Page 100 of Catch the Sun

“It has been.” Pausing, she adds, “But all that running was worth it.”

“Yeah?” I press a kiss to her forehead, my hand sliding up and down her arm as I wait for her to continue.

Ella’s eyes close through a sigh as she cradles her palm to my cheek. “Eventually, I ran into you.”

My heart pounds, bursting with a sense of completion. Because I’ve been running, too. Running through a dense forest on loop, calling for help, begging for someone to find me before the sun sets and darkness swallows me whole. And then there was Ella. Adorned in an orange dress with red hair and a golden smile, glowing prettier than any molten sunset.

My way out.

I raise my hand and tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “A favorable collision,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss the peak of her nose.

A drowsy smile tips her lips as she curls into me with a yawn, her palms clasped around my neck. A few blissful minutes tick by before she murmurs, “Max?”

“Ella,” I respond, sleep pulling me under.

“I think I’m Eeyore.”

I blink myself from the edge of slumber, an amused frown twisting my brow. “What?”

“I’m Eeyore. From Winnie the Pooh,” she says. “I don’t want to be, but I am. His friends would try to cheer him up, try to pull him out of his dark hole, andit would work for a while…but then he’d always crawl back inside.” She sighs, her eyes fluttering closed. “Eeyore never had a happy ending.”

Melancholy trickles through me. I pull her closer, lowering her face to the space between my jaw and my chest, my chin resting atop her mound of hair as I graze my hand through the tresses. “We’ll just have to rewrite it then,” I tell her softly.

Ella makes a sighing sound, her body going lax against me. “You rarely win…but sometimes you do, right?” she mumbles, her voice fading, her breath shallowing as sleep steals her away.

“Yeah, Sunny. Sometimes you do.”

I fall asleep moments later with a smile, knowing that this moment is a beginning.

But as everyone knows…

A beginning is often an end.

Chapter 24

Ella

Johnny Mathis is music to my ears.

But the only thing echoing louder is my own moaning as Max brings me to ecstasy against my bedroom door with his fingers between my thighs. The mellow vocals are drowned out, overridden by the feel of Max’s tongue in my mouth, his opposite hand sliding up my dress and cupping my breast. I arch into him with a whimper. “Oh God…”

“Mmm.” His fingers pump in and out, pace quickening. “Kissing you feels like catching the sun,” he rasps, his lips dipping to my neck and trailing wet kisses down to my collarbone.

Not that I’ve had a ton of experience with romance, but that is, by far, the most romantic shit I’ve ever heard.

It’ll be impossible to top.

I smile through the spasms buzzing down below that are funneling into a spine-tingling release. Max presses his face to the curve of my neck as his speed kicks up and he hits just the right spot, causing another loud moan to fly past my lips.

His free hand whips out to clamp around my mouth when I gracelessly unravel and jerk forward. I pull at his hair, my emerald party dress bunched at the waist. “Mmmphxx,” is my muffled version ofMaxthat doesn’t quite articulate right with his hand over my mouth.

I get it, though.

His dad is right down the hallway in the living room. And his brother.

My mom, too.

Actually, everyone is here, and they all probably heard me, including Johnny Mathis.

---