Tori’s overthinking, control-freak, overly attentive nature.
When Tori broke their kiss again, she held Mia close. “Let’s just go slow. We can both try to stop worrying about the future and the past and see what we have now, okay?”
Despite her bone-deep fear of disappointing Tori and losing her all over again, Mia couldn’t stop the selfish desire to know Tori like this. To give the fire roaring in her unworthy chest all the oxygen Tori had to spare.
“Okay,” Mia breathed, then dove into Tori’s kiss again.