Page 171 of A Taste of Vanilla

The full answer is dangerous. No, because I want all of you.

No. I want you loud and furious and flour-dusted and laughing in a bar full of athletes I don’t care about. I want your ridiculous drinks and your crooked labels and your lipstick-scribbled production notes. I want to know what it looks like when you believe praise for the first time. I want you in every system I build until leaving Maryland feels like walking out of my own skin.

“No” is all I say.

She steps closer.

I don’t remember closing the rest of the distance, but I must have. The prep table is behind her, the clipboard to my left. The music has changed, and Halston looks up at me.

I don’t move.

I can’t be the one to move.

“Warren,” she says.

I break.

I put my hand to the side of her face and kiss her.

For a second, she goes still. So still that fear cuts through me and I stop.

But she grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me closer.

It’s not a gentle kiss.

It should be. If I were better, it would be.

Instead, it’s everything we’ve been refusing to say for days. Anger, want, frustration, fear, and the shock of knowing exactly how she tastes and still being ruined by it anyway.

She makes a sound against my mouth, small and furious, like she resents needing air. My hand slides from her face into her hair, and the knot gives way under my fingers. She tastes of sugar and coffee and glaze she has no business making after midnight. I feel the table behind her, the hard edge where her back meets it, and I use the last clean bit of judgment to shift the bowl of glaze farther away before I lift her.

She lands on the edge of the prep table with a breathless little noise that hits me right in the ribs.

“Careful,” she whispers.

It sounds like a warning, but I take it as permission.

Her legs part around me, and I step in before I can think better of it. The contact is immediate. Terrible and necessary. My hands go to her waist, and hers go back to my hair, pulling the tie loose completely. Heat tears through me so fast I lose track of the room. There’s only Halston’s mouth, Halston’s body, and Halston’s fingers pulling my hair hard enough to make my control slip another inch.

I kiss her jaw, then move down her throat. The bare place where her shoulder meets the strap of her bra.

It’s not enough, and yet too much all at once.

Her head tips back, and my name leaves her mouth.

The last time we were in this position, she didn’t even know my name. I grip the edge of the table on either side of her to keep my hands from taking more than I should. She notices immediately. “Stop holding back,” she begs.

My forehead drops to her shoulder.

I breathe once.

Twice.

Everything in me wants to ignore the warning. I can still remember how she felt that night at her place. I remember howshe looked in the lamplight. How she asked for what she wanted and still looked surprised when I gave it to her. How she fell asleep against me afterward, warm and trusting, during the few hours neither of us could really process.

I want her again.

All of her.