Page 37 of Kiss Me Like I Didn't Kill You
She suddenly tilts her face up to mine, eyes searching. “You and Zara…”
I don’t let her finish. A flicker at the corner of my mouth betrays me, an involuntary twitch. She sounds jealous, and I rather like it. It means she’s feeling something, even if she won’t name it.
“I haven’t touched her.”
“You kissed her.”
“No…” I don’t tell her that it started as a power play, dragging her onto my lap just to get a rise out of Ophelia, only for it to backfire when she tried to kiss me. I shoved her off, and she stumbled into the dirt, but Ophelia had already turned away by then. She never saw it.
“She means nothing,” I say quietly. “Never did. Never will. You don’t have to worry about her.”
“Promise?” she asks, a flicker of vulnerability in her eyes.
And before I can stop myself, I whisper it back, “Promise.” With the same unguarded edge leaking through my own voice.
She lays her head back on my chest and turns back to the flickering nonsense on the screen. Her breathing evens out, her weight soft and warm against me.
My head is a mess. All these feelings, all this irrationality, clashing like a war inside me.
But just for tonight, I let myself pretend. Pretend we are as we once were.
That I don’t hate her.
That she didn’t destroy me in the worst possible way.
Just for tonight, I pretend she’s my lover, not my enemy.
Tomorrow will come, another step toward my revenge, another day of hate.
But tonight… tonight we drop the lies. Tonight, we’re not at war.
Tonight, we love.
Chapter 13
Ophelia
When I open my eyes, the room is still dark. I’m beneath the covers in my own bed. The memory of last night slams into me and I jerk to the side, expecting him to still be there.
But the space beside me is empty. Warm, though. Which means he hasn’t been gone long.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. Half-past five. I know sleep won’t return, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes. So I lie there instead, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of last night.
I slept with him.
Arlo Vass.
If I’d harboured even the faintest doubt about still being a virgin, he put that to rest.
But the thought curdles quickly into something worse, what if I had someone? What if, in the years I’ve lost, there was a man who mattered, and I’ve just betrayed him with Arlo?
Except it doesn’t sit right. That thought feels… false. What doesn’t feel false is the way my body answered his, like it had always known him.
And I don’t mean as a stranger who happened to hate me on sight. It was something else, something deeper, and I can’t explain it.
The pull between us is too strong, too raw. I can’t even muster regret. Not when I think of the way he touched me, the way it felt to unravel under him.
There’s an ache between my thighs, lingering and shamefully delicious. Just the memory of his hands on me sends a shiver down my spine. Last night was better than anything I’d ever imagined, better than anything I thought possible.
