Page 107 of The Kiss of Deception

I try, I really try to go slow and soft. But I could only ever love Zoe with untamed ferocity and sweet abandon. She makes me feel feral.

I kiss her until I think I might die from lack of breath, and then I kiss her some more because I would gladly die kissing her.

Squeezing her ass with rough hands, I’m blind and deaf to the world as I walk us to the desk where I deposit her. Separating our lips to mold our foreheads together, I want to memorize her undone by me—long lashes dark against rosy cheeks as she catches her breath.

But she blinks quickly and untangles herself from my embrace, breaking the spell. With drunken steps, she traipses to the window—one step closer to her way out, should she choose to run from us.

“Zoe.” She’s lost in deep thought, trapped inside that stormy, beautiful mind of hers. I need to pull her out. “Come here.”

Her head tilts the slightest bit to me, a troubled brow marring her flawless face as she debates her next step.

Get closer or get away.

When her hesitant decision tips in my direction, she approaches slowly, remaining on the other side of the desk.

“What are you so scared of, love?” The question is quiet and scared, too. Of scaring her away.

She flattens her palms on the wooden barrier, sweeping me in aquamarine storms.

“I’m scared of myself,” she says so softly I might have imagined it. “I’m scared if I get too close, I won’t be able to stop. I’m scared we want different things. And I’m really scared we want the same thing. I’m scared—I’m terrified of what I want.”

I forget how to blink, how to breathe, determined not to miss a single glimpse of this vulnerable piece of her.

“I never really understood the emphasis put on love. Why everyone is so obsessed with finding someone to love. I never even cared enough to give it a second thought. I was just okay with being just me, you know? I never felt the need for anyone else. But then you…” Zoe nibbles on the corner of her lip before she continues with a slight shake of her head. “You awakened something. And I never understood it, or why. I just felt so frustrated because I was perfectly okay on my own, and then you come in and boom. There you are, in my work, in my home, in my freaking thoughts. You’re such a nuisance, you know.”

I chuckle knowingly, amused but humorlessly. “Yeah. I know.”

I owe her a piece of my truth.

So that’s what I give her.

“More than anything, I’ve always wanted a family. Always had this clear idea of the person I wanted and every little thing I wanted with them.

“Then I met you. You’re not a nuisance, though. No, you’re a fucking hurricane. You came in and you swept my whole life and you rearranged all my beliefs. You changed everything for me, too, Zoe. You’ve made me realize that what I dreamed of wasn’t the true love I thought. I wanted someone to come into my life and fit into the storyline I had carefully drafted. Someone that would seamlessly fit my picture.”

Zoe is the only thing I can see, hanging to my speech as the final tether. She isn't sure if she wants it to survive or if she wants to sever it.

“You came in and you burned the picture down. I don’t know what it looks like anymore, just that you are in the center of it. Hell, you are the picture.”

Our eyes don’t waver, gray and green and all the shades in between, speaking ancient languages.

Not as confessions ricochet in the echoes of our silence.

Not as inevitability settles between us, of what this means, this single moment that is a collision, a culmination of many moments, and the catalyst of many more. Of what we are, what we were always meant to be.

Not as I make my way around the damn desk to her.

As soon as she’s within my reach, my hands take hold of her, fingers clawing into her waist, vowing to never let go.

“I am going to kiss you, Zoe,” I promise in her ear. Then, rolling her lobe between my teeth, I tell her all the things I’ve been dying to do to her. “I’m going to kiss that maddening mouth of yours. It makes me crazy just looking at it, and it really makes me insane when it spits your sweet venom at me.”

“Good,” she breathes out. I’m not sure what she means, kiss or insanity. Right now, I don’t care.

“I’m gonna kiss every inch of your body. Every centimeter until my lips can draw it from memory.” I run my tongue along her collarbone, around her small heart and up the pulsing vein in her slender neck. “Then, I’m gonna fuck you until you pass out.” I feel the shiver that shakes her frame, and twist her face, finding only a thin band of my favorite blue. “And then, I’m gonna hold you as you sleep. And when you wake up and freak out a little, I’ll kiss you again. I’ll kiss you until all your fears are erased, until you finally get it into this beautiful head of yours that I’ll never fucking let you go.”

And I kiss her.

I slam my starved mouth into hers.

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