“You,” he said, punctuating each word with a kiss, “are sexy and smart and amazing and I want to see you again.”
“What?” My question came out breathy and confused since I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“When we get back to New York.”
There was no pretense on his part. He was being serious and honest with me. No more spy stuff, no more going along with what Sadie wanted. “This isn’t part of the game,” I told him, needing to know that he understood what he was offering.
“No, it’s not.” He stopped kissing me and I wanted to whimper in protest. He rested his forehead against mine. “This isn’t about this game, or any other kind.”
“Okay.” Why was he talking when there were other far more interesting and amazing things we could be doing?
He started pressing kisses against my face, on the delicate skin of my eyelids, my temple, the bridge of my nose. “This is real. You and me. I want this. I want you.”
I wanted him, too. But there were other things to consider. Things he didn’t know.
Things I was having a hard time remembering at the moment, given how he was stroking my back.
I finally settled on, “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” I couldn’t promise him anything. Especially not when my brain was hyperventilating and reason was impossible. “Just kiss me.”
“That I can do.”
It was what I could offer—to be in this moment, here with him. His smoldering kiss engulfed me again, but the desperate ravishing of a few seconds ago was gone. Now he was gentle and sweet in a way that brought tears to my eyes.
He had feelings for me, and he was showing me. With his tenderness, his softness.
I was never going to forget this moment. The way his lips felt on mine, how every part of my body that he touched felt indelibly marked—as if I would have those marks forever.
“Rachel.” He said my name reverently, almost like a prayer.
It felt like too much. I couldn’t think of emotions right now. I pulled on the back of his head, deepening the kiss. He responded immediately and that hungry, intense kiss was back. The stubble of his chin rubbed against my face, sensitizing my skin, heightening every pass he made. I found myself reaching for the bottom button on his shirt, not caring where we were or what else happened. I had to touch him, to feel more of his heated skin on mine. Fire raced up and down my veins as he pushed me into the shelving unit behind us.
And I knew that fire could consume. It could ravage and devastate. I remembered that all of this would be destroyed when he found out the truth.
That cold reality—along with the sound of a bottle crashing to the floor—was what brought me back to myself. The shattering glass broke us away from one another. He stepped back and it was like someone had wrenched me away from him, and I hated the distance between us.
We were both panting, and the sound of his harsh breathing was doing funny things to my stomach. The only thing I wanted in that moment was to throw myself back into his embrace. I felt so stupid that I’d missed out on the opportunity to be doing this the entire time.
I had to clear my throat so that I could speak. “We should go. We did what they wanted.”
“We did what we wanted,” he corrected me. “What I want to keep doing.”
A wave of guilt and regret enveloped me. He was going to be furious with me. There was a reason I was holding back from him. Maybe if he’d just said this was a hookup it might have been okay. But with him saying he wanted things to continue? There was no future here.
Now I had tears in my eyes for an entirely different reason. My chest hurt. I wanted so badly to just tell him the truth. I couldn’t. I reached for the door handle, pushing it open.
No matter what I told myself earlier, I’d wanted this. The door wasn’t locked, nobody was standing guard outside it. I could have left at any time. I’d willfully gone into this situation knowing what the end result would be.
I walked back to where the group was sitting and felt Camden on my heels. I had no explanation to offer him about why I couldn’t let things continue.
The bridal party let out a loud cheer when they saw us.
“Was it everything you ever dreamed?” Krista asked as Sadie ran over to hug me.
“Are you so in love?” the now slightly drunk bride asked me. “You’re going to invite me to the wedding, right?”
Hank was packing up the camera equipment. “You guys should probably call it a night. It’s after midnight and you don’t want everybody sick tomorrow at the ceremony.” Given how the level of inebriation had increased among several people at the party, it seemed like that was a good recommendation.