Page 53 of Beachside Kisses With My Enemy

He holds me there, right against him, and I feel his breath feather over my cheek. Blake sighs. “I wish…” Then he groans. “Sunshine, if things were different, I just want you to know that I…”

I draw back and frame his face with my hands. His stubble is rough under my palms. “You’d what?” I dare him to answer. To admit that what he’s feeling right now matches what I am.

“I shouldn’t say.”

“Say it anyway.”

His hand finds my waist, flexes against my hip. “I’d say to heck with all the why nots and kiss you right now.”

Sweet macaroni. Am I brave enough to ask him to do just that? Even if there’s no future here? The seventeen-year-old girl inside of me waves her white flag of surrender. “And what if I said that was okay?”

His eyebrows go up. “You’re not making it easy on me, are you?” Fingers slide tighter around me, resting on my lower back. “I won’t be that guy. I can’t lead you on again.”

“You’ve made your intentions clear.” I shrug as if this kind of conversation happens for me all the time. “And what’s a small peck between friends?”

“Is that what we are, Lucy Reynolds?” A wry grin finds its way across those lips I’ve been dying to kiss for years. My own mouth tingles with the want, the longing. And I know one kiss with Blake Moffitt will never be enough. But right now, I just don’t care. “Friends?”

I draw his head down until our foreheads sink together. “I hope we’re at least that.”

He grunts. Then he pulls back a little, studies me. “You’re sure? Just once? I can’t promise you any more than that. I’m leaving again and I?—”

“I know.”

With a nod, Blake tips up my chin with his index finger and angles his mouth down to meet mine. It’s soft and sweet and gentle, chaste and lingering as we breathe the same air and finally, absolutely finally, give in.

It says more than a simple peck should.

It says, “I wish,” and “I want,” and “I’d like very much to,” and “why can’t we,” and “because.”

And when Blake steps away from me after far too short a time, my head is spinning and my heart is banging and my lips are tingling.

We stare at each other, and I feel the pull back toward his arms. The air stirring between us is a force that’s almost too strong to be denied. It’s a tornado, and I’m the lone barn in a dry field that’s trying to hold onto its roof but about to lose more than that. I’m about to be completely uprooted.

And all over a “peck.”

But before the winds can take me away, Blake squeezes my elbow and smiles in the sweetest way. “We still good?”

And I know our moment is over.

“We’re good.” And we are, because he’s making this easier on me in the long run. He’s stopping things before they even start—and if he doesn’t see a future of any sort with me, that’s the kindest thing he can do.

At least we’ll have this night of apology baklava and memories made.

The problem? I finally know what I’ve been missing all these years, and somehow, I have to live with that knowledge while Blake is literally right next door for another month and a half.

What have I done? I should have said no.

But as I head down the hallway, leaving Blake behind to pull the baklava from the oven, I can’t find it in me to regret that kiss.

seventeen

BLAKE

I tried to keep my distance from Lucy. Tried…and obviously failed as royally as a toddler trying to make creme brûlée.

If I had any doubts about her feelings, I don’t anymore. Not after Monday night. The way she looked at me. The way she bravely put herself out there.

Tying that apron without leaning in to kiss her bare shoulder tested the limits of my self-control. But when I finally let my fingers run through the thick, luscious strands of her hair, I nearly came undone. It was all I could do not to wrap my arms around her, to spin her around, pick her up, put her on the counter, and kiss her senseless.

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