Page 96 of Tulips and Lost Time

“And if we had, maybe we’d have fucked things up worse. Or maybe not,” I accept. “Maybe we could have been happy. We’ll never know.” I look down to her trembling lips and wonder: do I? Don’t I? “You asked me to kiss you once before, Bear. You begged me. Just one kiss.”

Her heart thunders under my hand. Her body sizzles with warmth, pressed against mine. “Yeah? So?”

“So ask me again.” I hover my lips just a fraction of an inch above hers. “Beg me. Then have me.”

“And if I don’t? What if I still don’t want this?”

“Then I’ll beg you.” I draw my hand up and cup her jaw, sliding the tips of my fingers into her hair and bringing her closer. Closer. “I’ll beg you every day from now until I’m a hundred and ten. And after that, I’ll follow you into the afterlife. Because I’ll still love you there.”

“Kiss me.” Her breath comes out on a gusty exhale, as though her words are a bravery she works so hard to cling to. “Fine,” she gulps. “I’m asking you to kiss me.”

“My fucking pleasure.” I slam my lips to hers and swallow down her cry of desperation. The gasp of air that bursts from her lungs. Then the flavor explosion of her tongue on mine. And because I’ve waited six years for this, I drop my hands and cup her thighs. I pick her up and inhale her squeal of delight, then I slam her back against the shelf until its contents rattle and her legs wrap around my hips. “Finally.” I bite her lips and suckle on her tongue. My cock roaring to life in my pants, though I’m grown enough to know we’re not going there here.

Not today.

Not at work.

“Fuck,” I break our kiss, only to run my lips along her neck. Biting. Tasting. I nip at her flesh and growl when she lets out a whimper of need. “So much better than I remember.”

“More handsy than I remember.” She drops her head back, a goofy grin plastered on her lips as she makes room for me to taste. To touch. “Last time, you wouldn’t have dared slam me against the wall.”

“Last time, I was being the moral fucking hero.” I pin her up with my hips, carrying her weight easily, and run my hands over her thighs. Her hips. Under her shirt and up to trace her ribs. “This time, I’m gonna please myself. Fuck everyone else and their wants.”

“Except mine, right?” She looks down into my eyes. “Fuck everyone else… except me?”

“No. I fully aim to fuck you, too.”

Her cheeks flame bright red. Scandalized. “Luc!”

“Sorry. I meant, I love you so much, I hope to someday make sweet, sweet love to you.” I move my hand around to trace her back, my fingers itching to unsnap the catch on her bra. Though I don’t dare. “It’s not that I’m wanting you for the sex, Bear. But I sure as shit hope to enjoy it. Eventually.”

“I’m still a virgin.”

Like a fucking grenade tossed into a foxhole, she drops her words and freezes in my arms. Or maybe it’s me that freezes. Tenses. Stops breathing as I carefully, so fucking cautiously, extract my hands from her shirt and pull back to meet her eyes.

My heart thunders out of control. Sprinting, although my lungs stopped working.

“Hmm?”

“I haven’t… I didn’t…” She gulps, a heavy lump of nervousness rolling visibly along her throat. “I wanted you. And then all that stuff happened. And then I was dating Blake, except we weren’t actually dating. He comes from a super religious family who doesn’t support who he is, so he asked me to help him out. And all the while, I was still pining after you and?—”

“Virgin?” I search her eyes and scrub my soul clear of memories I thought I had to carry. Memories that didn’t actually exist. “You’ve never…?”

She shakes her head. “I wanted you.”

“You’re twenty-five years old. And you’ve lived with your girlfriends, off campus, for five years. Not once in all that time did you?—”

She rests her arms on my shoulders and licks her dry lips. But then she cinches her legs around my hips and shakes her head again. “Don’t make it weird. I wanted someone I couldn’t have, and I was fake-dating someone I wasn’t compatible with. I got busy with school, and then time just…” She draws a long breath, releasing it on a noisy exhale. “Time got away on me. Now we’re here…” She glances to her left. Then to her right. “In the storage room at the hospital. Oh god.” Her face pales when that realization hits her. “Oh god. We’re in the storage room. And the ED is full. And people know we came in here. People know what we’re doing!”

“We’re not doing anything.” And yet, to prove myself a liar, I duck in and take her lips with mine. “I mean, we’re not fucking. We’re reuniting.”

“We’re making a scene!”

“You’re making a scene. I’m mentally planning how to fuck you without, like, hurting your feelings and without making you bleed.”

“Luca!” She slams her fist to my collarbone and wriggles until I release her legs and allow her to slide down. Then she fixes her shirt with a huff of indignation. “I’m gonna get fired.”

“You won’t get fired.” I crush her between my body and the shelf at her back. “No one actually knows anything about us except Mitch.”

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