Page 62 of Forever is the Sweetest Con
Chapter Twenty-Six
In some ways, it’s our first kiss. It starts slow, tentative, like a question, and then it gets deeper, more searching. Our bodies melt into each other, as he hooks his arm around my low back, keeping me afloat. I feel something unfurl deep within me. Kei’s naked body pressing into mine and the hard proof of his desire has ignited a fire in my centre stronger than I’ve ever felt.
Kei pulls me, still kissing me, toward the shore, where we stumble onto the rocks. I remember that I’m naked, but I don’t care. I want him to see all of me, to know all of me. We stop kissing long enough to grab our clothes, and then we run, hand in hand, back to the path on which we came.
Kei whoops into the night, which makes me laugh. I feel like a kid—carefree, giddy with excitement and possibility. A tiny, niggling worry lodges in my consciousness that maybe this isn’t the best idea, maybe we should put our clothes on and make decisions using what’s in our skulls, not what’s between our legs. But that just feels like such a bummer. I just want to have fun. And I deserve it. And it’s just sex! I’m perfectly capable of sleeping with someone and keeping my head on straight. Maybe this will be good for us—maybe it will dissolve some of the sexual tension and actually make it easier.
Back at the Treehouse, I scramble up the ladder first, and it occurs tome that I should feel self-conscious, until below me Kei lets out a low moan of appreciation of the view, and suddenly, I’ve never felt sexier. He emerges into the Treehouse and I pull him into me, kissing him frantically, our bodies still wet from the lake.
We stumble backward onto the bed, where he lands on top of me, and it takes all of my restraint not to scream from desire. I want to devour him.
But he stops, panting, and looks into my eyes. He props himself up on one elbow, and traces his finger lightly across my jaw, my lips. I nip his finger, and a smile spreads across his face.
“You’re sure?” he breathes.
I nod. “Are you?”
He kisses me, long and deep, first on the mouth, and then on my neck. His hand trails down, grazing my breast, and my breath hitches in my throat. He stops and looks at me, his eyes searching, his lips parted. He slides his hand down, crushingly slowly, to my hip, to the tender skin of my inner thigh. A soft sigh escapes my lips.
“You,” he says, dragging his fingers closer and closer to where I need them to go, “are the surest bet I’ve ever made.”
When I wake up the next morning, Kei is gone. I have one brief, blurry moment of confusion, and then it all comes flooding back, a play-by-play of the night before.
Kei’s body bumping against mine as we walked the path to the beach. The sound he made when he splashed into the cold water. His profile illuminated by moonlight. And then, the freedom I felt bounding naked into the lake. The stars twinkling their ancient light. The feeling of his breath on my face right before he kissed me.
Oh, the kiss. The memory of it is so visceral I can almost feel his body twisting into mine under the water. The heat of his skin in contrast to the cold of the lake.
Running hand-in-hand down the beach path. Our slick bodies tangled together under the bedsheets, moving together, until we both collapsed in waves of pleasure. Him covering my face in kisses.
Oh no.
My intellectual brain suddenly clues in to what a catastrophic mistake it all was, and fear, cold and ruthless, grips me, yanking me back into reality. I sit up, fumbling for Harmony’s lingerie, wishing I could cover myself so fully that I would just disappear.
A crush is one thing, but this? How could I have been so stupid?
“Knock, knock.” Kei’s head appears at the top of the ladder. “I noticed some wild blueberry bushes on the path last night, so I picked us some breakfast.” He holds up a bowl of shiny berries, which he sets down on the bedside table. “Strangest thing, the bell hasn’t rung yet, and from the position of the sun, I’d say it’s after ten. But whatever, more time for us.”
He leans in to kiss me, but I turn my head. He stands back, his beautiful face twisted in confusion. And then it slips quickly into sad resignation. He sees I’ve already retreated. My heart, momentarily open, has coiled tightly up, reinforcing itself against another breach.
“Cleo—”
I can’t hear him say anything nice right now, so I interrupt. “I’m so sorry about last night. Can we just go back to how things were?”
He tilts his head. “You’re sorry?”
“It was a mistake. We just got carried away. It was nothing.” I inject as much conviction as I can muster in my words, but they still sound flat. Itwasnothing. Ithad to benothing.
He opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again.
“We’ve been faking it for so long, I think we just got confused.”
He turns his back to me, pulls on the pyjama shirt.
“Kei,” I start, but I don’t even know what else to say.
“We should get going,” he says, handing me Harmony’s robe. Our eyes meet.
“I’m sorry, I—”
