Thin Love(164)

She feels the swift lick of disappointment when Kona pulls back, but it disappears with his fingers holding her face and the tips smoothing just over her cheekbones.

“My dirty little rascal,” he says, but he doesn’t return her smile, seems struck by how close they are standing, how easy this has been, to fall back into old habits. It was returning… their reactions to one another were primal, instinctual.

Un-fucking-avoidable.

The song ends, but Kona hasn’t stopped examining her face. His breath is still hot and panting over her cheeks. It would be easy, so fucking easy, to let him consume her.

Kona leans in again, somehow moving closer, another hit that will edge her toward overdose and she stops him. The rational part of Keira’s mind pushes back the sensation of his touch and the embers are extinguished.

“Wait.”

He pauses, but doesn’t move away from her, doesn’t move his fingers from her skin. “Wildcat, come on.”

“What are we doing?” Keira knows that expression. It hasn’t changed in sixteen years. Kona’s face is calm, but he frowns, forehead wrinkling in his agitation and Keira stops another attempt of his lips against her mouth. She pushes him back, palm flat against that tempting chest. “How’d this happen?”

Kona’s shoulders sag and finally, her skin is free of his touch.

“Memory lane,” he says.

“That’s a dangerous place.”

“If you say so.”

“I can’t do this with you.” She takes a breath. “I can’t ever do this with you again.”

“Why the hell not?” His anger isn’t quick, not the instant snap of frustration she’d always known from him, but there is no humor on his face and despite her small rejection, he hasn’t moved his arms from the brick behind her.

“I’ve been telling you for two months. We were not good together. I can’t…” Another slow breath and Keira tries to calm, to ignore the heavy scent of his skin filling her senses. “I won’t be that girl again.”

Too easy, she thinks, reminding herself how effortlessly Kona consumes her. Moth to flame, eager to die in the fire. She hated who she was with him, most days. She hated that she forgot good sense, any smidgeon of reason when he was around her. She didn’t like who she’d been at eighteen and it was that girl, that unbalanced, obsessed girl, that Keira had been running from all these years. She wouldn’t let that girl return, not now, not even for Kona.

When she slips out of the cage of his impossibly large arms, Kona reacts, old habits surfacing. He grabs her and for a quick second, Keira feels her teenage self return. His fingers are hot on her bicep, licking heat, anger, passion, through her limbs and Keira fears the sensation, hates that she loves it so much, that she’s missed it more than she wants to admit.

Just like that, she’s ready to react, to fight and it takes all the strength she has to repress that inclination. “Don’t…”And at her small warning, Kona jerks back, hands up as though she burned him. “You see what I mean? Three weeks and we’re flirting with past behavior.”

“I’m sorry.”

Keira thinks that he might be telling the truth. He fans his fingers through his hair, eyes rounded as though he can’t believe how he’d reacted. “Please,” Kona says, taking a tentative step forward, voice easy, calm. “Don’t leave.”

She doesn’t want to see that expression on his face; the one that tells her he’s different, that his overwhelming presence is no longer dangerous. He fooled her once. He won’t get a second chance. A quick shake of her head and Keira turns away from him, tries to focuses on a plane above shooting away from the city, wishing she was on it.

Kona’s breath warms her neck and Keira cringes at how much she’s missed this—him, her, the heat, the passion, and it is like refusing the best high she’s ever had. “If I don’t walk away right now, I’m going to kiss you again,” she whispers.

“I want your kisses. All of them.” Kona’s low voice is heady, firm and Keira has to tighten her eyes closed when his fingertip slides down her spine, between her thick curls.

“I can’t. We… no, we can’t.”

“You’re scared,” he says, mouth hot against her neck.

“I’m petrified.” Despite herself, Keira leans back, lets Kona wrap his hands around her waist. “I buried this shit. I left and didn’t want to look back. Your… memory, your touch… your… tattoo, I got rid of it all.”

Kona sighs, his grip on her waist tightens, but when he speaks, his voice is low, even. “I would never hurt you. You know I’d never touch you, not like that.”