“I really do,” I breathe.
“That’s a relief.”
My lips part to respond, but I don’t manage to get a single word out. In one great stride, Archer closes the gap between us, hauls me up against his chest, and crushes his mouth against mine in a heart-stopping kiss.
A kiss eighteen years in the making.
The brush of his lips sets off a seismic shift within my heart. Shakes the solid earth beneath my feet. Renders everything I’ve ever believed about love completely null and void.
There is nothing friendly about the way his mouth moves over mine. Nothing platonic. Nothing remotely safe.
He devours me.
Drags me under the surface.
Drowns me in passion.
I never want to come up for air.
His hands shove impatiently into my hair, twisting in the thick strands. He yanks my head back so he can deepen the kiss, his tongue spearing into my mouth with a moan that turns my bones to water. All I can do is hold on for dear life, clinging to his shoulders, letting him lay seige.
Since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of the day Archer Reyes would finally kiss me. I’ve spent countless hours wondering what it would be like. If he’d be tender or frenzied, hesitant or forceful.
Somehow, he is both everything and nothing like I imagined. A perfect medley of anticipation and expectation. He kisses me like I belong to him. His lips claim mine with both unflinching authority and acute familiarity.
I respond in kind, just as desperate to stake my claim.
He is mine as plainly as I’m his.
I make damn sure he knows it. Make sure he will never forget the way my hands feel as they slide over his shoulders; the way my breasts brush up against his chest; the way my tongue strokes his in harmony.
Our touches are filled with so much passion, we shake with it. Tears spill down my cheeks, falling onto our lips. He kisses them into oblivion.
We lose ourselves. There, in the shadows of Cormorant House with the moon shining down and the waves breaking along the shore, we disappear for a small infinity into one another, sacrificing all sense of self for a stolen moment of combined bliss. Putting aside our uncertain futures for one, shattering instant of unadulterated happiness.
We are not Josephine and Archer.
Not best friends.
Not sworn enemies.
We are merely two souls, spiraling deeper and deeper, like smoke from separate wicks on a single candle. We burn both for and in spite of each other, inextricably bonded by a foundation far deeper than attraction, far stronger than friendship, far bigger than fear.
This kiss…
It changes everything.
It’s me, who breaks away first.
I pull back, creating enough space between our faces to gasp for air. Archer’s breaths are just as uneven as mine. He’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen before.
Desire.
His eyes blaze so brightly with it, they could scorch the flesh from my bones. But when he sees the pain written across my features… when he recognizes what’s about to happen… his face becomes a mirror of my agony.
He knows me too well.
He’s memorized my lines before I’ve ever spoken them.