Page 34

Kenny zeroed in on us with a look that could curdle milk, Annie trailing half a step behind, her arm fastened through the crook of his elbow, holding on to him for dear life. She was doing her best impression of a woman who’d never stolen her best friend’s boyfriend, her lips frozen in a brittle half-smile, eyes darting between me and Damon with the panic of someone watching a live episode of The Real Housewives and realizing she was the villain.”

I tried to get ahead of the train wreck. “Kenny, Annie, this is—” But he cut me off, the way he always had, like my voice was background noise he could dismiss with a flick of his wrist.

“Damon, right?” Kenny said, drawing out the syllables like he was trying to catch Damon in a lie about his own name. He extended a hand, and Damon shook it, a simple, brief transaction, but I caught the micro-wars of dominance: the extra squeeze, the locked eye contact, the faint tilt of the head.

“So, how long have you two been together?” Kenny’s tone was condescending. “Must be serious if you’re making the rounds at a family wedding.”

“She didn’t really have a choice. I work here,” Damon answered without really answering.

Annie’s face lit up. “Oh, what do you do?”

“Little bit of this, little bit of that. Mostly shovel shit.”

I couldn’t help but notice Damon made direct eye contact with Kenny when he said the word shit. I also noticed he didn’t say he was part owner, despite the fact that he was. It was refreshing to meet someone who was so secure in who he was, he didn’t feel the need to try and impress people.

“Oh.” Annie was shocked by his response.

Kenny’s eyes flicked from Damon to me and back again. “Well, congrats, you two.” He forced the word out, like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Hope it works out better than the last one.”

Kenny and Annie turned away in a synchronized display of wounded pride and misplaced superiority, but before their backs had even cleared our line of sight, Damon spun me in place, took my face in his hands, lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me.

It was not a polite, photogenic first date kiss. There was no soft approach. No uncertainty. No gradual closing of the gap.

There was only the animal certainty of intention: his, and, much to my alarm, mine. The heat of his palm against my cheek, the thumb that danced along the hinge of my jaw, the pressure of his lips, as if he’d been starving for the taste of me since the day we met.

All pretense melted away, any idea that this was just for show went up in literal smoke, because I felt my entire body turn molten. A wildfire rolled through my veins, reducing all the careful architecture of composure and caution to ash and cinder.

I could feel the gaze of every bored, sunburned cousin and every sharp-eyed auntie land on us with the force of a telescope lens set to magnify, but I didn’t care. Not in that first, impossibly long second, when Damon’s lips parted mine and I let him in.

His tongue was warm, the taste of him salty and sweet, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner as if he was savoring not just the kiss but the act of surprising me. He kissed like he did everything else—without apology, but with complete focus, like he’d decided that the only thing that mattered was this exact moment.

It was supposed to be a performance, a gesture for the benefit of the crowd, but something unraveled inside me, something that had been wound tight for years. I was acutely aware of the impossible proximity of his body, the way his scent—earth and citrus and sweat—overrode everything else, the absolute rightness of our mouths together.

I’d spent my entire life building defenses against men like him, and now, here I was, melting at the first real touch. I’d thought I was immune. I was not.

Typically, I hated PDA. In the past I felt exposed, an unwilling participant in a play I hadn’t auditioned for. This was nothing like that. This was the opposite of that. Damon was claiming me, but not in a way that made me unsettled, if anything, the ground beneath my feet felt steadier than it had in years.

His other hand traced the small of my back, pulling me closer for a moment, the world contracted to just Damon and me, and I lost my bearings entirely.

I felt the air shift, the temperature spike, the blood in my veins fizz like shaken soda, and when Damon finally broke the kiss, his thumb lingered at my jawline, tilting my head up so I couldn’t look away from him.

“Too much?” he asked, low and private, his mouth still so close to mine I could feel the shape of the words.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Every thought had been wiped clean, every defense leveled. I was a blank slate, and Damon was the only thing written on me.

He grinned. “I’ll take that as a no.”

6

PASSENGER PRINCESS

Damon

The morning after the big relationship debut, I woke up to the predawn glow with my heart already pounding. It took me a minute to place the sensation thrumming beneath my skin, like the night before had left a residue I couldn’t wash off.

I just kept thinking about our kiss. I kept thinking about how natural it felt having Mikayla in my arms. How good she smelled. How soft her lips were. The lust-glazed eyes staring up at me as I’d asked her if that was too far.

I'd kissed a lot of women in my life. Not to brag, but I had a pretty solid résumé. And not once had a kiss kept me up all night.