Page 12 of Duke's Daring Bookworm
I reared back. I kissed him? I searched my memories, desperate for what, apparently, was my first kiss. I met a wall of black lightly interspersed with cherry flavored flashes of him, but nothing specific enough to grasp.
I sank into my chair. This explained his reticence. We’d already kissed, and he never wanted to do it again.
“Oh,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry.” He turned to me and saw something that made him kneel before me, like the hero of a book.
Except, no. This was reality, not a book. It didn’t get to be good.
“Why are you apologizing to me? I’m the one that drunkenly kissed you.” My hands twitched with wanting to reach out to him and soothe away the wrinkle between his eyes.
“It was your first kiss, and you can’t even remember it.” He put down the book and picked up my hands, his thumb tracing my knuckles, and I had to squash an image of him bringing them to his lips for a kiss, like a knight.
“So, kiss me again when I can remember.” I don’t know where the courage for those words came from, but there they were, hanging between us, waiting for him to grabthem, to kiss me.
“Lily,” he warned, low and rough, and a little thrill ran through me.
“Please. Just one kiss and if it’s bad, then we can forget about it.”
“And if it isn’t?” His eyes were dark and intense on me, the hazel color being swallowed by his pupils.Oh. That’s what that looked like. No wonder the women in my books fell for it every time.
“Then…” I licked my lips, and Duke followed the path of my tongue. I couldn’t finish my sentence—to say it out loud.
Time seemed frozen as we stared at each other, the space between us becoming heavy with each labored breath until it felt like it would explode.
And then it did. Except it wasn’t what I wanted, what I needed.
Duke pushed away from me, the book forgotten on the floor, the only proof he ever stood in front of me in the first place.
“I can’t lose your friendship, Lily. I don’t… I can’t lose you.” He pulled the long strands of his dirty blonde hair as if that could change this.
“You won’t. Never.” I promised, though I knew I couldn’t, not when he had a say in it, too.
“I don’t know how to navigate this, Lily. What if… what if it’s good, but then I fuck up.” He closed his eyes and dropped his hands. “I can’t have you hating me.”
“I could never hate you. I’d probably hate myself, but not you.”
“That would be worse.”
“How? I already hate myself quite regularly. It’s bearable as long as I find another book to love.” He looked aroundat the piles of books around us as if he really saw them for the first time. Maybe he did.
“Are you really asking me to do this?” It wasn’t ‘no.’ It might even be ‘yes.’
“Yes. You can say no, but…” I twirled my hands, overwhelmed at the thought of what I wanted. “Just one kiss. If it’s bad, we forget it happened. If it’s not bad, you can still say no to anything…more. I won’t be hurt,” I lied, and Duke scoffed as if he knew it immediately.
I didn’t promise him we could forget about a good kiss. I couldn’t do that. If it was good, I would likely remember it for the rest of my life, but I had to bear that burden and I would willingly do it just for the chance.
A chance that may never come again.
“I’m not exactly good at relationships, Lily,” he said as he paced, still occasionally tugging at his hair as if that could give him the answer to this.
“Oh! I almost forgot that part. If we… do more, we could set a limit. Just friends, plus s— sex for a month.”
“Why a month?” He finally stopped pacing and turned to me.
“It’s arbitrary, mostly, but I thought that would be enough time to try some things.”
“What things?”
