Chapter 9 – The Kiss

PLEASE READ: This chapter contains a very sensual scene. If this doesn’t sit well with you, please don’t continue. Thanks.

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For one perfect second that seemed to stretch into forever, Tilly held perfectly still. Memories welled up inside her – the burning ache of every time she’d looked at him and fervently wished that he’d touch her, just once, with more than just the casual intimacy of longstanding friendship.

Then it flashed by, and Tilly remembered something her friend Kay often said when it came to making decisions: Think of the first Transformers film. Do you want to look back in thirty years time and wish that you’d gotten into the car, or do you just want to get in the car?

Oh boy, did she want to get in the car.

She kissed back. As his mouth moved over hers, warm, quietly intense, Tilly lifted a hand to slide her fingers through the layers of his chocolate brown hair, tattered-silk soft against her skin. How often she’d thought about touching him like this.

He drew back; ended the kiss, and searched her gaze. A small, shy smile played on his lips.

Tilly would have given anything in the world just then, just to know what he was thinking.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

Tilly recoiled as if he’d slapped her across the face. I’m not sorry. “What?”

He leaned back in his seat, but his arms were folded. “I’m sorry. I… don’t know what came over me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He seemed to withdraw even more. “I just… I mean, I thought you and Anton made a good couple.”

What the hell? Tilly wanted to demand. You’ve just given me one of the most incredible kisses I’ve ever experienced and now… now you want to talk about my date? “Well… good, because I think he might even be the one.”

Why had she said that? She knew why. To get back at him for the barb he had probably not even meant. But it had hurt, and if the only way to get that across was to hurt him back, then so be it.

Jack looked surprised. “Oh. Well, that’s great.”

Silence threaded between them as the cab continued its journey through the congested streets of the city. Finally, just when Tilly thought she could bear the silence no more, the driver pulled up outside the hotel Jack was staying in.

“I liked them,” he said as he went to open the door.

Tilly turned. “What?”

“I liked your paintings. A lot.” She had a moment to drink in the quiet intensity of his beautiful cobalt eyes, framed by long lashes, and then he was gone, his presence reduced to the click of the cab door closing.

Tilly leaned back in the cab and closed her eyes, which burned with tears she wouldn’t dare shed in public.

She tried to will back the image of Anton’s pleasantly handsome face as he’d stood with her at the showing, but all she could think of was the little smile that Jack had worn after the kiss. A smile she’d never seen him give her before.

Her head hurt.

 

* * *

 

Jack dreamed of her. He tossed and turned in his sleep, the hotel bed’s white sheets tangling between his bare legs.

In the dream, he lay in his own bed, Tilly beside him, her inky hair spilling over the snow-white pillow case. The naked curve of her shoulder rose above the edge of the sheets, and he lifted a finger to stroke her soft skin.

She turned then, opening sleep-softened eyes, and her lips curved ever so slightly, as if she was dreaming, too.

Slowly, achingly slow, she lifted her body, moving underneath the bed covers like a thief moving through darkness. When her skin touched his, a low groan escaped his lips, halfway between a curse and a prayer.

Her gaze fell to his. Their eyes met and as Jack read the scorching heat in her eyes, he had no idea how he’d ever just seen her as a friend.

“Jack,” she whispered. She moved against his chest and her nipples grazed his skin. He curled his fingers into the sheet beneath him, afraid to touch, afraid in case she disappeared.

Then she lowered her head and their lips met. She opened for him, so that the tip of his tongue tasted the silky softness of her mouth. As they kissed, he felt her shift on top of him, straddling him. His body, past ready, tightened in delicious, painful anticipation.

Unable to resist any longer, Jack released one of his hands from his tight grip on the bedclothes and stroked his fingers down the gentle slope of Tilly’s spine. She arched in response, a low half-sigh, half-purr whispering past her lips.

He explored further, learning the shape of her shoulders, the column of her neck, and finally, gorgeously, the gentle weight of her breast, cupped in his palm.

Jack. He heard her whisper his name as she pressed herself wantonly against him, his breath fanning his jaw as she dropped teasing kisses across his face, heedless of the dark wash of stubble that populated his skin’s surface.

And then suddenly, she disappeared, snaking down against his body, nipping at the skin on his chest, her face pressed into the light smattering of dark hair there. Her hand, small of palm, tapered fingers, slid down his torso, over his flat belly, and followed the arrow of hair that led to the evidence of his desire for her.

When she cupped him, his hands clenched into fists. Everything centred on the glorious stroking motions of her hand on his flesh.

Then, all at once, she dissolved, and he awoke to the beeping of his cell-phone and the most frustrating morning hard-on he thought he’d ever experienced.

Jack rolled over, spreading his hand out on the empty side of the hotel’s big double bed.

Tilly.

But of course, she wasn’t there.

 

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