Chapter 39 Lance #2
I lean in, my eyes on hers, and take a bite from her fingers. It’s good, actually.
“I’m not admitting you’re right.”
“You just did.”
“I have manners. You literally just dragged a french fry through a vanilla milkshake. You should be in chef jail.”
“Bold talk from the man who ordered two slices of cherry pie after eating a double cheeseburger and drinking a chocolate malt.”
I beam at her. “I’m a growing boy.”
She laughs.
“Besides, you’re enabling me.”
“I stand by it. Sweet and salty is classic. Like depth of flavor. Complexity.” She shrugs. “Culinary science.”
“You’re defending milkshake fries with culinary science?”
“Don’t be mad because you liked it.”
I lean in, drop my chin to my hand, and give her a slow smile. “I like a lot of things I shouldn’t.”
Her breath hitches. Just slightly. But she doesn’t break eye contact.
The waitress drops the pie on the table with a wink, says something about how we look “too cozy to be new,” and walks away without waiting for a response.
Genevieve picks up her fork, stabbing a piece of my pie without looking at me.
“Chef jail isn’t a thing.”
I grin, wide and unrepentant.
We finish the meal. Neither of us mentions our deal.
That we’re acting like a normal couple having breakfast, because naming it might break it, and right now, sitting across from her in a diner booth with cherry pie on my fork and her laugh in my ears, I don’t want anything to break.
I don’t think about Art. I don’t think about Bors.
I don’t think about Myrddin or the Lye or the blood that was on my hands a few hours ago.
I think about her.
And for the first time in six years, that feels like enough.
The sun is starting to set by the time we get back to the room.
We spent the day doing nothing. Walking through the small town.
Sitting on a bench outside the hardware store making up stories about the strangers walking by.
She found a used bookstore and spent twenty minutes judging every cookbook on the shelf while I leaned against the doorframe and watched her.
I could do this forever.
Most likely, I won’t get to. I know that. Tomorrow is Boston, and her father, and whatever comes after. But today was ours, and I’m going to be selfish about it because I’ve earned at least one selfish thing in my life.
Genevieve kicks off her shoes and curls up on the creaky motel bed, her back against the headboard. She’s flushed from the walk, cheeks pink, hair tangled from the wind.
“You’re staring,” she says without looking at me.
“I know.”
“It’s creepy.”
“And?”
She glances over, and whatever she sees on my face makes her expression shift. “What’s wrong?”
“I keep thinking about tomorrow. About what happens when we get to Boston. When you see your father.”
Her expression closes off, just a little. “I don’t want to think about tomorrow.”
“Then what do you want to think about?”
She sets down the remote and looks at me. Her green eyes catch the last of the daylight flickering through the blinds.
“I want to think about tonight. I want to think about this room and this bed and the fact that for the next few hours, nobody knows where we are. Nobody can find us. Nobody can tell us what to do or who to be.”
She pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
“I’ve never had that before,” I say.
“I thought I did once, but it was just another way someone was pulling the strings.”
Her voice cracks, and I know she means Art. And maybe her dad. All of it.
“But right now? Right here? I get to choose. And I choose this. I choose you. And I don’t know what that means for tomorrow, or if we’ll even make it out of this in one piece, but I don’t care.”
I’m out of the chair before I realize I’m moving. Three strides across the room, my hands cupping her face, and I kiss her like I’m trying to swallow the fear right out of her.
She gasps against my mouth, her fingers fisting in my shirt.
“Not just tonight,” I breathe against her lips. “You hear me? This isn’t just tonight.”
She pulls my shirt over my head, her hands running down my chest. Her fingers trace the edges of bruises, careful and deliberate, like she’s mapping the damage and memorizing it at the same time. When her palm presses flat over my heart, she holds it there.
“Does this hurt?”
“Everything hurts.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “I don’t care.”
I tug the hoodie off her and find bare skin and the marks I left the night we were together in my cabin.
“You weren’t wearing anything under this?”
She grins. “Surprise.”
“You’ve been sitting next to me for hours in my clothes with nothing underneath?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could’ve crashed the car.”
“But you didn’t.” She reaches for the button on my jeans. “Now stop talking.”
The rest of our clothes disappear in a mess of impatient hands and the sounds they make hitting the floor. And then she’s beneath me on that ridiculous floral bedspread, her hair fanned out like fire, her chest heaving, her eyes dark.
I take a moment to look at her.
She’s not the woman who called me a dog at the tavern. She’s not the woman who threw a mop at my head or argued about mushrooms in the grocery store or refused to let me carry the bags. She’s not even the woman from my armchair, reckless and urgent, with guilt nipping at both our heels.
She’s just mine. And I’m hers.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks.
“Shh.” I brush my thumb across her bottom lip. “I’m counting.”
A softness lights up her gaze, and she pulls me on top of her. “Then let’s make every second count.”
I kiss my way down her body. Slow. Taking my time even though every nerve in me is screaming to rush, because she was right before.
About the strings. About never getting to choose.
So I’m going to make sure that every moment with me is a moment she never has to question.
I press my mouth to her collarbone. The dip between her breasts.
The freckle beneath her left rib that I found in the dark of my cabin and memorized by touch.
Each mark I left on her skin the first time, I kiss those, too, like I’m retracing something I drew and want to make permanent.
My face settles between her legs and I look up at her, waiting.
“Yes,” she breathes before I can ask.
I press a kiss to the inside of her knee, then higher, dragging my mouth along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh until she shakes.
She’s already wet. The scent of her hits me and my cock throbs hard against the mattress.
I lick her once. Long and slow, from her entrance to her clit, and her body tenses.
She gasps, hips jolting, hands flying to my hair.
“Easy,” I murmur against her, and she whimpers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Then I give her everything.
I flatten my tongue and lap at her, building her up from the inside out.
I suck her clit into my mouth and flick, gentle then hard then back off, reading her body like a language I’ve been studying for months.
I slide my fingers inside her, one then two, curling them just right, and she falls apart.
She rocks against my face, breath hitching, fingers tightening in my hair like she’s anchoring herself. Her thighs tense around my head, shaking, open just for me.
She’s something I’ll crave for the rest of my life.
Her breath comes faster. Her voice breaks on my name.
“I…Lance…fuck…”
“I’ve got you. Let me have it.”
She clenches around my fingers, cries out, her hips jerking as the orgasm tears through her. I don’t stop. I keep going, slower now, dragging it out while her body twitches and she moans, helpless and mine and so fucking perfect I can barely stand it.
When I finally pull back, her thighs fall open, trembling. Her chest rises and falls like she just ran one of the sprints I made her do. She looks down at me through heavy-lidded eyes, flushed and glowing.
I press one last kiss to her thigh, then crawl up her body, my touch trailing over her curves, until I’m hovering above her.
Her hands find my shoulders, sliding up to cup the back of my neck, and when our mouths meet, it’s slick.
“You okay?”
She nods. “Better than okay.”
I kiss her again, then flip her gently onto her stomach. She gasps but moves with me, letting me guide her up onto her hands and knees, her hair falling around her face, her back arching.