Page 65 of Not in My Book

“Ivy introduced you to the team. After you left the room she said, ‘That woman is optimistic to a fault.’ I’m not like that. I’m brash and rude. And … even though I thought you were beautiful, I knew I wasn’t what you needed. Or deserved, really. I figured I might as well keep my distance, but that became impossible. I lose sense of myself whenever I’m around you.”

His hands were still on the keyboard when I took it from him.

“Ask me why I hated you when I first met you,” I said.

“Why did you hate me when you first met me?”

“Because I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever met, and you seemed to want nothing to do with me. And I wanted everything to do with you.”

How had our faces gotten closer? How were our knees almost overlapping?

“Sounds like a lot of wasted time,” he whispered. His breath fanned my face.

I looked over my shoulder to Aiden, who wasn’t even watching the screen, he was watching me.

Our legs were pressed against each other as a result of me basically crawling over him to grab the laptop. When had our faces fallen so close together that our breath mingled? When did we start looking like Max and Hunter, yes, but Rosie and Aiden at the same time?

I cleared my throat, pulling my gaze away from his mouth. “We need to decide what kind of kiss scene we want.”

“What’re our options?” he whispered, his voice husky. I tried to ignore the shivers racing down my spine, but Aiden’s voice was so low and his eyes were so intense. I was drunk on this moment, desperate to sip on it forever.

“Well,” I started slowly. “There are the passionate kisses—you know, the ones you can’t control. Where the characters just can’t get enough of each other.”

“Mhm.” I could’ve drowned in the deep lull of his voice. My eyes fluttered without control, and I instinctively leaned closer to him.

“Or the slow ones. They’re still passionate … uncontrolled. Unrestrained. But tentative.”

“I see.”

“It has to be well-written, too. Kisses are always better in books so we have to make the right choice about what kind of—”

“What did you say?” he interrupted me.

Our heads were tilted to each other, close but not close enough. I could see the curve of his mouth as it deepened into a frown.

“We have to pick the right—”

“No, about kisses being better in fiction.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “I mean, kissesarejust better in books.”

He gave me a bewildered look. “What’re you talking about?”

“Kisses in romance novels areworld altering. The characters see everything differently after, and they have thisspark.In real life, kisses are just … wet.”

His lips quirked before he swallowed and said slowly, “No. They’re not.”

“Yes. They are.”

“If you think that, Rosie, then you haven’t been kissed the way you should be. You haven’t been kissed by someone who reallywantsyou.”

My eyes flickered from his eyes to his lips for a second, my chest rising up and down. When his nose nudged softly against mine, I fought to catch a single breath.

“Then show me,” I whispered.

In an instant, his mouth covered mine. He decided what kiss we would have, but it wasn’t any of the options I had listed. It was questioning and exploring, hungry and slow. His hand slipped underneath my jaw, tilting my mouth toward his. I arched up, pressing myself closer to him. His hand slid from my jaw, anchoring itself in my hair, a fist curling around my curls.

He nudged my mouth open and at the first slip of his tongue, I turned greedy. My hands curled into his T-shirt, wanting more of him. Obligingly, his other hand slid around my waist, his grip tight on my hip.

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