Page 112 of The Ruse

He helped me pull his jacket down and tossed it to the ground. Then he lifted me into the air and carried me to the couch that I’d always thought was a random thing to have backstage until right now when Asher was taking me to it.

He sat down with my legs straddling his hips, and for a second, he rested his forehead against mine, needing to catch his breath. Then he looked up at me and whispered, “You’re so beautiful, Elyse.” He slipped his hands up and down my sides and said, “So incredibly beautiful.”

31

ASHER

HadI somehow slipped into a daydream during rehearsal, or was this actually happening? Was I really sitting on the ugly orange couch backstage with Elyse on my lap?

Was she undoing my tie and unbuttoning the top few buttons of my dress shirt so she could kiss the crook of my neck and clavicle in the way that I loved?

In the way that made it hard to think clearly?

Because either I was dreaming, or Elyse was a lot less timid than I’d assumed.

That underneath the sweet and innocent facade she put on for the rest of the world, there was actually a girl who said she liked the bad boys who went after what they wanted because it helped her inner bad girl come out.

She kissed her way up my neck, under my chin, and across my jawline, causing a million nerve endings to spark to life. When she eventually made her way back to my mouth, she took my bottom lip between hers and sucked on it.

She took my face in her hands and let her tongue gently graze against my lips, asking permission to deepen the kiss. I opened my mouth to hers and let her explore.

Her hair fell around us like a curtain, and the scent of her shampoo filled my senses. She smelled so good. Like apple and something else that made me think of crisp autumn nights and sipping wassail in front of the fire. I slipped my fingers into her hair as our tongues danced together. And when she quietly moaned into my mouth and pressed herself closer, my stomach muscles tightened so hard I wondered if they’d ever relax again.

She slipped one hand behind my neck, bracing herself against me, as she moved the other one down my shoulders to my left bicep. And after giving it a good squeeze and rubbing her hand all over it, she mumbled, “This is mine now, okay?”

A huge grin slipped onto my lips because I kind of loved that she’d just said that. With a slight chuckle, I said, “You can have the other arm, too, if you want.”

A slow smile took shape on her lips. She took both of my forearms in her hands and put them behind her waist, saying, “If they’re mine now, then they better hold me close.”

So I wrapped them all the way around her and hugged her tighter against me. She let out a light giggle. We stared at each other for a moment, my heart swelling so big in my chest, and I wondered if I’d ever cared about someone as much as I cared about her. I pulled her lips back to mine and kissed her in a way that I hoped would tell her the things I was too afraid to say.

That I’d been falling in love with her since the moment we met. That she was everything I’d been searching for. She was funny and smart and beautiful and amazing…and falling for her had been inevitable.

As if it had been written in the stars long before we met.

Please pick me.

Please choose me.

Her lips met mine in a long, slow kiss. Without thinking, I lifted her off my lap, laid her down on the couch, and climbed down beside her.

She turned on her side to face me, and then we were kissing again. I was pressing her into the back of the couch, and she was arching into me.

I slipped my hand along her hip, smoothing it along the little bit of softness she had there. She pushed her hands into my hair, and when she gently combed her fingers through the wavy strands I never really knew what to do with, a shiver went down my back because it felt so good.

“I’ve been wanting to tangle my fingers in your hair since the first day we met,” she said in a soft voice.

“Yeah?” I asked, meeting her gaze for a moment as my insides did a bunch of somersaults.

She nodded. “I love it.”

And then we were kissing again. She kicked off her shoes and I kicked off mine, and we were tangling our legs together. She finished unbuttoning the front of my shirt, and when she pushed it open, I was glad I’d kept up my early morning workouts the past few weeks—she wasn’t shy about the way her eyes were raking me all in, her hands feeling the contours of my chest and down the muscles over my ribcage.

She bent her head lower and pressed a kiss to my sternum before nuzzling her face against my skin like she was planning to stay there until we could both catch our breath.

And since we were snuggling now, I pulled her closer. I slid my hand along the hemline of her blouse, smoothing it over her hip. I lightly traced my fingers across the skin of her back that had tortured me so much when I’d helped her with her dress. And when she shivered with pleasure, I flattened my hand against her spine and pushed it a little higher.

My fingers barely grazed against the clasp of her bra, and I briefly wondered if she wore the black bra she’d been wearing last Saturday…

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