And I would’ve been a moron. An idiot.
It was like… this moment was what I’d been waiting for my entire life. Like anything else, if there would have been anything else, would have been a pale, pathetic imitation. It would’ve been a drop in a bucket that I would never remember.
But this, this was not that.
Sitting on Aaron’s lap on the deck of his beach house, with a handful of stars out, and the sounds of people on the beach… it was just one of a dozen other memories I’d already made with Aaron that I would never forget.
I’d hung out hundreds of times with other people doing things that had been fun in the moment, but I couldn’t recall anything but a vague, hazy summary of the event. And maybe that’s how I knew this was something else. How everything with Aaron was different. It was special. In my gut, as we lived in the moment, I knew I could never or would never forget the way he smiled at me as I sat on his lap. How his hand felt on the side of my thigh. How his eyes looked at me the way I’d always wanted to be looked at, like my heart was surrounded by bees and my skin covered in butterflies.
I could never, ever forget it.
“What are you thinking?”
Pressing my lips together, I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a second as I swept my eyes all over his face and said, “About you.”
“Yeah?” he asked, amused.
“Yeah, Mr. Modest. Don’t sound so excited.” I snickered. “This is the first time I’ve sat on someone’s lap.”
Those brown eyes roamed over my face and the hand on my thigh gave it a squeeze.
With shaky fingers, I touched one of those beautiful, sharp bones just below his eye, unsure if this was something I could do. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he leaned into my fingers a little more. “Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror and think, man, I got lucky?”
There was a sharp noise that had me glancing at the face Aaron was making before he laughed and shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You. Do you ever thank your birth mom or your dad for giving you the best bone structure in the world?” I asked, tracing my finger over the bridge of his nose.
“No,” he chuckled. “I’ve never heard that before.”
I stopped my fingers and glanced at his eyes. “You haven’t?”
Aaron scrunched up his nose and shook his head. “No.”
I made a thoughtful noise. “I bet you’ve heard all about how handsome you are plenty of times.”
The hand on my hip gave it a squeeze. “Sometimes people only see what’s on the outside and don’t always care about everything else, Ruby. Looks can be deceiving.”
With my fingers over the opposing cheekbone, I glanced at his face again, wondering what the hell had happened to him in the past to say that. Then I remembered, and I kept on moving my fingers along his cheekbone as I said in a low, steady voice, “Well, luckily for me, the best part of you is on the inside, huh?” Then I stopped my fingers and cupped his face with both hands all of a sudden, cupping his cheeks together, not looking him in the eye on purpose. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get used to looking at this face. It’s like… you shouldn’t be real. Like I shouldn’t be real. Like I shouldn’t be sitting on your lap right here because—”
Aaron reached around me and wrapped his long fingers around both wrists, his chin dipping down. “Get used to seeing it,” he said.
And then he came for me.
Aaron leaned forward, his fingers still around my wrist, and slowly, so slowly I could have moved at any point or stopped him, the tip of that perfect nose touched mine. I could almost see every fleck of color in his eye from how close we were, and if he had any pores on that immaculate skin, I would have been able to see them as he rubbed the tip of his nose against mine, making me grin and feel like the world could have been on fire in that second and I would have died with a smile on my face.
“I could get used to Eskimo kisses,” I said in a whisper.
And in a move I never would have ever given myself credit for, I tilted my face just enough to press my mouth to his. It was a peck. Dry lips on dry lips. It lasted all of a second of contact before I pulled back just an inch or two.
Then it was Aaron who pressed his mouth to mine. Two seconds before he pulled back.
And then we took turns. Me for three seconds. Him for four. Me for five. Him for six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
By the tenth peck, I moved my mouth up to kiss that full upper lip. And then I pulled it into my mouth with a playful nip, like I really knew what the heck I was doing. My subconscious must have been totally aware that Aaron wouldn’t be the one to take it too far this time, so I did. It was my mouth that tilted to the side, that brushed my tongue across the seam of his lips. It was my hand that went to the nape of his neck to hold him in place. My fingers that brushed against the soft, short hairs right there.
But it was Aaron who opened his mouth and brushed the tip of his tongue against mine.
I hadn’t kissed a whole bunch of men, but I’d kissed enough, especially over the last few months. And even though I’d enjoyed most of those kisses, it was nothing compared to this one. No one had made the hairs on my arms stand up. No one had stolen the breath from my lungs or made me squirm closer for more. No one else had made me feel like this was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Aaron kissed me and kissed me and kissed me with his hand around my hip, the tips of his fingers just under the hem of where my shirt had ridden up. He held me to him, and I’d swear I could feel something hard and thick right along my hip. And we kept on kissing. My face tilted one way, his tilted the other as his tongue stroked mine slowly and tenderly. I’d suck one of his lips between mine gently and he’d do the same to me. Our breathing grew harder. My hands moved deeper into his hair. My nipples went hard, and I wasn’t sure if I shivered because of the breeze or because of Aaron.
What I did know was that it was him who pulled away, his nose touching mine as he let out a ragged breath against my cheek with a dry laugh that didn’t sound all that entertained. “Jesus, Ruby.”
I couldn’t help but smile, feeling pretty damn pleased with myself. “Is that a flashlight in your pocket or did you think that kiss was as good as I did?”
He laughed straight out, his chest bubbling. “Pretty sure we’re on the same page about that kiss,” he muttered, sounding slightly out of breath.
It was my turn to laugh. “Can we do it again?”
Chapter 23
I woke up with a stomachache the next morning.
It was our last full day in San Blas and… the idea of it sucked. It really did. I’d always been relieved to go back home after a vacation, missing my bed, missing my stuff, missing my life, but while I missed some parts of it, I didn’t exactly miss the rest of it. Not really. Not enough to calm the ache of knowing this was my last day with Aaron.
I’d turned into one of those girls apparently.
And honestly, I didn’t care. Not even a little bit.
I didn’t need to look at the clock on my phone to know it was right around six in the morning based on the shade of purple coming through my curtain. Aaron and I had stayed up until almost two, going back into the house to watch a movie when people started shooting fireworks off on the beach. Aaron had tensed every time the pew, pew sound from outside became particularly loud, but I didn’t make it known that I noticed. I wasn’t even sure he did, like it was more instinctual than anything. The rest of the group had shown up only about an hour into the movie after watching the fireworks, crashing on the couch to watch Stargate.