Page 101 of The Spy Ring

“There. It’s fixed,” he said and turned his head, catching me watching him.

His smile fell and those creases by the corner of his eyes smoothed out. Jagger didn’t move. He was an inch from my lips and as stuffy as this tight space became, I didn’t want him to step away.

His eyes stayed on my mouth. “I miss you.”

I bit my lip, willing myself not to lean toward him. But I couldn’t stop from saying what I felt, “I miss you too. But?”

“No but, I just miss you.”

The divorce papers had been finalized a month ago and I didn’t think my heart would hurt as much as it did.

One blustery Thursday evening, I opened a thick piece of mail and there it was, all typed out, the end of my second marriage. Something in my chest tore. And I swear, it had yet to heal.

“I want to kiss you,” he said as he grabbed my waist and pushed me back against the wall of the small shower, “but I want to say something first.”

He searched my eyes for an answer. I wanted to give him that answer but as I opened my mouth, nothing came out but a moan.

“We aren’t perfect, Tiffany,” he said as he began to dot kisses over my cheeks, my throat, and into my hair. “I’m so rough around the edges, I should come with a warning sign. But you’re sweet and so caring that you’re like syrup—sugary and addictive and messy. Very messy.”

He pushed my hair into his face or maybe it was he pushed his face into my head, it didn’t matter. I only noticed that when he inhaled it was the sexiest thing I had ever heard.

“But I love that. Because when the both of us came together we weren’t any of those things. We weren’t rough or sweet, we were somewhere in between.”

He lifted his head and gazed at me as if I was some fading dream. “What we have isn’t pretty like a picture, it’s the mountains and the valley and the sun that inspired the artist. We are forever like that rock and earth and ball of fire. We may be hot and cold, but we will always be solid because we are the eternal. You are what I had been looking for most in my life, even if I only just met you in June.”

Then his lips devoured mine. And all his words melted into that kiss and I knew I would never let him go again.

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