Page 63 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
“That easy? Did you go to a school for it or something?”
“No. The teacher came to our house.”
He looked shocked. “Really? Right to your house? How often?”
“Three tines a week,” I said quietly, feeling somehow guilty for admitting it, like I had done something wrong by having the upbringing I had.
Now it was his turn to whistle, though his face had turned sort of wistful. “So that’s how it is to live in a house where the parents actually love you.”
Okay, what?
“Huh?”
His face shuttered as quickly as it had opened, and the wry, sarcastic expression replaced the dreamy look he’d been wearing a moment earlier. “Nothing. Just interesting to hear how the other half lives.” His mouth turned up into a smirk. “So I guess that means I worked harder to learn guitar than you did.”
“Excuse me? I worked really hard to learn guitar!”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. You probably practiced for about two weeks before you could do anything you wanted on it.”
“Which would mean I’m probably better at it than you,” I shot back.
He swung his guitar between us and scooted so close to me I could feel the brush of his skin against mine, our hands on our instruments exact mirrors of each other. And then he leaned in,his face filling my vision until he was all I could see. His dark eyes. Those thick lashes. Incredibly lush lips.
I jerked my gaze up from his lips to his eyes and caught my breath. I hadn’t seen him smolder like this since the time we made out in the hallway. I’d been in my pajamas then, and desperately aware of how bare my legs were.
Those legs were bare now, too, and burning with awareness.
“Care to prove that?” he whispered.
My mind stuttered. Prove what? What had we been talking about?
Oh, who was better at guitar.
“Any time,” I whispered. “You don’t scare me, Rivers Shine.”
Instead of answering, he ducked and captured my mouth, his lips hot and wet and demanding, and I opened for him and let him in without thinking about it, my body reacting without any help on my brain’s part. God, he was intense. Like kissing someone who was on fire. I’d forgotten what he did to me when he was this close, and the groan he forced from me was pure need and desire.
And the moment I let it out of my mouth and into his, everything started moving at warp speed. His guitar was thrown to the side and mine jerked out of my hands, tossed to the ground. His hands were on my arms, running up my shoulders and then into my hair like they had a mind of their own. He grasped the threads of my hair and pulled, forcing my head back and my mouth open. His tongue delved swiftly into my mouth, and it was all heat and demand and pure, overwhelming desire.
“Lila,” he whispered in a breath against my lips.
I didn’t know whether I could respond at all. The heat of him, the demand that I respond, had stolen my breath away, and my voice was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t see anything but him.
I didn’t know what we were doing, but I knew I wasn’t going to stop it. I’d waited a week for him to touch me again, been in the depths of despair at his sudden absence from my life, and now here he was right in front of me, his lips on mine and his body so close I could feel him vibrating with need.
He reached down, grabbed the backs of my legs, and jerked, pulling me smoothly underneath him, and before I could truly comprehend it, he was yanking my skirt up around my waist. Laying my legs even more bare in front of him. He pulled back and stared into my eyes, his eyebrows suddenly creased with concern like he’d just realized that maybe he was taking things too quickly.
“Is this okay?” he whispered hoarsely.
The way his voice broke told me there was only one possible answer.
“I mean you’ve gone from barely speaking to me to basically mauling me in the space of an afternoon,” I replied breathlessly. “What’s not okay about that?”
I caught the quick glint of a smile—barely a glimmer of it in his eyes—and then he was back on me, his lips fire on mine and his skin burning against me. And I was both floating and falling, my brain incapable of understanding how this was happening and my body telling me that it didn’t matter whether my brain understood it or not.
I was back in Rivers’ arms.
Nothing else mattered.
