He completely ignored me. “You’re that slut that wouldn’t kiss him. I’ve heard about you.” His laugh was edged with malice. “So fucking weird. You’ll let anyone stick it up your ass, won’t you? But you won’t?—”
Beau suddenly pulled me behind him, stepping between me and the judgmental asshole. “He asked you to stop, so stop. You don’t get to talk to him like that. Don’t ever talk toanyonelike that. It’s gross and disrespectful. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
I’d never heard that hardness in his voice. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever stood up for me like this, and I was so achingly captivated bythisversion of Beau that I didn’t even think.
I turned him around, grabbed his face, and kissed him.
He made a startled sound in the back of his throat, then tentatively let his hands rest on my hips as he returned the kiss.
I pulled back an inch, breathing hard, and kissed his forehead. His nose. His cheek. I knew he was blushing because his cheek was burning hot.
“Lea,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, love. Thanks for sticking up for me. That was so hot, love. Always my knight in a white t-shirt.”
He glanced at the guy who was still sitting next to us. Still watching us.
I threw a glare his way because he was ruining this moment. He’d done enough damage for one evening.
Slut-shaming asshole.
“You two are fucking crazy,” he muttered, picking up his drink and sliding off the stool. He walked toward the pool tables in the back of the bar.
“Thanks,” Beau said quietly, fingers coasting lightly along my forearms.
I nuzzled my cheek against his hair. So soft. “You wanna get out of here? I don’t have a jacuzzi, but I do have something else you might like.”
Beau laughed, his breaths puffing against my arms. “Yeah. Show me what you’ve got, Lea.”
Challenge fucking accepted.
20
BEAU
Iwas fairly certain that I’d fallen in love with Lea.
Maybe I’d been in love with him from the moment we’d met. It felt like I’d known him a lifetime, and yet, it had only been two and a half months.
Every time I looked at him, my heart raced, my chest felt tight, and my hands got clammy. Every time he looked at me, I couldn’t even breathe.
Every moment with him was like some hazy dream. The real world fell away, blurring at the edges, and there was only him. I wanted to etch these moments into eternity, to keep them somewhere they could never be defiled or grow dimmer.
It was true that I had no one else to compare him to, as far as romantic interests went. But I knew in my heart that he was incomparable. No one would be able to hold a candle to how Lea made me feel.
But on the other side of this dazzling coin was the bleak reality that Lea would never feel the same way about me. There resided a shadowy, vague future where I would exist one day…without him.
I would be alone again.
“Why the face?”
“Hm?” I glanced over at Lea to find his eyes on me. The way he’d been looking at me since this morning—like I was the only one in the room, the only person that mattered—was everything to me. No one had ever looked at me like that before. Maybe I was just projecting, but the intensity in his gaze made me feel like I was becoming someone special to him.
I wasn’t. Maybe he liked me here, in this moment. But the moment would pass.
“What face?” I asked. The glow of the TV painted shifting patterns of light over one half of Lea’s face as he studied me. Judy had been watching TV with us, but about twenty minutes ago she’d jumped off the couch and said she was going dancing, leaving in a flurry of subtle perfume and excited declarations when she’d been lounging in her pajamas five minutes before.
She was really unpredictable.