Page 147 of The Lies We Play

A question.

She answers by rising into me.

The second kiss is not slow.

I back her toward the bed without meaning to, or maybe I mean to and only admit it when her legs hit the mattress. She gasps into my mouth, and I stop immediately, hands at her waist, breath coming hard.

“Too fast?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No. I just⁠—”

Her eyes move over my face.

I press my forehead to hers.

“We have time,” I remind her.

Her hand slides to my jaw.

She smiles then, small and brave.

“Then stop wasting it, Lafontaine.”

That does it.

The last of my restraint doesn't break.

It chooses.

I kiss her again, and this time, when she pulls me down with her, I go.

“You sure,” I say.

“I’m sure?”

“Liv.”

“I’m sure,” she says again. “I have been sure for some time. I am, in fact, exhausted by being sure without doing anything about it.”

I put my hand over her sweater.

Her breath leaves her in one small audible release, and I realize, with a small humbling rearrangement of every previous theory I have ever held about her, that she had been afraid I would say no.

Chapter Twenty-One

Creed

I kiss her.

Slowly at first, because if I don’t start carefully, I won’t know how to stay careful.

Her hands go up into my hair.

That changes the kiss.

Not because she pulls hard. She doesn’t. She slides her fingers in and holds on like she has found the one part of me she’s allowed to need without explaining herself. My hand goes to the small of her back. I pull her against me, and she comes, all of her, the way a woman comes against a body she has been waiting to be against longer than she is willing to admit.

Her hips meet mine.