Page 54 of Edge of Stars

Who’s now filling my mouth with her husky laugh and my equilibrium with her stupefying conjuring, lifting me up off the floor as she executes a beguiling mid-air twirl.

“Holy…shit,” I chuff out in uncanny time to the pair of circular swirls she directs at me with her hands. Now I’m turned in the same horizontal way she’s gone, only I’m facedown and headed for her shapely uplifted arms.

She lowers us at the same time, and I already vow this’ll be a main feature of my life’s highlight reel in my last hours in this realm. But—thank God—that time is not now.

Now is solely for being here, present and aware of every second of this moment, as I lift my hands to smooth the hair from her eyes and my lips to adore her with all the awestruck adoration in my soul.

“True confession time,” she says once we pull a few inches apart. “That’s the first time I’ve ever tried the Cirque twisty.”

“Worthy of a standing ovation.” I quickly kiss her again to stress my sincerity. “But as long as we’re turning this into tell-the-truth hour…”

“What?” She widens her eyes. “Oh no. Did I hurt you?” Her hands frisk as much of me as they can reach—which I wouldn’t be so hasty to negate once there’s only my briefs between my ass and her frantic touches. But she’s too genuinely upset to be taken advantage of.

“Not a scratch. Honestly.” I stress it as soon as she punches up a skeptical scowl. “But also honestly? Roasted yak isn’t my thing.”

No more narrowed eyes my way. Her gorgeous browns are as wide as the O of her mouth, slamming me with her mock distress. “Whaaat? Oh, that’s it. We can’t be married anymore.”

I tilt my head, adding a little sarcasm of my own. “Maybe we can try putting it on pizza.”

Her frown halts in its same place too. Her hands stop atop my shoulders. She nods toward the magical food maker. “Let’s try it. Ask our fun friend here.”

“Ehhh…” I shake my head. “Don’t think it’ll be the same.”

“Ohhh, yeah.” She lifts one hand long enough to snap her fingers. “Can’t believe I forgot about your connoisseur standards.”

“Which, to be honest, are more Jesse’s thing than mine.”

Her head tilts to one side, emphasizing the splay of her long wedding curls against the marble. “So you’re being a pizza snob in his honor?”

“If it was only that simple.” My reply is quieter than I originally planned. And more melancholy.

Of course, Kara doesn’t miss a single nuance of it. Damn it.

“If everything was still just that,” she rasps.

“Not even asking for everything,” I return. The low utterance takes me to the edge of pathetic brooding, but I don’t care. Maybe getting her to open up means I have to do it first. “Just the day Jesse and I were plowing through a pie while grading papers—and something more delicious happened to my day.”

The focus on her features gains a new kind of intensity. Deeper degrees of understanding.

“So that’s where you really went.” There’s a smile in her voice even if it still doesn’t breach her expression. But she gives me a better gift in the caress of her fingertips along my jaw. “I remember that pizza.”

“You do?” Here go my brows again, crashing back toward each other. “Wait. Did I offer you some? No. I would’ve remembered that part. Well, goddamn. Guess who’s not getting a host of the year nomination?”

Upside of my mortification: her emerging giggle. “I wasn’t there for food, Professor.”

“Ah. Right.”

It hardly has any volume, and I like it that way. Mashed this close to her. Remembering our origin story together. Acknowledging how every sexually charged minute of them is directly feeding these. Liking that feeling too. Liking it a hell of a lot.

“You were there…for the earring.”

As I gently tap on the jewelry, which has stayed on both her earlobes since this morning through some insane cosmic benevolence, she counters, “Or so I told you.”

I dote on her with a soft kiss to her left lobe. Then the right.

“I’m grateful for these earrings way more than the pizza.” And then seal my candor about that one with a meaningfully long kiss. “Though I might’ve gotten well acquainted with the cold knob in my shower that night, battling thoughts of how you’d look in them and nothing else.”

A shiver claims her whole form, and I’ve barely begun with trailing my index fingers down the sides of her neck.