of frosting before she smeared it across my upper lip.
She fell back laughing with the piece of cake I’d successfully delivered in her mouth. “Tradition,” she said as I blinked at her.
I ran my tongue over my upper lip, but it didn’t quite reach all of the frosting that had become a white mustache above my mouth.
“I’ll get it,” she said, sitting up and crawling over to me.
I didn’t have a second’s notice before she climbed into my lap, straddling me, and brought that mouth down to mine. My hands found her, gathering the shirt behind her back as her tongue ran in one continuous motion across the frosting on my skin. I had to restrain myself, to stop from flipping her onto her back and kissing her with all of the heat I held for her.
When her bottom lip grazed the opening of my mouth, I opened to greet her.
It was slow, languid, like we had all the time in the day, in the week, to enjoy this. To savor one another. She tasted like chocolate and something dark, something inviting.
And when she emitted the littlest moan into my mouth, it was all I could do to keep myself from deepening that kiss and pursuing something more with her. I wanted to deepen the kiss. I wanted something more. But more than those things, I wanted this to last longer than tonight.
Which was why I broke away first, pressing my forehead to hers as I calmed my uneven breathing. “Thanks,” I said, hearing the strain in my own voice.
“You don’t have to thank me for that.”
I pulled back and brushed my hand over the side of her face, tucking her hair behind her ears and ending the movement with a gentle tug on her earlobes. “For humoring me.” I looked pointedly at the cake, which had a Tori-fingerprint marred across its otherwise perfect surface.
“Trust me,” she said, scooting off my lap to grab her glass of champagne, “I’m getting plenty of enjoyment out of it myself.” The tilted her head back to drain the glass and I became mesmerized by the long column of her throat. “I think it’s your turn,” she said, settling back down on the bed like it was perfectly normal for this beautiful creature to drink champagne and eat cake in my bed at nearly four in the morning.
“My turn?” I asked dumbly.
“Your tale of woe.”
I took her in as I laid beside her on the bed. Long, pale lashes brushed the tips of her freckled cheekbones when she blinked. Her blonde hair curled at the temples and her pretty rosy lips smiled while I was quiet.
“My dad went to jail for murder,” I said. It shocked us both. It wasn’t exactly a conversation I liked to engage in, but for some reason, I wanted to tell her. I don’t know if it was due to the lack of sleep, the way my body bounced from calm to on fire for Tori, or if I was finally doing what Will had wanted me to do for years: open up. Let go.
“Murder?”
I nodded at Tori’s question. “I can bet your next question is who.”
“How old were you?” she asked, surprising me.
“Ten. Young enough to not understand how to process this information, but old enough to be hyper aware of the stares and whispers I heard behind my back at school.” I tipped my head back in a stretch. “My dad was—is—a piece of a shit. Beat up my mom a bunch when he was home. And when he wasn’t home, he was out cheating on her. One of the nights he left…” I paused and swallowed, the memory vivid and loud. “He had just kicked my mom down the stairs. Her head went through the wall at the bottom. She was knocked out, instantly. And he stood there, doing absolutely nothing. I was ten and half his size, but I grabbed the nearest heavy object I could—an aluminum coffee mug—and threw it at his head.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I missed.”
Tori’s hand slid across the duvet until she found mine. I felt each press of her fingers as she opened my hand and slid her fingers across my palm until her fingers rested in the spaces between mine.
“The coffee mug bounced off the wall and he picked it up, intent on hitting me with it. For the first time, I didn’t duck. I didn’t start crying. I just started yelling. So loud that