Kismet (Happy Endings Book 4), page 5
He chuckles into his hand. “Stop. Just stop.”
This is going better than I thought. Tilting my head, I turn a little coy, playful. “So, I should tell Google that one’s a no?”
“Yes, do let Google know,” he says.
The bartender swings by with my lemon drop. “Here you go,” she says. I reach for my purse, but the British Indiana Jones sets a hand next to mine and asks, maybe a touch tentative, “May I?”
The question sends a cascade of tingles down my spine—that he asked, but also, how he asked.
“You may,” I say softly, sounding more demure than I intended. I’m not a demure person, but something about his offer brings that out in me.
He places a bill on the counter then lifts his glass and offers it in a toast. “To chance encounters. I’m Heath.”
That name. It’s so Emily Brontë and windswept moors. “That’s very literary, Heathcliff,” I say, clinking back. “And I’m Jo.”
“You’re one to talk about literary names, Jo,” he says, then whispers, “March as in Little Women.”
I try not to smile too wide. That’s exactly the fictional Jo I’d want to be.
He takes a drink, then sets down his glass. “So, these pickup lines—do you like them? Would they work on you?”
“They’re silly.” I shrug lightly. “There’s a time and a place for silly, but they aren’t my speed.”
“And what is?”
His question that made me shiver—that’s my speed. “If a man says, May I? when he asks to pay for your drink.”
Heath dips his handsome face with a gentle laugh and a smile that reads more genuinely than the cocky Harrison Ford grin from before. It’s a good look on him.
But then, a lot of things look good on him. His face, for instance. He’s ridiculously handsome in a way that should be illegal. It’s not fair that anybody could be this handsome, with his close-cropped brown hair, his striking, slightly stubbled jawline, and yup, he has a tiny scar on his chin.
Indiana Jones, indeed.
A few crinkles touch the corners of his eyes. They are what engage me most. They’re rich with stories, with tales of loves lost and won, secrets uncovered, passions shared.
This is a man who’s lived. I bet he doesn’t have Snapchat either.
Heath clears his throat. “Now, I have to ask: since you researched pickup lines, does that mean you came in here in hopes of picking someone up? Also, is that what they even call it anymore? I have to be honest—I’m a little rusty.”
That’s so damn endearing, honesty and all. “I’m kind of rusty too. I’m new to town and, confession, my friends from New York challenged me to go out and meet someone tonight.”
His lips twitch. “Wouldn’t you know? My brother from here challenged me to do the same.”
“Maybe it’s kismet,” I say with a laugh.
“Do you believe in kismet?” he asks, seeming more curious than judgmental. “In fate?”
“I’d like to.” I sip my drink and set it down. “But right now, I’d like to believe that my terrible pickup lines might actually be working.” I watch his reaction, feeling bold, feeling daring. Feeling like maybe he was everything my friends had in mind for me.
Heath leans a little closer, lowers his voice. “Your pickup lines are definitely working.”
A pause follows, a little awkward, maybe because neither one of us knows exactly how serious we are about our plans for the night.
In that space, I calculate.
Am I really doing this?
Is he asking himself the same?
He draws a breath like it fuels him. “So, what brings you to town?” Then he holds up a hand and shakes his head. “That was actually a terrible line in general, so let’s pretend I didn’t ask.”
I touch my fingers to my temples, shut my eyes, then open them again. “Erased.”
“I’ll start over.” He gestures to my Hazel Valentine book. “Speaking of libraries and things to check out, are you enjoying your book?”
My face heats slightly, and I hesitate. When you tell a person what you read, sometimes their reaction reveals who they are. Some judge, and some don’t. I prefer the latter. “It’s a love story,” I say, lifting my chin.
His expression goes serious. “Is it an escape?”
“You’re not going to tease me about reading romance novels?” I ask.
His brow knits in confusion. “Is that a thing people do?”
So much. Too often. I’ve been ridiculed for my taste in books, my love of musicals, my affection for pop songs. “Some people think you should only read serious literature or important non-fiction.”
Heath’s expression is comically astonished. “People mock reading? Make fun of books? Well, besides silly quote books culled from social media feeds.”
“Social media is fair game for mockery. And yes, some people mock reading, and certain types of stories,” I say with a laugh.
“People,” he mutters, like he disapproves of them in general.
“I like people, generally. But now that I’ve said it, that does sound unbelievably petty of them.”
He taps the back cover of my book gently. “How does the book make you feel?”
The question makes me dig into my emotions about the story, examine them, and I like that. I flip to the back cover, featuring a couple kissing on the streets of New York, and my heart glows a little. “Possible,” I say. “It makes me feel . . . possible.”
He hums softly, perhaps in understanding. “That’s a good feeling,” he says a little heavily, and that weight in his voice makes me want to ask more questions.
But that’s not what tonight is. It’s not a date. It’s not dinner and a getting-to-know-you. This is a one-night stand with a hot British man.
Or so I hope.
Be bold. Have some bloody fucking fun in London.
I shove past the nerves, the fear of rejection, the what-ifs, and I go for it. “Would you like to kiss me?”
As soon as the words escape, my hand flies to my mouth. “I can’t actually believe I just said that.”
Heath tilts his head, studying me. “Do you want to take it back?” His voice is a low rumble, sliding over my skin. The air between us crackles, charged and sparking.
“No,” I whisper.
“Then, do you want me to answer, Jo?”
“Very much so.”
He doesn’t reply with words, but with deeds. He lifts one hand, cups my jaw, slides a thumb along it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a memorable kiss, one to crave later. The kind of kiss you imagine when you dream of kissing.
He lowers his head, inches away, then breathes out my name, all sultry and a little bit dirty in that growly, rich voice of his. “Jo,” he whispers, somehow stretching out two letters seductively, like he’s testing the flavor, letting it roll across his tongue.
It hardly feels like we’re in a bar in the middle of the city, with other patrons drinking pints or ale or shots or cocktails all around us. I don’t care about that while I’m caught in this promise of a kiss, in the giddy haze of anticipation.
He lets it build, his gaze lingering on my lips. Then he dusts his mouth softly across mine.
A soft, tender brush of a kiss.
This stranger kisses me in a bar, that most old-fashioned of meeting places. Kisses me like he’s savoring every second of this moment.
Like kissing is a treasure.
As his lips sweep over mine, I’m completely convinced that it is. It is a rare and precious thing, to be kissed like you matter.
I can barely breathe for how good it feels. My toes tingle.
Sometime later—it could be seconds, it could be another lifetime—we break the kiss. I feel woozy and tipsy.
He looks the same, wearing the barest hint of a smile. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Is that a pickup line?” I ask, breathless.
There’s that cocky grin again. That action-hero charm. “It absolutely is.”
“It’s working.”
Twenty minutes later, he holds open the door of my hotel, makes a quick stop at the concierge desk, and then heads with me to the elevator.
The second the doors close, nerves wind tight inside of me.
The laughter and lightness from the bar disappear, and he’s all intensity. His eyes turn darker, almost brooding, and he stares, undressing me with his gaze.
The elevator climbs. Closing the distance in a heartbeat, Heath cups my face, and kisses the hell out of me. It’s a completely different kiss from the first one. This is deep and needy, a desperate kind of kiss, almost like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he doesn’t devour me.
Heat rushes through me in delicious tingles that light up my skin.
That flip my insides.
That make me feel buzzed in all the best ways.
Devoured too. Consumed with the need that seems to radiate from him.
The elevator slows at my floor. Dings. We stumble out. My instinct is to talk, to fill the silence with words.
But I don’t know that anything needs to be said, and I don’t feel like throwing out a sassy comment or a note of banter. I’m an ocean away from my home and my friends and my life. All I want tonight is the purity of the physical connection.
Of intimacy with a stranger.
When we reach my room, I slide the card key against the door, and we tumble inside. In a second, he pushes me up against the wall and his kisses continue. He journeys everywhere. His lips travel all along my neck, across my shoulder, nipping my collarbone, licking the hollow of my throat. He kisses me like he’s mapping my skin with his lips and mouth and tongue.
My knees turn to jelly. I’m hot and achy everywhere, wanted in a way I’ve never felt before.
Maybe we can even do this again.
Not so fast.
This is just a one-night stand.
Don’t let your thoughts gallop away.
I focus on the here and now and linger in how good he is with his mouth as I take all of his kisses.
My thoughts turn hazier. They wander away, leaving the room, frolicking around London. This city’s not so bad, really—not if kisses like this exist in this place.
Have I just been kissing the wrong men all along?
Maybe I’ve been missing out. Maybe I’ve seen the wrong men.
Because, apparently, there’s a whole other kind of kiss out there.
A kiss you can drown in.
A kiss that’s soft and tender, but passionate and deep. It’s a fierce, hazy vibration, like all my senses have been tuned and sharpened. Like I’m a violin, and the man playing me isn’t even a master; he’s just obsessed with the strings.
That’s how it feels. This kiss feels a little like a dreamy obsession.
I sink into it, falling deeper and deeper into the sighs and murmurs, into the groans and gasps. Into the hands that clasp my cheeks, roughly at first, but then travel, sliding down my arms, along my sides, around my back.
I don’t even know where to focus. Pleasure pings me everywhere, zipping to my toes and fingertips. But most of all, it’s right here inside me, pulsing between my legs. I don’t want to wait a single second longer.
I somehow find the will to break the kiss and run my thumb along his swollen lips, meet his dazed eyes. In them, I see a wild need I’ve never witnessed before. “Take me. Take me now.”
He sweeps me up in his arms, crosses to the king-size bed, and strips me. Then his clothes vanish too.
Welcome to London, Jo.
5
HEATH
Two voices echo in my head.
One needles me, taunting. “It’s been a while. Do you even remember how this works? Surely, there are new techniques that have emerged over the years. New tricks. New skills. You don’t know any of them.”
The other one simply whispers, “Touch her, kiss her, please her.”
As I make my way up her naked flesh, brushing openmouthed kisses along her thighs, the dip of her stomach, the curves of her hips, bless them indeed, that voice quiets the other.
Some things haven’t changed at all.
Desire.
I kiss her skin, her breasts, her shoulders, and the delicious hollow of her throat with fervor that borders on worship. Her moans tell me that’s exactly how she likes to be touched—like she’s adored.
She arches and writhes, her hands flying to her hair, her own fingers threading through her lush locks, like somehow that’s the only way she can handle this lust.
I’m not sure I can handle this lust. I’m not sure what to do with this overabundance of it, a supply that can barely even seem to fit in this room, let alone this building.
But I’m willing to try.
Oh yes, I am.
I pour all my longing into the way my hands roam along her body. She loops a hand into my hair, then slides the other down my chest, pressing it firmly against my pecs.
“Hold on. We need a condom,” she breathes.
“Right, right,” I say, nodding, then jump off the bed. I root around for my trousers. I grabbed one from the concierge when we walked into the hotel.
But when I turn around, she’s brandishing one. “I’m prepared too.”
Maybe she grabbed it from her purse, or had it on the nightstand, or who fucking cares.
That’s just . . . smart.
“Ladies choice, then,” I say.
“Yours now, mine . . . next time,” she says.
I like her philosophy, and I’m back on the bed in the span of one breath, rolling it on, then kneeling between her legs.
She parts her thighs, and a rumble works its way up my chest, skips my lips.
Have I ever sounded this carnal before? This greedy?
Hell if I know.
She’s so beautiful, ready, and aroused. “I could spend hours worshiping your body. Kissing you. Tasting you,” I tell her.
She nods, then makes a rolling gesture with her hands. “I have no doubt I’d come fifty times. But right now, I really want you inside me.”
“Ask and it shall be given to you,” I say. Then, I sink in.
Her body grips me, so hot and tight and so wickedly wet, that the thought occurs to me—I won’t last long. And yet, there is no way on heaven and earth that I’m going to come before her.
I grit my teeth, lower my chest, and swivel my hips, concentrating on her. Jo’s hands curl around my head, her fingers playing with the ends of my hair. “Oh, that’s so good,” she whispers, on a heady moan.
Those words make my skin sizzle.
My pulse surges.
Her back arches as she moves with me, her eyes fluttering open and closed.
She grabs the back of my head as I thrust, going deeper. Electricity crackles down my spine, radiates across my entire body.
“Yes, I like it deep. Love that,” she says.
I follow her every order, only too happy to obey her directions. “What else do you like?” I rasp out.
“Your arms around me. The way you stare at me. Your voice,” she says, then on a long, deep thrust, she groans wantonly.
They say that sex is like riding a bike. That you just hop back on and you never forget.
Whoever came up with that saying is stupid.
This is nothing like riding a bike. This is like living inside Ravel’s Boléro.
The pleasure intensifies with every note, with every measure in the rising crescendo.
Her hands clutch at my back. Her nails scratch at my flesh, grabbing and digging.
Vaguely, I consider that she’ll leave marks.
That feels right, too, and fitting.
Scratch me, bite me, mark me, I want to say. I want to remember how good this feels. How good it feels to be part of an orchestra.
Her moans intensify. They trip the switch in me, and that crescendo becomes relentless—the swirl and twist of pleasure, the tight, tense coil. The swell of the music. The finale drawing near. The exquisite agony of feeling this good, so good, too good.
Her words.
She cries out, bowing her back, her sounds echoing in my mind and reverberating in my bones. She crests, then falls blissfully on the other side of desire. Like that, I still, tense, then let go as pleasure takes over entirely, blurring the world.
For long seconds that seem to spill into minutes, I am someplace else. Someplace wonderful I don’t want to leave.
But soon, I come down from the high, ease out of her, then deal with the matter at hand.
Cleaning up.
Quickly, I dispose of the condom, then return to her, and kiss her neck and her shoulder.
She laughs softly. Turns her face to me. She looks radiant. “That was . . .”
“It’s not really like riding a bike, is it?”
“If so, that’s the best bike ride I’ve ever had,” she says. Then she yawns, deep and hearty, like it comes from inside her soul.
“You should go to sleep, Jo,” I tell her, gently stroking her cheek.
She yawns again. “I really should. Big day tomorrow,” she says, stretching her arms.
Big day doing what? Are you visiting the Tower of London? Big Ben? The Tate?
I want to tell her my favorites, to weigh in on her agenda.
The Tate is too huge, too teeming with crowds, too terribly unpleasant, but you should go anyway, because the collections are worth it. Or if you want a list of bookshops in the city, I’ve got that right here, in my head. I could even take you after work.
That is, if you’re not too busy with whatever you’re here for?
Holiday? Friends? Family? Work?
A quick glance around tells me little. It’s dark, and there are only one or two suitcases here. But they are large. Maybe she’s here for more than a few days.
I’m dying to learn more about her. But is that what this is? Are we supposed to talk now?
No idea.
Still, a gentleman shouldn’t fuck and run.
And I don’t want to.
So, I give in to what I want and ask a simple question. “How long are you in town?”
“A while,” she says, sounding terribly sleepy, drifting off already.
