“Thank you for your help,” she said to Rhys now, shutting the wardrobe and turning the key in the lock. “I’m sure being terrorized by a ghost wasn’t high up on your list of things to do tonight.”
Turning around, she leaned back against the wardrobe, crossing her arms over her chest. Rhys was still standing there across the room, the firelight playing across his handsome face, his hair definitely doing The Thing and his stubble really upping his whole rakish air.
Which is probably why Vivi said, “And let me add a retroactive thank-you for never trying to have sex with me in a haunted house back when we were in college.”
“Young Hainsley does need to rethink his game,” Rhys acknowledged, mimicking her posture against the cabinet just across from her. “But to be fair, had the option been available back then, I probably would’ve tried it. I would’ve attempted to shag you most anywhere. Haunted house, abandoned asylum, Department of Motor Vehicles . . .”
“If you’d done that last one, we could’ve also tried to have sex in jail,” Vivi replied, ignoring the way her heart seemed to flutter in her chest at both his words and the half smile he was wearing, wishing Aunt Elaine weren’t quite so committed to her aesthetics because this room with its warm wood and soft lighting and plenty of available soft surfaces was not helping matters.
“Would’ve been worth it,” Rhys said, and then his smile faded even as the look in his eyes grew warmer. “I was mad about you, Vivienne,” he said softly.
Sincerely.
“Utterly mad.”
Vivi swallowed hard, her arms tightening around herself. She wanted to find a joke to throw at him, something that would puncture this moment like a balloon.
Instead, she told the truth. “The feeling was very mutual.”
“Was?” Rhys pushed himself off the cabinet, moving closer to her. It was late, so late by now, and Vivi had been up for nearly twenty hours, but she felt like she had when she’d touched those runes in Piper’s cabin.
Electrified. Alive.
“Because the more I consider it,” he went on, still moving toward her, slowly, his hands in his pockets, “the less I think I should’ve used the past tense. Shall I try it out?”
He stopped, watching her, and Vivi knew if she told him not to, if she said they should leave, he would, without question. It was one of the things she’d loved about him so much all those years ago, how easily he put the power in her hands. She could stop him in his tracks right now.
Or she could let him come closer and hear what he had to say.
Not sure if she trusted herself to speak, Vivi just nodded, and one corner of Rhys’s mouth hooked up. “I am mad about you, Vivienne Jones. Again. Or maybe I should say still, because I’m gonna be real honest with you here, cariad. I don’t think it ever went away.”
Cariad. He’d called her that, that summer. She could still feel it, growled against her ear, whispered into her skin, murmured between her thighs.
He still stood a few feet away from her, still giving her the opportunity and the space to put an end to this if she wanted to.
She didn’t.
Closing the space between them, Vivi rested her hands on Rhys’s chest. His skin was warm through the material of his sweater, his heart thudding steadily against her palms, and as Vivi leaned in, she could smell the outside on his skin, the woodsmoke from the forest, the scent of night air clinging to him, and it suddenly seemed so stupid to have pretended she didn’t want this.
Lifting her face, Vivi brought her lips to his.
The kiss in the library had been frantic, a match touched to gasoline, anger and frustration fueling it as much as lust.
This was different. Slower.