The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(35)

“Already tried that one.”

“What about this one?” she asked, tapping her fingers on another book, and Rhys barely looked up before shaking his head again.

“Also a dud.”

Vivienne sat up straighter in her chair. “Okay, so this entire endeavor has been a bust, then?”

Rhys finally looked up at her. “Did you think this was going to be easy?”

Rising from her seat, Vivienne rubbed the back of her neck. “No, but it just . . . it shouldn’t be this hard to reverse a curse. Especially a curse this stupid.” Throwing up her hands, she added, “I mean, we were barely even a thing.”

Rhys was tired. He was cranky. And he was quite literally cursed, which is probably why those words . . . irked.

More than irked, really.

Infuriated.

“Enough of a thing that you cursed me when I left.”

Vivienne frowned, her hand resting again on the back of her neck. “You didn’t leave,” she reminded him. “I left you after you suddenly remembered you were engaged.”

Tilting his head back to look at the ceiling, Rhys groaned. “I was not engaged, I was betrothed, which is not—”

“I know,” she said, standing up. “Not the same thing. So you tried to say at the time, but I gotta say, Rhys, I was not in the mood for a discussion about semantics then, and I definitely am not now.”

Had he forgotten that she could be this frustrating, or was this a new trait, another facet of Adult Vivienne he hadn’t learned?

Rising from his chair, Rhys stepped closer to her, suddenly aware of just how small the study room was, how close they were.

Christ, he should go home. To Wales. He should say “bugger it” to all this and leave.

Instead, he said, “That summer was important, Vivienne. It meant something.”

Her lips were parted, her breath coming fast, and every cell in Rhys’s body wanted to touch her even as his mind was screaming for him to back off.

Then Vivienne’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to him. “It was a three-month fling that I barely remember.”

“Bollocks,” he countered.

“Extremely not bollocks.”

She was openly glaring at him now, her hands curled into fists at her sides as he moved in closer.

“So you don’t remember the first time we kissed?”

Rhys did. He’d remember it until he died. They’d been sitting on top of a hill, the night a soft violet all around them, the smell of bonfires and summer in the air, and when he’d asked if he could kiss her, he’d nearly been holding his breath, wanting her to say yes more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

“I’ve kissed a lot of guys,” Vivienne said, shrugging. “They all blend together after a while.”

“Do they indeed,” Rhys said, and somehow he and Vivienne were very close now, close enough for him to see how wide her pupils were, the flush climbing up her neck.

“Yup,” she replied, and he saw her gaze flick to his mouth. “Guess you should’ve been more memorable.”

“And if I were to kiss you now,” Rhys said, his voice gone low as he looked down at her, “would that refresh your memory?”

She was going to tell him to fuck off. Or slap him. Possibly knee him in the balls. Those were all things he was ready for.

What Rhys had not expected was for her to step so close that their bodies aligned, chest to chest, hips to hips.

“Go for it.”





Chapter 15




The moment his lips met hers, Vivi realized she’d made a terrible mistake.

It had probably been too much to hope that the intervening years had somehow made Rhys worse at kissing. Even with the curse.

And of course she’d lied to him when she said she couldn’t remember his kiss. She’d remembered everything when it came to him. Every kiss, every touch.

Those months with Rhys Penhallow had been prime fantasy material over the years, her own personal X-rated scrapbook.

But maybe she hadn’t been lying after all, because as he kissed her, she realized she hadn’t remembered exactly how good it was. How good he was at this.

He kissed her like he’d been dying to kiss her every one of these past nine years, a low growl rumbling in his chest when his tongue met hers, and Vivi felt that sound all the way down to her toes.

Hands cupping her face, Rhys tilted her head, deepening the kiss, and Vivi’s own fingers clutched at his shoulders, wanting, needing to get as close to him as she could.

As he backed up, pulling her with him, his hip nudged the table. Vivi heard that one precarious stack of books hit the floor almost from a distance as she turned around, propping herself up on the edge of the table, never taking her hands off him, her eyes closed, her blood so hot in her veins she was surprised her skin wasn’t steaming.

“Christ, I forgot,” he was muttering against her neck, his mouth hot. “How did I forget?”

Vivi could only shake her head because she’d forgotten, too. Or maybe “forgotten” wasn’t the right word. She’d driven the memory of this connection, this heat, from her mind along with all the rest of Rhys. She hadn’t let herself remember how good it was between them because that would mean the summer fling she had at nineteen somehow trumped every other relationship in her adult life, and that was too depressing to contemplate.