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But then I felt the rasp of his jaw on my shoulder and the whisper of his lips on my neck. And it wasn’t awkward. It was slow and lazy and sweet, like warm caramel sauce sliding down a scoop of ice cream.
Bright blue eyes. Strong hands. Ocean breeze on sun-bronze skin. A kiss on a beach. Sand in the sheets. The day when everything changed.
Felix was so off-limits, he may as well have been wearing a medieval chastity belt.
“Do we need rules?” His gaze moved to my mouth, and need thrummed between my thighs. “I think we might.”
Felix is the best thing I’ve ever inhaled, and it’s been a full year since I’ve had a hit.
Five years have passed since we first met. Every time I see him, he’s changed. Just a little. Just enough that I find myself cataloging all the subtle differences, paying him more attention than I should.
It’s his eyes that say more than the words from his lips. They whisper, they tease, they laugh. I’ve seen them dance in the starlight.
His eyes meet mine for one brief moment. It’s a drop of liquid turquoise, but I want the whole ocean.
I’ll see him in my dreams tonight. His fingers, unraveling the braid in my hair. His body, moving over mine.
“I’ve known you for five years now, Lucy. You’d pick adventure and fresh air over a grocery store run every time.”
I want to smooth my hand over his cheek, trace the contours of his chin. I want to map Felix’s temples and nose with my palm so I can keep the sight of him folded in a glass box in my apartment and take it out when I miss it.
“Lucy.” The way he says my name. It’s velvet. It’s chocolate. It’s dirty sex in the bathroom upstairs.
Felix is a whirlpool, and if I’m not careful, I’ll get sucked in.
I need a football field. Provinces. A whole damn country. But I’m not sure that would even work. Somehow, I always find my way back.
“If there’s one thing I can teach you, Lucy,” Stacy said as I sobbed into my wine, “it’s to live your life fully, to live it for yourself and no one else. I know how much you love this place, but I have to do what’s right for me, just as you have to do what’s right for you.”
“But setbacks can be chances if you look at them from the right angle.”
“Live your life for you, and no one else” was one of my aunt’s signature pieces of wisdom. But what if you aren’t sure what you want? Or what a full life looks like?
“Sometimes I worry that as I’ve got older, I’ve shrunk my world instead of making it grow,”
“Tell me more, Lucy,” he says. “Tell me everything.”
“Fuck it,” I whispered to myself. I deserved an orgasm or seven.
I KNOW THATS RIGHT GIRL 🤭
Something on your mind, Lucy?” “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “You.”
“I forgot how good this felt,” I told him. He pressed his lips to mine, once. “I didn’t.”
“You make me a lot of things, but nervous isn’t one of them.”
‘Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.’ ”
“Lucy, you deserve so much more than fine,” Stacy said. “You should have a partner who sets you on fire.”
“Dream big with me, Lucy.”
“Lucy.” That’s all Felix said. Only my name, but I felt it everywhere.
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
You mean so much to me that I can’t think, can’t even breathe properly, when we’re together.”
“Pink.” “That’s my favorite color.” “Mine, too,” he says. “Pink like your suitcase. Pink like your lips. Pink like that striped dress with the buttons and the buckles on your sandals. Pink like the ribbon on your nightgown. Lucy pink.”
“Tonight. You, me, that dress, your dining table. I’m going to bend you over it.” I lean into his ear, my heart racing. “Not if I bend you first.”
“I don’t want to be a stop along your journey. I want to be the destination.”
“I relish you, Lucy Beth Ashby.”
I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want you. —L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
“Are you a fan of talking on the phone?” “I’m a fan of listening to your voice.”
His lips are reverent, the most devout kind of worship, as slow and sweet as jam.
“How can you make that sound romantic? I love the things that come out of your mouth.”
“There have been times when staying away from you has felt as impossible as not breathing. I think I’m made for you, Lucy,”
“I think you’re brilliant. A dreamer with beautiful dreams.”
Felix will be my home, and I will be a place for him to return to. He’ll be my oasis, and I’ll be his. He’ll save his best words for me, and I’ll save mine for him.
