Page 40 of The Kiss of Deception

“Yeah, I can see that.” She nods her agreement, elegant fingers gathering her hair up in a messy, messy ponytail. She looks untamed and ethereal and free. “Old men can’t resist me.”

My poor face twists so hard it’ll leave wrinkles. Our last stop today will be the beauty store.

Camila bursts out in a laugh that swallows my pleas.

“Please, please never say that again.”

Shaking her eyebrows, she slurps loudly on a milkshake that must have arrived while my eyes had been glued to the photo. “You’re pretty when you beg.”

Not for the first time today, I wonder how I ended up here—on a first girl date with this delightfully deranged girl who called me a friend from our first meeting. And how much I was enjoying it all.

I’m still wondering as the marble monster I grew up in comes into view before I even enter its street. It’s only when I turn the wheel on the circular driveway that the shiny gray car reshifts the direction of my thoughts.

Parked in front of the imposing house of Greek architectural inspiration, it looks perfectly at home at my mother’s mansion. Windows upon windows, perfectly proportional and proportionate, watch as I stop my Jeep next to the Mercedes. Green gardens and tall columns frame an ample porch and stairs where a smile awaits.

For the first time, I feel a surge of something positive shoot through my heart upon seeing those dimples.

Miles rises as soon as I turn the ignition off, his tall frame small against the imposing background.

But all I can see is him.

Today, his dimples are the reminder of a memory, a picture that's etched itself into my heart, fueling my feet forward. The closer I get, the faster I become until I can launch myself into his open arms that meet me in the middle.

Miles simply catches me, closes me inside his arms like that’s what they were meant to. To catch me, whether I jump, I fall, I run—his strong hold speaking to my skin with branding promise.

He’ll always catch me.

I hug him to me, too, with all my strength, as I drown in the crook of his neck. And he is warmth, he’s that fleeting feeling of summers in the sand, the sun kissing my back with serenity and the sea speaking in gentle waves.

Some time later, moments or minutes, he loosens his hold around my middle, allowing me to slow, slow, slowly slide down his chest, as my body feels every hard inch of his. My shirt bunches up around my waist, but I don’t feel the breeze, enveloped in his heat.

Miles halts my descent when we’re nose to nose, our breaths a warm mingle between us before fading in the wind that rustles the trees with a hint of evergreen mint. After a lingering heartbeat, he unlocks his eyes from mine to paint every angle of my face. They end up on my lips, watching them shape two whispering words.

“Thank you.”

My voice is raspier, like my gratitude is made of so many things, its weight heavy in my throat.

I’m suspended in his grasp, in this interval—an instant between two moments, before and after. The clock ticks as always, one, two, three seconds at a time, but they’re slower and swifter simultaneously.

Sometimes an instant feels like forever, sometimes forever is an instant.

Miles sets my feet on the ground with steady hands. When the tips of his fingers recognize the bare skin of my waist, they press with punishing branding. Warmth escalates to heat, but I don’t care if I’m scorched.

My hands, behind his neck, curl at the rebellious tips of his hair, struggling to keep myself upright as my skin tingles with pinpricks in the shape of his fingerprints. They sharpen, swallowing my whole body when I crane my neck up to meet sparkling silver in the melting sun.

I feel like I’m floating, still dangling in possibilities and what ifs.

What if I hop on my tiptoes, what if I claw my nails, what if I stretch my neck as I draw him down?

Something shifts in my periphery, effectively erasing all the possibilities.

The surprises won’t stop coming, today.

With a stumbling step back, I create some needed distance, giving my brain time to retrieve the sanity that has clearly abandoned me.

“Grandfather,” I address my second favorite grandsire. His arrival bears cold reality. “I wasn’t aware you were in town.”

“It’s my daughter’s birthday.” His voice is the same as always, but it’s the haughty tone that triggers all my defenses, setting my body on lockdown.

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