Chapter 11
Eleven
The Kiss
Kelly
My heart and head pounded. By the time we got back to the compound, my body was behaving like I’d made several bad decisions already and was actively considering worse ones.
I got out of the car.
I laughed when Charlie said something obscene about gulls and unresolved tension. I let Hope hook her arm through mine on the walk up the stone path.
But I kept remembering what Xerses had said to me on the marina boards. His voice was so clear in my mind as he said because I’m not finished being jealous yet.
I was turned on enough to need divine intervention and maybe a blood transfusion.
I should have gone straight upstairs but I glanced behind me.
Xerses was inside the door behind us, one hand on the frame while the others moved past him.
His eyes were on me, possessive, and volatile.
My pulse kicked so hard I almost stumbled.
I wasn’t drunk, not even close.
We moved deeper into the house in little clusters without a word to each other.
Charlie dragged Hope toward the game room because the man could not see a table without wanting to compete on it.
Avril and Kir peeled off toward one of the side terraces with the quiet intimacy of people who no longer needed witnesses.
Jeff and Miley disappeared into an argument that looked suspiciously like foreplay if a person hated herself enough to examine it too long.
Roxanne kissed my cheek in passing and told me there were pastries in the kitchen if I got hungry later. Then she was gone in a cloud of silk and satisfaction.
And Xerses, he beaconed me. I shook my head and left. I was not doing this in the foyer. I started toward the stairs.
This is not happening,” I whispered under my breath. “You are not losing sleep because a man said the word jealous in public.”
The ceiling did not care.
“You are a grown woman,” I continued to myself. “And you have very sensible opinions about boundaries.”
The ceiling remained unmoved.
Moonlight outside the door turned it into a temptation.
I stood up before I could think better of it, slid on my sandals, and slipped out of the guest room with my tea still in my hand.
The hallways were dimmer now. Lamps instead of chandelier light. The distant murmur of voices came from the far wing where Charlie and Hope had likely trapped half the house into a game. Somewhere below me, someone laughed, Miley maybe. Or Isabel. Hard to tell from that far.
I went slowly and noticed the sound of the ocean getting louder with every step.
The cove was empty. As I stepped, I heard the crunch of steps in sand behind me and knew.
Xerses was here. The air changed. I looked out at the ocean and said, “I’m starting to think you have me followed.”
The footsteps stopped.
Then his voice came through the dark, lower here than anywhere else, roughened by wind and distance and that there was no one to hear it but me. “I came down for air.”
“At midnight.”
“Yes.”
“To the exact cove where I happen to be sitting.”
“Coincidence.”
“That is not a coincidence. That is surveillance.”
“That is a strong word you can’t prove.”
“It’s the right word.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“I give you exactly the right amount of credit and you know it.”
The moon put enough light on him when I finally looked back that the shape of him properly. Dark shirt again. No jacket. Hands in his pockets. Barefoot.
Something about the stripped-down simplicity of it, Xerses Norouzi, wealthy and polished and infuriatingly controlled, standing in the sand with no shoes on, did mean things to my body my brain had not cleared with legal.
He was within the small, charged circle the cove had become.
“I needed quiet,” I said.
“I get it.”
That immediate answer got to me more than it should have.
“Why do you keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
I shook my head. “Not everything needs to be something you understand.”
“No.”
I was noticing his feet. “There are more words in a sentence than one.”
The laugh that escaped me was real before I could stop it and some of the pressure in my chest loosened.
He stayed where he was.
No reaching for me. No assuming the invitation of proximity just because I hadn’t ordered him away. The restraint from my apartment the night before, alive again here in the dark.
It also made me want him more.
“Are you going to sit or loom,” I asked.
That got me the closest thing to a real smile yet.
“Is looming an option? I always thought I sulked.”
“Probably a better word but loom makes me remember to be cautious.”
He came over then and sat on the sand a few feet from the rock, one knee bent, forearm draped over it, the ocean in front of both of us.
We stayed like that for a while. Then he said, “Why aren’t you safe in your room?”
“Because the cover is the only place in this compound that doesn’t feel like it’s watching me.”
He considered that. “My family has too much interest in us.”
I felt it all over again, the force of his attention, the way it gathered and narrowed and made my skin go aching with need.
I should have let the moment pass.
Instead I heard myself ask, “Why were you so jealous? We aren’t real.”
Then he asked, “Do you want the polite answer.”
“No.”
“Good.” He looked back toward the water. “Because I don’t think anyone should touch you.”
My pulse zipped and I stared at the side of his face.
“That is not an explanation. We don’t have a claim on each other.”
“No.” His jaw moved once. “But there was a man in front of me making it very obvious he would like the opportunity to want you out loud.”
My throat tightened. I breathed it down and looked back at the black water because if I kept looking at him while he said things like that, I wasn’t sure I’d be me after.
“So it was competition,” I blinked as my lips trembled and I needed to clear my head.
“No.” He shook his head but kept his voice low, “It bothered me because he looked easy.”
That made me look at him. Moonlight caught the side of his face.
“Easy?” I repeated.
I understood what he meant the second he said it.
“Ben is not exactly my future husband,” I said. “I never went out with him.”
“That wasn’t the point.”
“No?”
He looked at me now. “The point was that I saw what it would look like if you chose someone sensible.”
God. What was I supposed to do with that. “Xerses...”
“You deserve better than me.”
The ocean hit the shore harder this time, one wave bigger than the rest, and spray moved over the rocks in a soft mist. “Don’t.”
“I’m telling you what I felt.”
I got off the rock before I could talk myself out of it, pacing two steps toward the water and then back because the cove had become too small to contain the conversation and my body at once.
The wet sand was cold under my feet.
I crossed my arms and looked out at the black line of the Atlantic and said, “This is why fake dating is such a stupid idea.”
“I realized I had miscalculated.”
“Miscalculated what?”
“How difficult it would be to pretend I didn’t want you in a house full of people who notice everything.”
“You are not allowed to say things like that in a cove.”
“Where would you prefer I say them?”
“Nowhere. That’s the whole point.”
He stood too close now. “Yes.”
I looked at him for one long second and then, because maybe the ocean makes people stupid or maybe I was already there, I told the truth.
“Because I wanted to be chosen beside you.”
The words came out too fast to stop and my skin went hot all over.
Xerses went still in that sharp, devastating way he did when something mattered too much.
I should have looked away.
I didn’t.
“I know,” he said softly.
That should not have made me want to cry and kiss him and hit him all at the same time. I hated crying. “What do you mean you know.”
The wind moved my hair across my face and before I could brush it back, his hand lifted.
I should have said no.
Instead I stayed still and his fingers brushed the hair back from my cheek.
The lightest possible slide of skin and warmth and attention.
And that was somehow the final blow.
I lit up under it. Heat racing hard. Heart stuttering. Skin zapping me everywhere at once. The world narrowing to his hand, my face, the wind, the sea, and the terrible quiet between us.
His breath changed and he was close the darker ring around his irises, the slight part in his mouth was my every focus.
No one had ever watched me like that and made me feel simultaneously wanted and asked.
“Kelly.” My name in his voice sounded like a line I should not cross.
I crossed it anyway.I took a half a step and tilted my head.
His hand slid from my cheek to the side of my neck.
Everything in me went quiet except for the burning desire.
His forehead almost touched mine.
“If I kiss you,” he said, voice rough now, “This changes everything.”
I should have said yes and agreed simply. Instead what came out was the truth. “It already has.”
The end of whatever restraint had been holding the moment upright.
His mouth met mine slow to feel like a question. Desire rushed through me with aching need because he clearly chose me. With his lips on mine, warm and devastatingly real, I kissed him back.
And everything broke open.
The care was still there, but now it had hunger under it.
My fingers grabbed his shirt without dignity. He made a low, rough sound into my mouth that sent heat shooting straight down my spine.
I’d been kissed before but nothing had ever felt like this.
Nothing had ever felt like being claimed and asked at the same time.
His hand came to my waist.
I opened for him because that was the sort of decision I was making now, and his mouth deepened against mine, slower and harder at once.
I kissed him like I had been waiting for permission from myself and had finally gotten tired of pretending I needed it.
He tasted like whiskey and tea and something warm I had no business wanting more of.
His thumb moved against my neck and my knees almost gave.