Firmly.
Deliberately.
I wanted her to have no doubt that I absolutely meant to kiss her.
I slid my hands down her cheeks so I was cupping her jaw and my fingers curled around the sides of her neck. She shuddered when I pulled away only to go back and kiss her again, this time even harder. This time, she leaned into me, the cloth falling to the ground as she pressed her hands against my stomach. Her fingers curled with the dip in my abs, but all I could think about was the way her lips felt against mine.
Her lips were the softest I'd ever kissed. And I didn't want to stop.
She tasted like the fruitiness of the cocktail we'd both drunk. Like pineapple and coconut, like orange and...freshness.
Like everything I shouldn't be tasting, because I shouldn't have been kissing her.
As if she could read my mind, Raven pulled away with a gasp that sent a shiver down the back of my neck.
In the silence that followed, a phone rang from somewhere in the bar.
Of fucking course.
She pushed away from me and ran to the back without another word to me.
The phone stopped ringing.
Five minutes later, it was obvious she wasn't coming back.
I rubbed my hand across my face and did what I should have done when she asked if we could forget the fact she'd kissed me.
Left.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Raven
It had been twelve hours since Parker Hamilton's lips were on mine, and despite two showers, I could still feel the roughness of his teeth as they grazed across my lower lip.
It'd been twelve hours since he'd walked up to me and basically silently taken my mouth with his, and there was no ridding the sensation of his tongue as it teased the seam of my mouth.
It'd been twelve hours since I'd stood there and allowed him to kiss me, and I didn't know how to get rid of the guilt.
I'd kissed him first. I still didn't know why. Figuring it out seemed absolutely impossible. There was no rhyme or reason for why I'd stepped forward, laid my hand on his arm, and kissed him. I didn't remember wanting to. I didn't remember even thinking about doing it.
I just did it.
An impulse.
That was all it was.
Yet I couldn't shake the memory of the way lust filled his eyes-of the way he'd clamped his jaw shut before he'd stormed out.
Now, I knew I should've let him go when he came out of the kitchen. He was leaving, and stopping him was the stupidest thing I could have done. I could have texted him or even waited until today. Then, I could have apologized and we could have moved on. Forgotten it.
But, no.
I had to stop him.
I had to ask.
And he had to kiss me. Properly.
There was no reason for that one, either. He didn't need to kiss me, but he did. It served no purpose other than to give me a restless night's sleep where I, ridiculously, kept imagining my brother walking in on him kissing me.
On second thought, it wasn't so ridiculous when you considered it was his phone call that had made me push Parker away...and pushed me into hiding in my apartment until I knew his car had left the lot.
Talking to my brother with the taste of his best friend on my lips was the most awkward thing I've done in a while. It wasn't even just the taste of him. My lips tingled the entire phone call, and by the time I'd agreed to god only knew what so I could get off the damn thing, I'd realized one thing.
My lipstick was chapped and smudged in the corners, and while I knew me biting off loose skin was partly to blame, there was no denying that Parker was entirely responsibility for the smudging I'd struggled to get rid of.
All morning, I'd been trying to focus on one single emotion. I was confused and frustrated, torn and tired. I'd been dragging ass ever since I forced myself out of bed, and now, as I hid in the cellar under the guise of organizing it, I was still dragging my ass.
I had everything organized, it just happened to be on the floor in front of me.
It was easier to keep shifting it around on the ground than to put everything up on the shelves and in storage where it belonged. If I did that, I'd ultimately be done soon, and then I faced the task of handling my emotions
I needed to get a hold on it. My grandmother wanted a lunch date to figure out what food I was putting on for the Karras family reunion . If I dared give her anything less than one hundred percent of my attention, I'd be hearing about it for the next five years.
Knowing that didn't make the task any easier.
Neither did the fact I knew that if I still felt as conflicted as I did when she showed up-with Ryan-that she'd sense it right away and not let up until I gave in and told her what was bugging me.
What I needed was a do-over. Of the entire weekend. Back to the point where I'd opened my big, fat wine-hole at the very least.