Page 88 of Close Contact
I giggled while they continued to chuckle. Callum rolled his eyes before ending the call. I collapsed backward onto the mattress and groaned. “I hate them.”
“No you don’t.”
“Ilovethem, but I also hate them.”
Callum curled around me, lips brushing my bare shoulder. “We’ll convince them.”
“They bought it.” I sighed. “Hook, sinker, and… line de pêche. Or whatever the rest is.”
He rolled just enough that I could turn my face and meet his gaze. “Line de pêche?”
“You know, the fishing thing. The—how do you say it?”
He was already grinning, but by the time I finished, he was laughing, rich and full. Then he dropped his forehead to my shoulder. “Hook, line, and sinker, mon cœur.”
“Ugh. That’s what I said.”
“Did you really just sayugh?”
“Yes, and I also saidhook, line, and sinker. Just maybe not in that order.”
“You really didn’t. You said ‘line de pêche.’ I’m fairly certain that means fishing line.”
“Close enough,” I said flippantly, wiggling out from his hold so I could sit up.
Callum chuckled, soft and warm and only mine to hear. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
“I’mlucky?” I turned and pinned him with a glare. “You’re the one gettingle sneaky sex.”
“Le sneaky sex? Auri, be so fucking for real right now.”
“Don’t mock me.” I climbed out of bed and raised my arms over my head to stretch. “I am très emotional. I’m supposed to get my period some time next week.”
He sat up, planted his feet on the floor, and grabbed my wrist, pulling me back to him for one more kiss, so fast I could barely blink before our mouths were moving against each other’s. “Officially, we wait until the end of the season.”
I nodded, silently agreeing. “Unofficially?”
“I’m yours,” he said softly, pale blue eyes meeting mine. “Every second we can steal.”
I sighed, brushing my fingers along his jaw. “This feels an awful lot like our friends with unconventional benefits arrangement.”
“You mean the one that lasted four days?”
“Ouais. That one.”
“Except now we’re saying I love you, but no official title, right?”
I smirked. “Complicated, secretive, emotionally devastating.Trèson-brand for us.”
His face softened as he looked up at me through thick lashes that cast shadows down his sharp cheekbones, the stubble along his jaw darker than usual, dangerously kissable.”You know what that does to me,” he murmured, voice low and reverent. “When you speak French. It ruins me.”
God help me, I caved. I stepped between his legs, hands sliding around his neck, and bent to kiss him—not a tease, not a goodbye, but a memorization. My lips found his jaw first, soft and adoring against the delicious scratch from his stubble that was a little longer than usual. Then his mouth, over and over, as I relaxed into him.
It wasn’t enough. It never would be, but it meanteverything. I kissed him, licked the inside of his mouth, devoured him. I tried silently to tell him he was mine. Because he was, even now, in secret. Even in the quiet—especially in the quiet.
His hands moved frantically, as if he was unsure what part of me he wanted to touch the most. One slid down, gripping my ass with a possessive groan, squeezing until I gasped. His other hand smoothed up my spine, goosebumps scattering across my skin in its wake, before settling beneath my breast. When his thumb brushed over my nipple, I arched into him on instinct, breath stuttering out of my lungs.
Heat bloomed low in my belly. Desire, reckless and wild, surged up like it always did when he touched me. But beneath it, pressed painfully under the surface, was restraint. The clock was ticking, and there was the looming goodbye and the tight ache in my chest that warned me this couldn’t last, not if we wanted to keep hiding.
