Page 89 of Fire for Effect

I placed a kiss on her forehead - a gesture that I had never thought of as intimate until I did it to her. I was a lip-kisser. Pecks on the mouth, or cheek. But with Taz, I felt the overwhelming urge to kiss her forehead, her palm, the delicate part of her inner wrist.

To give a kiss, rather than to receive or reciprocate one.

It was the small things that made her special.

The way she didn’t question sharing a cigarette. That we still exchanged keys to each other’s houses after she snuck out on me. The way she drove my truck while I was overseas.

A truck I had long considered hers.

Hell, I had bought it for her. She was going to get an RV, but I really, really wanted her to have a mode of daily transportation that didn’t involve that death on two wheels she called Daisy. So, I bought a truck, asked her to take care of it, and suggested she get the trailer instead.

She took a drag of the cigarette, her breasts lifting with her breath. She extended her arm to the side to ash away from me.

“I’d be insulted, if I didn’t know you so well.” I couldn’t help smiling up at her. “So, what do you say, Firefly?”

This was the best time to ask. Her defenses were down, we were still physically connected. There was something unglamorous and perfect about how she was naked, and I was half dressed, keeping her off the dirty ground.

“Say to what?” She placed the butt of the cigarette to my lips, and I inhaled before she pulled it away.

“Don’t be dumb, Taz. You can’t pull it off.” I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves.

This was the most important conversation I would ever have in my life. I had stacked the deck in my favor, and now, I needed her to say it.

“Do you belong to me?”

“Slavery’s illegal in the United States.” She brought the cigarette to her lips and casually smoked. She released it through her narrowed lips, looking away again, her eyes scanning somewhere in the woods.

Avoidance was her fucking superpower.

“Don’t do that.” I reached up and turned her chin towards me.

“Do what?”

“Be a fucking child!” I wanted to throttle her. “Tell me that we’re together in this. Tell me that we’re…”

“Going steady?” She lifted a brow, and smirked.

Was this psycho playing with me right now?

“Something like that,” I grumbled. Because it was hard to tell with her, even knowing her as intimately as I did.

“You sure that’s what you want?” her smirk melted away, her eyes darted down to the scars and marks that asshole had left on her. “Flaws, baggage and all? A big scary super-secret organization, whisking me away to a safe house. And everything else you just learned…”

Heath Carlin.

“Flaws, baggage, pyromania, irritating talent for avoidance, peak ability to irritate the fuck out of me–”

“Way to make a girl swoon.”

“Brave, strong, beautiful, intelligent, caring and…” I leaned up, planting my hand into the dirt so that I could see her eye to eye, “Completely perfect.”

“Screwed up mom, abusive ex-husband, absent dad, insecurities…”

“Mom, ex, absent dad, and especially those insecurities.” I kissed her lips. A peck. Then her cheek. Then the brow above her left eye – the one that could lift when she was perplexed. Then her right. “Tell me you’re mine, baby, and I’ll never ask you to say it again. I swear.”

How did a small kiss feel a thousand times more intimate than fucking? I wasn’t sure.

I took her wrist - the one with my bracelet - and looked down at it, fiddling with the links.

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