Page 37 of A Deal with the Devil

I taste the scotch on his tongue, my lungs full of the scent of him.

His hands hold my hips tight, and he presses closer, until our bodies are flush. We have more than proved any point we are trying to make, and I know I should stop him or object, but I can’t. There’s some wild impulse running through me, destroying every neuron, killing off every reasonable thought. My fingers slide into his lovely, thick hair; his hand tightens around my hip...and then he inhales, sharp and surprised, and pulls back.

His eyes are nearly black under the bar’s dim light, his lips swollen. “He’s jealous as hell right now.”

It takes me a second to even remember Matt was here.

I press my palm flat to the barstool beside me, trying to get a grip. “You’re not even looking at him, so how could you possibly know that?”

“Simple,” he says, grabbing my hand. He begins fighting the crowd again, pushing toward the exit. “Because I’d be jealous as hell if I were him.”

When we finally get outside, he plucks the valet ticket from my hand while I take one lungful after another of the warm air, wishing I could think clearly. Because the kiss is over, but inside me, it’s still occurring. It feels like he just let something out of a cage, something too dangerous to be set free. We stand in silence, waiting for our cars, my body so taut I’m certain it would snap like kindling with little effort. It’s all I can do not to grab his collar and drag his mouth back to mine.

When my car arrives, he looks at me for one extra moment, and I feel a pulse, low in my abdomen. There’s hesitation in that gaze of his, uncertainty. As inexperienced as I am, I suspect if I asked him to get a drink, he’d say yes.

And if I asked him to go home with me, he’d say yes to that too.

“See you Monday,” I say instead.

It’s the wise thing to do. But it’s one of those nights when it feels like wisdom is really overrated.

19

The thing about a long-term relationship is that you persuade yourself, when you’re in it, that it’s good enough. All the little irritations and disappointments are brushed aside. No one’s perfect. Why nurture your tiny miseries like a delicate plant you want to see flourish?

Except I brushed aside disappointments with Matt having, essentially, no experience with anyone else. A kiss while playing spin-the-bottle in eighth grade and a sloppy, drunken one-night stand post-Matt are all I had to compare against him...and neither of them held up very well.

I’d believed, for instance, that Matt was an extraordinary kisser. But I could kiss a thousand men, and none of them would match Hayes.

My fingers trace over my lips on the way home, remembering. I try to look at the kiss scientifically: What was so much better? Was it his utter confidence, the way he increased the pressure so suddenly, like water reaching its boiling point? Was it just his feel and his smell, his urgency and his size and that sharp inhale of want and surprise I heard at the kiss’s end?

I don’t know. But he’s not an option, so I really pray that whatever it was, I find it again in someone else.

He appears at the counter Monday morning, all lean, unruffled beauty, that arrogant upper lip of his firmly in its arrogant place, smirking as always.

I slide the smoothie next to his coffee. “Don’t freak out on me,” I tell him. “I used more kale than normal.”

“You know, one of these days you could surprise me and make Eggs Benedict instead.”

I bite into a strawberry. “Eggs Benedict, hmmm? I’ve never pictured you eating breakfast.”

“What do you picture, Tali?” he asks, his tone and leering smile so ridiculously filthy I laugh.

“Jonathan coming home so I don’t have to get up at six anymore,” I reply, leaning my hip against the counter. “That’s what I picture.”

“You’ll miss me,” he argues. “My mother says I’m loveable once you get to know me. Well, it might have been the nanny. Someone said it. What’s on the schedule today?”

I hand it to him, amazed by how easily things have gone back to normal. They definitely didn’t seem like they would all weekend when I flopped around in bed, sheets tangling between my legs, having one dream after another about him: Hayes kissing me, my back pressed to the wall, his hands sliding up my outer thighs as he pushed my skirt to my waist.

You have the purest face I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Where have you gone, Tali?” he asks. My head jerks up as I blink the memory away. “You’re not still mooning over the idiot from the soldier movie, are you?”

I roll my eyes. “Not at all. In fact, I put up a profile on Tinder, you’ll be happy to hear.”

A muscle flickers along his temple, and his smirk is oddly…muted. “Very good. Let’s see it.”

I carry the blender to the sink. “I’m not showing you my profile. You’re just going to make fun of it.”