“She did,” was my only answer. I took a sip of my tea, watching him over the rim of my mug.
“Well, they say the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody.”
A laugh, nervous and tittering, jumped out of me.
“You looking for volunteers, Lila?”
My laughter died at his directness. “That’s silly,” I hedged, certain I misread his meaning.
“Is it?”
I opened my mouth to oppose but closed it again. Then, I snagged a thought. “I’m not really in a place to make pragmatic decisions.”
“On a rebound?”
“On much of anything. But yes, that too. How can I willingly involve someone in all of this? It wouldn’t be fair.”
“The biggest danger is to the reboundee,” he said. “And I happen to be immune.”
The proposition hung in the air for a moment, simmering between us. There was no mistaking his intention, and a shocking rush of yes whispered through me.
“Immune?” I asked quietly. “How?”
A pause. “I already know what things are between us and what they’re not. You’re not looking for anything serious, and I’ve never been one for the notion. The reason rebounds exist, why they happen so often, is that when you’ve been hurt, a distraction makes you forget the pain. And I’ve been told I’m an excellent distraction.”
That smile, tilted and teasing. But his eyes were dark and full of promises.
He stood, closing the space between us with little more than a shift. My mug disappeared from my hand, placed on the table by his. But I hadn’t seen the action—there was only Kash, towering and sturdy and safe. His smile faded as his gaze hooked on my lips.
“I can make you forget all about him,” he promised. His hand, warm and rough, cupped my jaw, thumbed my cheek. “Is that what you want?”
My thoughts were a tangle, jumbled by his proximity. By the heat of him radiating into the chill of my skin, the damp of my hair. The scent of him sliding over me, around me, pulling me into him without thought or permission.
Something in my mind yelled through the fog to stop, to think. To make a pros and cons list, to be rational. But with Kash looking at me like that, holding my face like he was, none of it seemed to matter except for one question, the question he’d asked me.
Did I want to forget Brock? I pulled the thought from the mire, searched for my answer.
And that answer was clear and true as daylight.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Deliberately, slowly, he framed my face with both hands, tilted it up to the sky. Moonlight burst around him in a halo, the sound of rain against the glass of the greenhouse, the musky scent of earth and fragrant flowers. The moment held, quiet and still. And just when I thought maybe he’d changed his mind, he shifted, slanted, tilted my face with tender force, and brushed his hot lips to mine.
A sharp, simultaneous intake of breath, the kiss first a brush, then a seam, then a heady tangle of lips and tongues. We twisted together, relief palpable and anticipation tangible as I stood on shaky legs without breaking the kiss. My hands slid up his chest, over his shoulders, around his neck, into the silken depths of his hair. Our bodies were flush, his hand in the small of my back without knowledge of how it’d gotten there, holding me to him as if he couldn’t get me close enough.
I was no longer cold. There in the circle of his arms, I was on fire.
Nothing about the kiss was delicate and yet it held a gentility, an exploring tenderness. His fingertips tasted my skin with exquisite demand, precise and deliberate as they trailed the length of my neck, the line of my jaw, the tender space behind my ear. With the slightest squeeze of possession, he tilted my face, angling to delve deeper into my mouth. And with a sharp breath through my nose, I did the same.
How long had I done without this? How long had I been denied wanting and being wanted? Had I ever? Or had I wasted my years with the wrong kind of men, for all the wrong reasons?
It’s only that I hadn’t known this existed.
That Kash existed.
Compliant and yielding, I held on to him, kissed him with feverish lips, with no thought as to what to do and no desire beyond what he could give me. When his hips pressed me against the table, I felt