Chapter 12
Twelve
His World
Xerses
I kissed Kelly.
Will power kept me from going further earlier.
I made it through the terrace, through the foyer, through the short exchange with my mother and whatever it was Charlie tried to say that Hope physically shut down before it reached me.
Finally I made it into my room, out of my shirt, and into the shower. Nothing stopped my mind from the replay the exact sounds Kelly had made when my mouth first touched hers. I was going to need stronger methods than cold water and bad judgment to get through the night.
The cold water did not help.
She had kissed me back, actively. She had kissed me back like the choice was hers and she wanted me too. That was what kept replaying.
I laid in my bed after the shower but sleep eluded me.
“You do not lie awake because a woman kissed you back,” I said. “Even if it was Kelly.”
I turned over. Sleep eventually came in spurts.
By eight-thirty, I had already had coffee, ignored three messages from Roman about work I didn’t feel like doing from a family house, and stood at my window long to watch the ocean go from gray-blue to silver where the sun hit it.
The compound moved into daytime around me. Staff and voices. Tea service. Somewhere downstairs, my mother directing flowers as if their placement affected market conditions.
I should have been able to settle but instead I found myself listening for Kelly without meaning to.
I left my room and the second I made it downstairs, I saw her, Kelly.
She sat halfway down on the sunlit side in a pale dress that should have looked softer than it did.
The color made her skin look warmer. Her hair was still damp at the ends, falling over one shoulder.
She had a glass of tea beside her and was listening to Hope with exactly the sort of half-smile that had become unsteady to me in direct proportion to how private it felt.
My body recognized her before my face had a chance to choose neutrality.
And her eyes found mine.
For a second it felt like the cove again and her taste and how she breathed my name replayed.
Then she blinked, looked down at her tea, and everything came rushing back.
My mother noticed. She smiled into her own glass like a woman who had discovered proof of life where she’d already planted hope.
“Xerses joon,” she said as I took the chair beside Kelly. “You’re late.”
“It’s not even nine.”
Kelly looked at her tea like she was using the glass to avoid the room.
I sat and my chair brushed hers.
“Good morning,” I said.
Her fingers tightened on the tea glass before she turned. “Good morning.”
“You slept.”
“Is that an observation or a question?”
“Neither. You look rested.”
“You say that like it surprises you.”
“Well I’m confused to be honest.”
“About what.”
“Whether to be angry at you or pretend last night didn’t happen.”
My heart stilled. I didn’t want her to regret. I swallowed and asked, “Which are you leaning toward.”
“Angry is safer but honestly your mother’s pastries are making that difficult.”
“They have that effect.”
“It feels deliberate.”
“It is. She has weaponized breakfast since before I was born.”
“That explains a lot about you.”
“What does that mean.”
“It means you treat every meal like a negotiation.”
“I treat every meal like fuel.”
There was nothing in the words themselves.
Everything was in that her voice sounded a little lower than usual.
Hope looked between us once, opened her mouth, caught Kelly’s eye, and chose life instead. She turned back to Avril and said something about pastries with the desperate energy of a woman redirecting a train.
Interesting. Kelly had handled her friends well.
My mother started instructing staff about fruit as if brunch required military precision. Charlie launched into some story about the bar and his own dancing. Jeff corrected three parts of it on principle. The room moved around us in normal family noise.
Kelly took a sip of tea and carefully did not look at me but I liked being near her.
I poured more tea without being asked and refilled her glass before she reached for the carafe.
Kelly looked at the tea. Then at me.
I should have left it there. Instead I said, low enough that only she could hear, “You didn’t sleep.”
Her gaze sharpened instantly. “You don’t know that.”
“It’s in your eyes.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
She looked away again, but I caught the faint color climbing under her skin before she hid from me behind the tea glass.
God.
Breakfast stretched on. Plans for the afternoon. Someone asking about Adrien’s cap and gown. My mother deciding we all needed lunch at one whether anyone was hungry or not.
Kelly relaxed in increments.
She laughed more once the first fifteen minutes passed and no one interrogated her.
She argued with Miley about something practical and useless involving real estate photos.
She told my father a story about one of her students trying to sell her a rock on the playground and called it an early market instinct, which earned a genuine laugh from him and made my mother look smug.
Every little thing she did made the room rearrange around her a little more naturally.
She fit.
She fit because she brought life into the spaces she occupied.
By the time breakfast broke apart, I had touched her exactly twice. Once to pass her the jam. And second when she dropped a napkin and I picked it up before she bent for it.
Both times the contact had been brief.
I wanted ten minutes alone with Kelly that did not feel stolen from under twenty other people’s eyes.
Apparently that was too much to ask.
After breakfast, I found her first in the library.
“Hi,” she said, looking up from a book.
“Hi.”
“You’re hovering.”
“I am not hovering.”
“You’re standing in a doorway staring at me. Your book is upside down.”
Then Hope appeared and stole her.
I found her second on the terrace.
“You again,” she said.
“This is my house.”
“It’s your parents’ house.”
“That distinction does not help your argument.”
Then my mother appeared and stole her for opinions on table linens.
I found her at lunch, seated across from me, and spent the meal watching her eat a strawberry and trying not to resent the concept of other people.
By three-thirty, I had reached the end of my tolerance.
Luckily Kelly stood near the far wall in that strange cool half-light the cave always carried, barefoot again, one hand trailing through the thin sheet of water as it ran over the rock.
She wore a loose white cover-up over what looked like a dark bikini.
Her hair was up. The line of her neck was bare.
For a second I simply stopped.
She was exquisite.
Kelly heard me before I moved again.
She looked over her shoulder.
That immediate lock-on of attention, the recognition that happened between us now before anything else had a chance to.
I took a step and said, “You keep disappearing.”
She smiled. “Disappearing implies I’m hiding.”
“Aren’t you?”
That got the smallest flicker of a smile. Kelly turned back toward the trickle of water and let her fingers move through it again.
“Did you need something?” she asked.
“You.”
The word came out before I decided how I wanted to phrase it.
She heard it.
I saw the impact in the small straightening of her spine, the way her mouth parted slightly before closing again.
“I don’t know what to do with that sentence,” she said.
“Yes, you do.”
“No. I genuinely don’t. I can’t think with you standing there looking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like a man who makes me forget.”
Heat rushed through as I said, “Good. I’ve spent the last sixteen hours wanting to do it again.”
She stared at me for a long second. Then, to my surprise, laughed softly and looked down at the rock.
That laugh moved through me like a wave.
“I am trying,” she said, still looking down, “very hard not to respond to that.”
I took another step. “Why.”
“Because then you’ll expect it.”
I was close enough now to see the small goose bumps rising where the cave breeze touched her bare thighs below the hem of the cover-up.
I let myself look at all of her and then swept back at her face. “You like me.”
Kelly’s eyes lifted slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “Avoiding you didn’t fix that at all.”
And that was enough. I crossed the last of the distance and kissed her.
No question this time and Kelly didn’t refuse. She kissed back instantly and placed her hands in my shirt. Her body stepped close enough so that the cover-up became the only soft thing between us and even that wasn’t much.
I made a low sound against her mouth and she kissed me harder for it.
I backed her gently against the cave wall, one hand flattening beside her head. I moved my mind mindlessly to her as I didn’t want her against the rocks.
Her hands moved down my chest. Over my stomach. Gripped at my sides like she didn’t know where to put them. Her touch clung in a way like she was learning in real time how to hold me.
I wanted to ruin every plan either of us had ever made.
My mouth left hers and found the line of her jaw, her throat, the pulse there jumping under my lips like it was trying to get away and failing.
Kelly’s head tipped back against the stone. “Xerses.”
My name sounded different now.
I kissed lower along her throat and her fingers tightened in my shirt.
The cover-up shifted when I slid my hand to her hip and brushed her bare skin not covered with her bikini.
My palm moved under the edge of the cover-up and settled fully at her waist.
Kelly gasped softly against the cave air.
I stopped.
She opened her eyes.
I kissed her again and let my hand move slowly under the fabric this time, giving her every second to stop me or change her mind. She didn’t. Her skin burned against my palm
The line of her stomach tightened the second my thumb brushed there and it was clear she was in.
I slid the cover-up farther open over her hip.
Jesus.
Kelly made another sound, this one lower, and kissed me.
My hand went to the back of her thigh and then higher.