Page 59 of Her Pretty Words

I begin to pulse between my legs. “Yes.” It comes out breathless.

His face is no longer above mine. I cry out when he kisses the places he pinched, and then swirls the tip of his tongue. He palms my chest, and his empty hand draws lazy patterns up and down my thigh, leaving gooseflesh in his wake.

I grip him over his pants and we both let out a pleasurable sound. I cup his jaw to bring his face back to mine. I move my lips over his neck, and he kisses my bare shoulder. The heat of his sporadic breath does nothing to tame mine.

I want to explore his body as he’s done mine, so I slowly shimmy down beneath him, kissing the hard planes of his pectorals. He’s planking over me. I press a kiss to the soft skin of his forearm with a giggle, which turns into a gasp as he slides off me and shimmies us around so that I’m laying above him. Itmakes it easier to kiss his abdomen. His muscles tense and relax beneath me, and once I get close to his navel, he squirms, and I grin. “You’re ticklish here.”

“Don’t abuse that knowledge.”

I do just that, digging my fingers into his skin and making him tense. He’s quick to still my wrists, the size of his hands swallows them whole, as if he were holding toothpicks.

“Very cute, Mace.”

I paint an innocent smile on my face.

“That smile is going to be my demise.”

I crawl up the length of his body. He’s hooking his finger beneath my chin so his gaze can burn into mine. “It’s unfair,” he says so closely to my mouth.

“What is?”

“For someone to look so divine.” His lips touch mine, and he lowers his voice, making it come out deeper. “There are flecks of gold in your eyes, did you know that?”There are?“And your hair beneath the sun shines golden. It’s heavenly, really.” He sighs, like the beauty he describes is painful. “I think my favorite color might be gold.”

His words are a drug, turning my blood molten and liquefying my heart to something that feels as pure as gold. His laugh comes and this time it’s childish. Innocent. The cadence of it feels familiar, like a dream tugging at the edges of my mind that I can never fully grasp. “What were you like as a kid?” I find myself wondering out loud.

“Happy,” he says, then lays flat on his back, pulling me down so my head rests upon his chest. “And sad.”

“What made you happy?” I ask.

The dark room is devoid of sound, save for the hum of the air conditioning, for eleven heartbeats until he responds. “The sun.”

I nearly ask what made him sad, but I want him to hang on to the sun. I want him to lay here with me, only rememberinghow it feels to be happy. After several minutes of focusing on his breath, it slows and becomes even. Each rise and fall feels like waves rolling over sand. Shortly after him, I fall asleep too, head on chest, skin against skin. It’s one of the most intimate things I’ve ever felt.

It’s easy to be bold in the dark, with shadows adorning you. But in the morning, with daylight pouring through the window, I glance down at my shirtless body and hurry to throw my clothes on, which are fully dry after hanging up all night.

Grayson stays asleep until I’m dressed, or he does a good job pretending. Once his eyes crack open, he smiles at me. It’s a real smile, wide and cheeky, showing nearly all his teeth. I feel myself returning it, and it’s as if the room at the Inn is floating in space, far away from the world.

My phone is dead from the day prior, so I plug it in the moment I’m home since Grayson was using his charger in the car. It’s flooded with missed calls from my mother, but I don’t bother returning any of them. I want to exist in a bubble, if only for today, and perhaps I’m naïve to believe nothing can burst it.

I’m combing through my wet hair after taking a shower, the vanilla scent of my shampoo hanging in the air. I roll my eyes when I hear a demanding knock. I quickly wrap my hair in a towel and throw on denim shorts and a cropped tank top. I don’t bother looking out the window, assuming it’s Grayson here to demand I eat dinner with him. My smile slips as I swing open the door to find my parents standing there, side by side.

My dad turns to my mom. “I told you she was okay.”

My irritated mom barges past me to enter the house, revealing what I had missed before. The man I begrudgingly agreed to marry and then effortlessly dumped over text.

Chapter 19

Macy

“Macy,” Walter says curtly, rushing past my dad. Then, his mouth is on mine and it’s wrong. His tongue is sweeping in without permission and his hand are claiming me as if I belong to him.How many other girls has he kissed while we were together?My lips are unmoving, yet he continues to assault them. Bile rises to my throat, and I shove at his chest.

He feigns hurt. His eyebrows come together but his nostrils are flaring when I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

My dad clears his throat in discomfort and awkwardly passes us, following my mom into his parent’s house.

I hold up my hand, so Walter doesn’t come any closer, but the idiot smiles and interlocks his fingers with mine. I quickly tug my arm back. “You need to leave.”

His eyes flash with disbelief, and then my mom calls. “Walter, honey, bring Macy in here. You two don’t need to stand out in the heat.”

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