Page 12 of Cherry Beats

I didn’t get a chance to finish.

Presley closed the distance between us and was on me before I could blink, turning me around his arms and pulling me closer to him until I had nowhere else to steal oxygen from except his breaths.

His sweet, minty, tequila-tainted breaths.

My fists were bunched up, resting against his chest as I leaned back and looked up into his eyes.

“You talk too much, Cherry,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“But, fuck, can you dance.”

My eyes were wide and waiting until they fell to the plumpness of his lips, and then I wanted to cry. Everywhere wanted to cry. He was so perfect, and he was holding me, and I couldn’t speak.

“You. Speechless. I feel like I should take a picture.”

“W-what are you doing?” I asked weakly.

“What I’ve been thinking about doing for a while.”

“Tying me up in rope, throwing me in the back of your car, and letting me rot in a forest so you can’t hear my snark anymore?”

“Tempting.” He wrinkled his nose. “But your mouth is entirely too good at what it does to waste it. I’d rather just kiss you and swallow that snark so only I can taste it.”

“You want to kiss me?”

“It’s either kiss your lips, bite your arse, or leave. Your choice, Cherry.”

“Oh…”

“And youcanchoose. Just say no, and I’ll turn around and walk back out of that door, and you can return to your ridiculously endearing performance.”

Michael Hutchence sang his chorus from the speakers above, and I looked up to the ceiling, letting the words filter through. Presley looked up, too, catching up with what I was trying to tell him before I actually told him.

When our eyes met again, he was smirking, and I was smiling. It was a girly smile. Something you’d imagine on a pretty little blonde, girl-next-door, virginal type.

“Nothing tells you what a girl really wants to say like the song she’s begging you to listen to. At least that’s what they say,” he whispered roughly, and just like that, his lips finally pressed against mine.

He kissed better than I’d ever dreamt he could.

Chapter Four

“Glenn Medeiros? I can’t kiss you to this,” Presley mumbled against my lips as one of my all-time guilty pleasures poured through the speakers, his eyes aimed at the ceiling as a sexy as sin scowl creased his forehead.

“You know this one?”

“There isn’t much I don’t know about music.” His fingers rose to flex against my scalp, and he gripped my hair tightly, forcing me to moan softly. “But you havetheworst taste in songs.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Whatever, know-it-all.”

“This is truly horrendous.” He laughed with me. “The worst.”

Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For Yousuddenly seemed like the best damn love song in the world to me, and if I wasn’t in the middle of making all my dreams come true, I would have made sure Presley took my hand and spun me around this empty bar in a slow dance to beat all slow dances.

“Opinions are like arseholes. Everyone has one. And I bet my taste and knowledge trumps yours, rock star.”

“I’m not the kind of guy you want to challenge like that.”

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