Maybe then I’ll be able to breathe without wanting her so damn much.
I see the shuffle of feet in the crack beneath her door.
“Evie!” I bark, impatient. I’m making a scramble, goddamn it. She doesn’t need to hide in her room all morning. We’ve already done the awkward shit together. We don’t need to do it again. “I made breakfast!”
The door swings open and she appears, a scowl scrunching her nose. My gaze sweeps down from her shoulders to her long, long legs and my entire body tightens. She’s wearing the damn knee socks again, a creamy white against her dark skin.
“You don’t need to yell about it.”
And she doesn’t need to be temptation incarnate, but we are where we are.
I turn with a grunt and push the eggs around in the pan in an effort to keep my hands occupied. She makes me feel things I have no business feeling. Out of control, half the time. Out of my mind, the other half. I want to do a thousand different things, starting with my hands in her hair and my mouth on her neck—everything I thought about doing last night, when it was just us and the moonlight.
I’m clinging to the rope of my restraint and I can feel the ends starting to fray. Every look, every touch, every smile she gives me—it unravels a bit more.
“Would you like some breakfast?” I try again, a conscious effort to soften my voice into something gentle. It still sounds like a demand instead of an offer though, and Evelyn snorts a laugh.
“Did you mean what you said last night?” Right to the point, then.
I continue to poke listlessly at the eggs. The edges are starting to brown. I flick off the stovetop and rest the wooden spoon across the pan.
I like you so much.
“I did.”
I’ve thought about her every day since that morning I woke up alone, a storm thundering in from the east, thick gray clouds hanging low over the water. I’ve thought about the exact sound she makes when my body is over hers, the way her breath hitches and then releases, a breathy sigh around my name. I’ve thought about her laugh and her smile—prettier than all the wildflowers in the meadow and every star in the sky.
I feel a deep exhale against the cotton of my t-shirt, Evelyn standing at my back. “Are you still drunk?”
I huff a laugh and shake my head. “No.”
I wasn’t that drunk to begin with. Just loose enough for some of the desire rattling around inside me to slip through. Standing in this kitchen last night, I had swayed right into her space like I’ve been wanting to. My arms on either side of her hips, my nose at her neck. I wanted to kiss her more than anything. Almost did, too.
“Was it the alcohol?”
“That’s not how that shit works.” Alcohol doesn’t make things up, it just pries them loose.
I glance at her over my arm. She’s standing close, her feet nudging the back of mine. I could drop my head and press a kiss to her temple if I wanted, prop her up on the countertop and make the rest of this breakfast with her wrapped around me. It’s a tempting thought.
She considers me with curious eyes. I get the impression she’s looking right inside to the heart of me. “Were you teasing me?”
“Teasing you about what?” I watch her hand as she catches the bottom edge of my t-shirt with two fingers. She rubs the material, considering.
“I like you too, Beckett.” She pulls on my shirt until I’m facing her, her hands at my sides. She raps her knuckles against my ribs and my whole body jolts. “You haven’t noticed?”
“Too busy liking you back to notice, I guess,” I reply faintly, watching the shape of her bottom lip curve into a smile. All of the versions of Evelyn I’ve gotten to know flicker through my mind like the frames of a filmstrip. Sitting at the bar with her hand on my thigh. Tangled up in bed, bare skin and dark eyes. Laughing across the bakehouse with a plate between us. Curled up in the chair on my back porch, her chin on her knee. Out in the fields, making everyone around her glow.
Standing here like this, with her face tipped towards mine.
I like every version a little bit more.
Her hands find my arms, fingers tracing over ink. She lingers over a single white blossom, a sensitive spot on the inside of my elbow.
“Okay,” she says with a decisive nod.
“Okay, what?”
She ignores my question. Instead, she curls her hand around the back of my neck, tugs me down, and kisses me.
The first time I kissed Evie was under a broken light in a dingy bar, the dull orange glow flickering on and off and on again. I could see it behind my eyes as our mouths moved together, a drumbeat of desire I kept pace with. I feel like I’ve unpacked the memory of that kiss enough over the last couple months for the edges to run smooth, like stones at the bottom of a river bed. It’s nothing but hazy flashes of sensation. Fingertips under my ear. Her cheek brushing mine. The slow, wet slide of heat as I urged her chin down and kissed her deeper.
Now, here—in the bright light of my kitchen with the window cracked half an inch and coffee brewing in the pot—I feel that memory crack right down the middle.
There’s nothing hazy about this kiss.
No sweet introduction. No gentle relearning. Evie scratches her nails up into my hair and tugs, a demand in the way her mouth works at mine. She kisses me like she’s hungry for it, like she’s been dreaming of me the same way I’ve been dreaming about her. I smooth both of my hands over her hips and grip tight.
“There you are,” she breathes into my mouth. I squeeze again and she lets out a husky chuckle.
“I’m right here,” I tell her. I’ve always been right here. Waiting, it feels like, for Evie to show up and kiss me in the middle of my kitchen. Our kiss tilts into something hotter—wetter, slower—in the span of a single stuttered heartbeat. Evie’s hands turn demanding as they grip the front of my shirt, strong fistfuls of soft material between her fingers as she pushes me up against the refrigerator. The appliance at my back shudders with the impact, but I’m too occupied with the slide of her tongue against mine, too focused on feeling the soft skin of her back beneath my palms.
I dig my thumb into one of the dimples just above her ass as I lick into her mouth and she makes my favorite sound—a throaty whimper. I press harder and she pulls her mouth from mine, drops her head against my collarbone and presses that sound into my skin.
I move my hands up her back, impatient as I map the arch of her spine. I drag my hand back and forth over the band of her bra and slip my fingers beneath, snapping it once as I release the elastic against her skin. She nips at my jaw in retribution.
“Be nice,” she tells me.
“I can be nice.” As a matter of fact, I can think of several nice things I want to do right this second. Her shirt gathers against my wrists as I tuck my fingers under the straps of her bra again, following the line over her shoulders. I curl my hands there and tug, watching her sway further into me.
“Oh?” Evie’s eyes are dark with desire, her mouth kiss-bitten. “Would you like to show me?”
It’s like our bodies are frantic to make up for lost time, our mouths diving back together as I drag my knuckles across her collarbones, down over the swell of her breasts. I linger there in the space above, her chest heaving, my thumbs tracing where skin meets fabric.