Room-maid(68)

He pulled back slightly, still within kissing range. I felt his warm breath against my face and it took all my restraint not to press my mouth against his and keep this going. Which he may not have wanted. I swallowed, trying to figure out what to do next. I settled on finding out what he’d thought of our experiment.

“How,” I started to speak, surprised at the breathy quality to my voice. “How was that?”

His lips pulled up into a smile. “I think I need more data before I can draw any conclusions.”

Again, perfectly sound logic. I nodded, feeling as if I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I noticed that he was looking at my lips. As if he’d only had a fleeting impression and now needed to do a more thorough investigation. The look in his intense blue eyes made the air around me feel charged with energy, like lightning could strike us both then and there.

That feeling didn’t lessen when he pressed his lips against mine again, this time kissing me. Not just a peck, but moving his mouth against mine with a gentle firmness that left me weak and shivering. He made the nerve endings in my lips explode from sheer pleasure.

Now both of his hands were on the side of my face, guiding my head this way and that as he kissed me over and over again.

Some detached part of my brain was warning me to pay attention to the technical aspect of the kiss, so that he wouldn’t think I was terrible at it, but I was so caught up in what was happening that I couldn’t focus on anything except the feel of his strong mouth on mine.

He tasted like champagne, and it was delicious. He was delicious.

Time passed—seconds, hours, I didn’t know—and somehow, something changed. A sense of urgency crept in and I didn’t know whether he was the cause of it, or if I was.

I suspected myself. Because while kissing him was almost transcendent, better than anything I could have imagined, I wanted more. More kissing. More of him.

At this point I didn’t even care if I was truly bad at it. It didn’t matter because obviously Tyler had been created solely to kiss women into oblivion. Yet another thing he was fantastic at.

The pressure of his mouth increased, his movements faster, and I immediately responded. A buzzing sensation whipped through me, and I wanted to get closer. My hands moved of their own volition, wanting to touch him. Hold him close. Feel the strands of his soft hair against my fingertips.

His arms went around my waist, tugging me up. I got to my knees so that I could be closer to him. He shifted his body up into a kneeling position, too. The sensation of him wrapping his arms around me, holding me tight, made me sigh with pleasure, every part of my body tingling in response.

The sound I made did something to him, as if the electricity passed through me and traveled into him, and he groaned against my mouth, deepening the kiss. A lightning storm burst to life under my skin, making my lungs constrict and my heart feel as if it were about to explode.

We kissed and kissed, building and building the storm until it threatened to rage out of control. I couldn’t have guessed how long we stayed locked in our embrace, only that I wanted to spend the rest of time kissing, and being kissed by, this man.

I’d never known anything to be quite as glorious or as intoxicating.

Then he suddenly stopped, resting his forehead against mine. His hands moved to my shoulders, and I didn’t know if he meant to push me away or pull me back in. I was confused, but felt a primal surge of satisfaction that he was breathing as hard as I was.

I heard his husky intake of air, and it made my shivering intensify.

“You,” he said, his voice raspy and harsh, as if he could barely control it, “are not a bad kisser.”

The tingly sound of his voice made me want so badly to lean forward and capture his clever lips again. I was about to do just that when, without another word or touch, he got up and left the room. I heard his bedroom door close.

What?

My nerves still buzzed, and I had the residual feel of his mouth on mine, as if it had been permanently imprinted there. I collapsed back against the couch, not trusting my legs to work.

Pigeon cocked her head at me, seeming confused. She wasn’t the only one.

“Is there anything written in Sharpie on my forehead?” I asked her. Because I worried that would be the only way I would understand for sure what had just happened.



I slept in a little later than normal because all night I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. I understood that it had been some kind of weird tipsy/friend/pity kiss, but if somebody compiled a list of Top Ten Kisses of All Time, that one would have to be put on there. Which then made me wonder what it would be like if he really kissed me. If he did it because he wanted to and not because he was drunkenly trying to make me feel better about myself.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed the next morning, I smelled bacon. One of my favorites. It was also one of Pigeon’s favorites, so this didn’t necessarily mean anything.

I wasn’t sure how this morning would go when I saw him again. Would he just pretend it had never happened? Could it possibly move toward being something more? Although I’d already decided before the kiss that maybe trying to have a relationship with him was a mistake. I didn’t want to jeopardize our living situation or our friendship.

But truth be told . . . if I saw him and he said that the kiss had been incredible and that he wanted to try an actual relationship? I just couldn’t picture myself saying no.