Kismet (Happy Endings Book 4), page 15
Then he takes a drink of his beer, letting the charged moment dissipate. Reluctantly, I let it go too.
“But let’s go back to these boys who mocked reading. Was there anyone in New York for you who was . . . special?” he asks, biting out the last word like there’s sand in his mouth.
Heath has some jealousy in him. That’s appealing. I never expected I’d want an envious man, but I like it.
“No. I’ve never really had that deep, abiding kind of love. The kind you must have known.” My throat tightens as I think of what he had and what he lost. “I’ve just had little bits here and there.”
Heath reaches across the table for my hand, takes it, and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “You’ll have it someday. And it’ll be worth it.”
His eyes latch with mine. I shudder, maybe from his gaze, maybe from his touch.
Perhaps, simply from the conversation.
“You loved her. Deeply. Passionately,” I say, voice trembling.
He simply nods. Somehow this both thrills me and hurts me.
Gently, he asks, “Does that bother you?”
“No.” I answer too quickly. It feels wrong to tell him the truth. Maybe it does bother me, his great love. Only because . . . I want his heart for mine.
I want to hold it and protect it.
He squeezes my hand, his eyes reading me perfectly. “Don’t lie to me, Jo. I don’t lie to you.”
His words are powerful, a bit demanding. They insist on truth.
I have to answer honestly. “It shouldn’t bother me, Heath. And in my head, it doesn’t, because I’m glad you had the happiness. I think it would make me sadder, actually, if you’d said you were miserable before.” As I say that, I realize how true it is. If he’d told me they were falling apart, or they didn’t get along, that would have been worse. “I’m glad you had a great love like that.”
“Me too. But do you know what else I’m glad of?” he asks, holding my hand tighter, like he doesn’t want to let me go.
I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience in this conversation with him. Like it’s veering so close to something impossibly risky. But I won’t step away. I’m walking into this, eyes wide open. “What are you glad of?”
“That I’m here, right now, in this moment. That I met you. That we’re . . .” He stops, his lips hooking up in the hint of a grin, like the grin itself contains a secret. “And that we’re friends.” His tone is all vulnerability and true emotion as he whispers, “I think you might be my favorite friend ever.”
My God, it feels like he’s saying he’s falling for me.
My heart thunders mercilessly. It’s unforgiving in my chest, pounding away in a crazy rhythm of hope, and impossibility, and wishes.
Is now the moment to take a chance?
Is tonight for risks?
I don’t know.
“You’re mine,” I say softly.
For a second, maybe more, his eyes float closed. He’s so unbearably handsome like this—in the evening, here in his city, with the scar on his chin, and his heart on his sleeve. He opens his eyes but says nothing.
It’s my move.
If I asked him to kiss me, I’m certain he would. If I asked him to make love to me, he’d sweep me in his arms and take me upstairs to his home, mere blocks away. And he would absolutely make love to me.
Passionately.
Again and again.
I swallow roughly past the tight knot in my throat. “I should go soon, or I might throw myself at you.”
“And you know what I would do if that happened,” he says, confirming that, yes, the ball is in my court.
“I do.”
Too soon, I say good night and set off for my flat, fighting every urge to return to him, press my hands to his face, and kiss him so deeply we don’t let go.
I don’t even look back.
17
HEATH
I’m a smart man.
I know what’s happening here, and the way to end it is simple. Stop seeing her. Stop pretending that we’re just friends.
Because there’s nothing friendly about the way I feel for Jo Brennan.
But then I’d be denying myself the thing that’s made me happy again.
The person.
Her.
When I’m with her, all the loneliness goes away. It simply vanishes. Poof. The ache for connection no longer pounds at me because it’s fulfilled by her.
The days roll by as we work together, as I catch little moments with her in the office, as we collaborate more closely on the collection, and as I show her the nooks and crannies of the city.
On a Saturday, I take her to closing night of Jude’s play and we all grab a drink afterward. They get on like old mates, with Jo asking Jude about his return to New York next week.
“I’ve got some work there. I have to stop in Los Angeles first, then I go to New York again to start work on a TV show that shoots in the city. And word on the street is my apartment in the Village misses me terribly,” my brother says.
“Awww. Your apartment is all alone with only New York for company,” Jo says playfully.
“Jo loves New York,” I offer.
She holds both hands over her heart. “I do. It’s so wonderful. I’m jealous you’ll be back there, Jude. Say hello to Central Park for me,” she says. “And thank you for the tickets. I swear, when you were there on stage, asking your friend if she was the one on the dating app after all, I was dying laughing. That’s a gift. To make someone laugh like that.”
Jude dips his head, his smile radiant. When he looks up, he nods at me. “It’s a gift to make someone smile like you’ve done for my brother.”
I groan quietly, but she sets a hand on my arm and rubs my biceps a little possessively. “He gives me a lot too,” she says, then excuses herself for the ladies’ room.
When she’s out of earshot, I give him a look. “Do you want a knife so you can serve up my heart on a platter to her?”
One brow lifted, he locks eyes with me like a cat who won’t lose a staring contest. “No. But I think you should, Heath.”
My stomach twists. “Should I? I feel like she already knows.”
Elbow on the bar, Jude parks his chin in his hand. “Have you said the words? The actual words.”
It’s like he bangs a gong. The clang vibrates my whole body, shakes my very bones. “No.”
“Think about it. You’re like . . . a whole new man with her.”
Am I? I wonder.
Am I truly new?
I certainly feel like I can be hurt again, I can lose again, I can ache again with her.
She doesn’t just fill an emptiness, though. She’s not simply a solution to a problem. She’s so much bigger, so much brighter than an answer to the pain.
I feel something like joy with her.
That fills my whole heart and spills over into the rest of me.
All because of the lovely, big-hearted, kindred spirit of an American who walked into my life.
The woman I no longer have the will to stay away from.
When I walk her home, I ask her if she wants to see more of my London the next morning.
“Do you have something in mind?”
A photograph image flickers before me, along with a feeling. Maybe it’s déjà vu again. Or maybe it’s my imagination this time.
But I am sure of this—I know what I want to show Jo.
“I do. A place I stumbled across a month ago. I felt like I’d discovered something no one else had found.”
Her blue eyes gleam with excitement. “Take me there.”
The next morning, we make our way to the old church near St Paul’s, the one I came across more than a month ago, before she arrived and turned my lonely life upside down.
Before she filled my days and nights with her questions, her hope, and her own vulnerable soul.
Before she filled it with so many dangerous, but wildly wonderful, possibilities.
As we walk down the alley, the déjà vu I experienced the night of the gallery returns like a force inside my body—a pulsing in my veins, the pounding of blood in my ears. As we near the little church, the sensation practically seizes me, takes my mind hostage.
But it’s not déjà vu, after all.
It’s a stark realization of what’s happening to me.
After I took that photo the first time I was here, I pictured a moment unfolding.
I imagined talking about this place. Laughing about it. Having a meal.
I wanted to share the picture with someone. And now I’ve found her.
And I have that future right beside me.
When we reach the ivy-covered stone, Jo’s breath catches. “Oh Heath, it’s so gorgeous. And so very you,” she says, moving closer to me.
I catch the faint scent of summer from her shampoo. My skin buzzes with electricity. My chest heats with longing. “Do you think so?”
“It’s completely you.” She turns away from the church to face me. “It’s a little moody. A little bit hopeful. And it looks like it has a story it wants to tell,” she says, her voice like sunshine.
“And because it’s old,” I joke, trying to step away from the intensity, but she takes my hand and won’t let me.
“No.” She shakes her head. “It feels timeless.”
“It does. I love that about it,” I say.
She shudders out a breath at the word love.
Then whispers a hi.
“Hi,” I say.
One more small step and her face is so close to mine. The air crackles. The risks no longer matter.
The future is now, and I can’t let it slip away from me. “May I kiss you?”
Her grin lights my soul as she answers. “You better. But I must warn you . . . if you do, it’s not going to stop at kissing.”
My entire body sings. I close the distance, hold her face, meet her gaze. “It better not end.”
I’m not just talking about kissing. I’m talking about this unstoppable thing that’s happening between us.
I drop my lips to hers, and all the déjà vu ceases.
This is all there is.
This woman. Her lips. Our time.
18
HEATH
The kiss starts slow and a little dreamy, like neither of us can believe our luck.
It’s a gentle exploration. A return to each other and that one night that unspooled into a month of longing.
But kissing the woman you want rarely stays slow for long. Soon the kiss turns heated, bordering on urgent. It becomes a collision of lips and teeth and bodies.
Yet even as our kiss turns frantic, my mind does not. As my lips sweep across hers, the most welcome calm floods my entire body.
Are kisses supposed to make you feel settled?
Hers certainly does, and in a brand-new way.
A way that wraps around my heart and mind, making me feel like this is the answer to every question.
This kiss.
This touch.
This woman who I’ve fallen in love with.
That word—love—it imprints on my brain. It blinks like a neon sign at night. I can feel it in every moment with Jo.
I kiss her more deeply, telling her with the fusion of our lips what she means to me.
As I mold my body to hers, she moans into my mouth. I want to capture the sound, replay it night after night. I can’t get close enough to her. I push and press, and as I hold her face more tightly, we slam together, up against the ivy-strangled wall of the unnamed church.
Jo grinds her thigh against my length, seeking, hunting me. Like she wants all the things I want.
She doesn’t hold back in speaking her mind, and she doesn’t hold back on telegraphing the needs of her body.
This connection between us shows no signs of stopping, only intensifying. My hands cling more tightly because I don’t want to lose her. I want to have her, as much as I can, starting right now, no turning back.
No matter the cost.
Now, though, I’m not contemplating costs. I’m only thinking of where we are and how the hell to get to what’s next. Because what’s next is inevitable.
I need to get out of here and take her to my home, yet the prospect of ending this kiss is awful. I don’t want to stop it for anything. And so, I don’t. I take. I take everything I’ve wanted for the last month, more of her soft lips, her decadent mouth.
Our lips fuse together, hungry, heated, and just a little bit desperate.
It’s fantastic agony.
Pleasure skates down my spine as my hands rope through her hair. Those silky tresses are curled around my fingers, where they belong.
I hold her and kiss her, our tongues exploring, lips returning, bodies craving.
Somehow, I find the will to break the kiss.
I stare at her, drinking in the sight of her face. Her eyes shimmer with wild desire that I alone can satisfy. I brush tender, gentle kisses against her bruised mouth, licking the corner of her lips, kissing the edge of her smile, then whispering against her skin, “Your place or mine? And that’s not a pickup line.”
She laughs softly, her hands snaking around my waist, grabbing my ass, yanking me tighter against her. “You mean here and now up against the church isn’t an option?”
I run the backs of my knuckles down her cheek. “For you. I would commit that sin.”
“But is it really a sin?”
“It will be a sin if I’m not making love to you in the next thirty minutes.”
Her eyes, those blue eyes I adore, sparkle with mischief. “Whichever one is closer, Heath.”
Fifteen minutes later, I unlock the door to my building. The second we’re inside, I can’t even wait to get up the stairs. In the hallway, I tug her against me, and then we spin around, so I can pin her against the wall. We’re frenzied as we crash into each other once more.
Her fingers rake through my hair. My hands glide down her body, cupping her breasts through her blouse, squeezing them.
She wrenches away from me, her mouth parting, unleashing a deliriously sexy moan. “I need to be alone with you right now.”
I curl a hand around the back of her head, yank her against me. “And naked.”
“Well, yes. That.”
I let go of her, take her hand, and we walk up the first set of steps, then a second flight, then a third.
“My God, how many flights do you have?”
“Too many at the moment,” I tell her, but then we’re at the door of my flat. I unlock it, swing it open, let her in, and close the door behind us.
I scoop her up, carry her to the couch, and undress her in a rush. I can’t even bother with her blouse. Just have to get this skirt up, these knickers off.
She helps me along, kicking the scrap of white lace to the floor, then spreading her legs. She reaches for me, threads her hands in my hair, and I kneel between her glorious thighs. She arches her back, moaning, and my lips haven’t even grazed her skin.
I just can’t stop staring at how gorgeous she is, how wet she is. “Beautiful,” I murmur. “I could worship you.”
“Please,” she says. “Please touch me, Heath. I’ll keep begging until you do.”
With a grin, I turn my face, brush my stubbled jaw against the inside of her knee, press a tender kiss to her skin. “You never have to beg me unless you want to. I will always give you what you want.”
She sighs, long and greedy, tugging at my hair. “Give me you. I need you,” she says, utterly desperate.
I want to take my time, and I also want to devour her. These twin desires war in me as I pepper kisses along the inside of her leg, up her thigh, along her creamy skin, delighting in the taste of her, the smell of her.
My senses ignite at every kiss.
My mind swirls with heady desire.
When I near her sweet center, she arches her hips, her hands scrabbling through my hair to bring me closer. Perhaps I do want to tease her, just to make it last.
“I’ll get you there,” I whisper against her skin, heading in the other direction, down the opposite leg, as her need goes to my head.
My mind crackles as the potent reality sinks in. All these weeks of getting to know her, all these days with her, all these nights wanting her—they’re colliding into this one perfect moment of desire, heat, and, love.
I can finally have the woman I love.
In one swift move, I slide my hands under her ass, and haul her against my mouth, pressing an openmouthed caress right there, where she wants me most.
She tastes incredible, like dirty dreams and beautiful promises.
“Oh God,” she gasps, arching against my touch.
I groan lasciviously against her hot, wet flesh, electrified as I’m kissing her like this.
Lust flares down my spine as I kiss and lick, suck and flick. I taste her, listening to her moans and murmurs, reading her body, the way she writhes and moves. How her fingers clutch at my hair, how she holds on to me. I’ve wanted this so badly, wanted to consume her, to know her. Every second with her is both everything I’ve craved and somehow ten thousand times better. It’s so much better than what’s unfurled in my head as she rocks against me, muttering words, panting obscenities, then making everything clear.
“I’m close, so close,” she gasps, like she’s hanging on by a thread as she chases the knife’s edge of desire.
Need pulses through my body as I give her everything she wants. And everything I need too—this incomparable intimacy.
One more sweep of my tongue, one more press of my lips, and she shudders, babbling incoherent bliss as she bucks against my mouth, clutches the back of my head, and pulls me against her as she crests with a delicious, sensual ohhh.
Her moans and groans don’t stop. They’re the most gorgeous song as they linger, the fading notes of satisfied sighs, of murmurs and gasps.
Soft fingers play with my hair, and my beautiful woman’s face registers only euphoria.
Pride thrums in me.
I did that.
I made her feel that way.
And I can’t wait to do it again.
