Page 57 of Forking the Billionaire

“Admit that I’m the ocean scavenger hunt queen.” She pressed her hand to my chest, and gave a small push.

It was probably meant to be playful. It was probably supposed to be meaningless.

But the contact short-circuited my brain, and I found my fingers threading through her hair. I lost all sense of logic or reason as I stole that teasing smile right off her face with a bruising kiss.

SIXTEEN

ESME

If you didn’t count sloppy slobbers from friendly pups or scratchy pecks from a particularly affectionate uncle, which for the record I did not, I could count the number of guys who had ever kissed me on one hand.

But my very first kiss had been with my best friend at the time, one Jasper Carrington.

I’d been six years old. Throughout the entire school year, Jackie Lowell had relentlessly taunted me that I was going to marry Jasper. And at the time, she’d really seemed like she knew the ways of the world. She had the most awesome sparkle pink jelly shoes anyone had ever seen. And the biggest check for her coolness factor—she’d already kissed three boys.

Later, I learned this was a lie. She’d kissed two boys, and had made them do it through unsavory means. She’d blackmailed Xander into it after catching him shove an extra brownie into his pocket in the lunch line when he thought no one was looking. I didn’t get the whole story about what she did to Blake, but it wasn’t any better.

She’d told me that kissing boys wasthe best.Better than chocolate. Better than birthday cake. Better than caramel.

Misinterpreting her bravado for wisdom, I’d listened to her.

And after school, I’d talked myself up.

If it was better than caramel, I needed to experience it.

So I’d sat in the field of thorn bushes watching for the boy next door. Every day after school, Jasper and Gabe got off the bus together and walked past the field to our house for some of Oma’s lemonade and cookies.

This day, Gabe wasn’t at school, so I knew Jasper would be alone.

So I waited.

And when he was close enough, I pounced.

He tripped.

We went down. The metallic taste of blood coated my mouth as I bit my tongue. Then I kissed him.

It would have been easy to play it off like an accident when our faces smashed together and our teeth clashed. But brazen little me did nothing of the sort.

Twelve-year-old Jasper stared up at me, wide-eyed and mortified. “You kissed me,” he’d said in the same way someone would sayyou kicked out all my teeth.

But I was so stuck on my own disappointment I hardly registered his reaction.

Jackie Lowell had been way wrong.

“Ugh,” I’d said. “Overrated.”

Kissing sucked.

My opinion didn’t change all that much through the years, though I was always eager to be proven wrong.

But as childish daydreams of the past flitted through my head, I finally got exactly what I’d wanted all those years ago.

No fantasy of what could be or how it was supposed to go compared to the reality smacking me in the lips.

Jasper’s hands held my cheeks softly, reverently, as his mouth assaulted mine in the most delicious way.

I was shocked, stunned, and entirely enthralled.

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