Page 106 of The Kiss of Deception

Right now, as she crosses the threshold on our way back from lunch with Toby, and keeps walking without shedding her white sneakers, my eyes fixate on her lean legs and I can’t help but think about how much I love even the little things.

Like she, the tiny thing that she is, doesn’t feel the need to wear those ridiculously high heels all the time. Her existence is large enough, her aura not just demanding, but commanding all senses of every room she enters.

I’m about to remind her to change into her house slippers when she pauses. Back still to me, she rests her chin on her shoulder, gifting me a perfect view of her side profile.

“I wanted to give you your birthday gift, now that it’s just the two of us.”

Her phrasing paints a million unbidden forbidden images in my mind—none of them appropriate—reminding me of our unfinished business. Not that I was able to forget for a second in the past two torturous hours.

Clearing those dark thoughts from my throat, I manage to rasp out a question. “I thought the party was my gift?”

Zoe tucks a fallen tendril of the hair tamed in a long ponytail behind her ear, much like I always itch to do. “Come here, Blackstein.”

She resumes her steps down the hall without bothering to check if I follow.

She knows I will always follow her everywhere.

Right now, everywhere is her office.

Zoe pauses for a fraction of a second, a hand on the handle. With one heaving breath, she swings the door open for me.

Rainbows pour from walls instantly, erupting from the spines of countless books neatly stacked in cream floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that blend seamlessly with the white walls. A fluffy snowy rug sits in front of an electric fireplace, surrounded by two reading chairs, a simple coffee table right in the middle of them.

Sun pours from the windows that make up the further wall. In the corner, a swinging egg-shaped chair rocks back and forth, and I stare. I can see myself sliding the window doors open, the early rays or late low-hanging sun against my face as the steam rises from the cup of coffee in one hand, the other occupied with a book.

I lose notion of how long I stand in the middle, a clock tick twirling around and around, mesmerized, taking in everything around me.

It isn’t just the gift itself, which is so much fucking greater than anything my imagination could have conceived.

It’s what it means.

It’s Zoe’s love language.

“Zoe… I—When—How—” In a room full of words, they fail me.

Uncharacteristically shy, she watches me watch everything. She’s shed all shields to walk inside, vulnerable heart on a platter. She has never looked so beautiful to me. So perfectly mine and made for me.

Her eyes flit from her desk to me twice. “I’ll take the desk when I lea—”

I refuse to let her finish the preposterous thought.

In six purposeful strides, I cross the room. She matches every one of my steps forward with two steps back until her back hits the bookshelves filled with fantastic worlds and magical existences.

I never want to escape this life.

I brace my hands on the white wood on each side of her, as though I can trap Zoe in this life, too. Ours. “The desk stays.”

She cranes her neck, elegant unblemished cords that beg to be painted by my teeth, as her trembling hands scramble for balance until she curls them around my bulging biceps.

“I need to kiss you right now.” A rough confession, a plea in hushed tones. I might actually lose my mind if I spend another second not kissing her.

Her tiptoes bring her parted mouth closer to mine. For a moment, I only stare at the permission. The invitation.

Leaning forward, my breath paints her cleavage as I run my fingertips along the back of her thighs, torturing a whimper out of her before I hoist her up, her ankles immediately locking behind my back. My lips hover over hers for a torturous beat, my tongue dipping to trace her plump bottom lip as I gulp her sweet, heady scent.

Then I shove her up against this wall of fantasy and foreign worlds she’s curated for me, and my mouth collides with hers.

The kiss is hard, designed to confess everything I kept hidden in plain sight all this time. All the quotes I could cite and write about us, all the things that live inside my heart that belongs to her.

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