The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(50)

“I’m sorry. Sun? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hah-hah,” she says dryly. “I think it was Hawaii. We were swimming in the ocean, and all of your tattoos washed off in the water.”

There’s a weird tightness in my chest. I don’t know if it’s because she dreamed such a strange thing, or because she dreamed of me, period. I mostly only feature in other people’s nightmares. “Is that your subtle way of telling me you want me to go through a hundred laborious, incredibly painful hours of tattoo removal, Dolcezza?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not finished. I dreamed they all came off in the water, but then they transferred onto me. And they were all in the wrong places.”

I tug my bottom lip through my teeth, holding my hands over Silver’s face, covering her eyes. “Hmm. I’m not sure a bunch of face tattoos would suit you.”

She bites back a coy smile as she takes hold of me by the wrists, the beater smearing yellow batter up my arm, and pulls my hands away. “I—” She starts. Seems like she can’t finish, though.

“You what?”

“I’ve wondered about the rest of them. Your tattoos. How many do you have? Do they all mean something to you? Where are they?” She trails off, twin patches of red staining her cheeks. She’s fucking ridiculously adorable when she’s embarrassed.

Leaning into her, unable to resist the chance to make that blush spread a little further, I brush my mouth lightly against hers again. “Are you asking for a guided tour of my body, Silver Parisi? Because I will happily oblige.”

The change in her body is very noticeable. Her back straightens, her hands tightening around my wrists. Great job, asshole. You’ve freaked her out. “I’m only teasing,” I say quietly, nudging the end of her nose with my own. “I’m not suggesting we get naked and run around the cabin like animals.”

Her eyes are like mirrors when she looks up at me, pale blue, almost silver. “I’m not upset. I—I would like the guided tour. So long as the rides are optional.” She seems pretty pleased with her euphemism.

“Oh. So you’re a dork? Good to know.” I grab the beater from her and toss it underhand into the sink behind her, pulling her closer to me. Our bodies are pressed up against each other, and I spend all of a heartbeat trying to figure out if I should try and angle myself in a way that might hide the fact that I have a raging hard-on, but I run out of time. Silver feels it—she has to. It’s digging into her fucking hip like a reinforced steel baton. I expect her to flip out, at least get a little weird, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gives me a slightly scandalized open mouth smile, coolly arching an eyebrow at me.

“If I’m a dork, then you must get turned on by some pretty weird stuff,” she says breezily.

“You don’t know the half of it.” I gather her hair in my hands, reveling in the weight and the feel of it as I brush it back over her shoulders and I expose her bare neck. There is a line in the sand where physical contact with Silver is concerned; I made it myself, so I know how far to go and when to pull back. Kissing her neck is definitely not on the right side of the line, but I allow myself one slow, careful graze of my lips against the porcelain column of her throat. Just one…and it’s enough. The identical flushed patches of red on Silver’s cheeks have grown, but I don’t think they’re caused by embarrassment anymore.

“I’ll show you my tattoos, and you can grade every single one of them,” I tell her. “But I think we’re gonna have to hit up that diner I noticed on the way up here to grab some more food, Dolcezza.”

She frowns at me. I don’t know if she’s noticed, but her hands have found their way to my chest, palms resting familiarly against my pecs, and the contact is making me want to fucking sing. She cants her head to one side, and asks, “Why?”

“Because the French toast you were making is on fire,” I reply.

She nearly jumps a foot in the air as she spins around, rushing over to the stove, swearing loudly like a sailor. “Fuck! Shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit, fuck! Shitshitshit, nooooo….” She turns the burner off, shoving the frying pan off the ring, and then proceeds to bat at the flaming, blackened pieces of French toast with a kitchen towel. Not really a good idea. I intervene, physically picking her up by the waist and setting her down by the kitchen table, then I take the towel from her and use it to pick the pan up by the handle. The whole thing goes in the sink. I turn on the tap, blasting the contents of the pan with water, and the mini fire immediately gutters out.

Silver stands next to me in front of the sink, regarding her destroyed attempt at breakfast with morose resignation. “Probably for the best,” she says. “I’m a horrible cook. I’m sure you’d have been the one that ended up poisoned if you’d eaten that.”





19





SILVER





I pinch myself repeatedly while Alex is in the shower, hard enough to bruise. This doesn’t feel like real life. I can’t bend my head around the fact that he’s here, with me, at the cabin, and we’re actually doing this. I’m letting him in, for fuck’s sake, and he…god, for some, unknown reason, he actually wants to be here with me.

By the time we get to the café on the other side of the lake, the heat blasting on full inside Alex’s Camaro, we’ve missed breakfast and have to make do with lunch. People halt their conversations, forks freezing halfway between their plates and their mouths, as Alex and I make our way to a booth. No one really comes up here in October, and the café crowd today are mostly locals; they’re not used to someone like Alex showing up in the middle of their BLTs and their gossip sessions.