Don't Want You Like a Best Friend (Mischief & Matchmaking, #1)

by Emma R. Alban

Gwen finds their height difference rather charming. Beth fits against her nicely.

he’s very pretty, for a boy.

Gwen swallows hard and nods, her breath catching as their eyes meet, close and secret. Between the perfume and the sun and Beth, she’s a little bit dizzy.

Mrs. Gilpe and Mrs. Stelm, pressed up as they are against the counter, covered in flour and kissing like they’re drinking oxygen from each other’s mouths.

Gwen, kissing, wine, jealous—oh. Oh.

OMF THEY DID THE THING

Gwen goes to pull back but Beth’s hands shoot out, quite of their own accord, clutching at her waist, anchoring Gwen against her. Beth rises on her toes, pressing their lips back together, the warm, soft pleasure of it trickling through her. This is what it’s supposed to be. This is what it’s supposed to feel like. Swoony and bright and everything.

i miss my girlfriend

She didn’t know anything could feel like this. Hot and soft and hard and fierce and beautiful. She wants to stay like this forever, her hands twisted into Gwen’s skirts, Gwen’s stroking at her collarbones.

Beth struggles to find the words—more, please, soon—can’t explain how desperately, how ardently she wants to stay like this forever.

What’s never made sense before—how everything has crystalized into this moment—how they should run away right now, forget the balls and boating and parties and just lie beneath trees in the woods like this forever and always.

But how is she to settle that in her head, when she feels nothing for Lord Montson and everything everything everything for Gwen?

She swallows hard as Gwen slurps her oyster from its shell, tipping her head back to get the rest of the sauce. The bob of her throat and the line of her neck and the way her tongue snakes out to rim her lips—dear God, that was perhaps the most arousing thing Beth’s ever seen.

It wasn’t an aberration, a champagne-fueled mistake. Gwen wants her, just as much as Beth wants her back.

She wants to spoil and savor and touch and kiss and dote on Gwen the way she sees Lord Havenfort doing for her mother. She wants to be with Gwen, in all ways. Slurping oysters, and exchanging kisses, and going on walks, and reading quietly in the library. Just—living with her.

this only costs her her happiness, not her life. But all she wants to do is rail at God for the injustice of all of it. Of a title she can’t inherit, of a husband she needs for security, of a love that cannot exist and a lover who will belong to someone else in far too many ways.

“I’m keeping you.” Beth presses closer, squeezing her waist. “Forever and always?” “Forever and always and eternity and infinity,”