She gasps into my mouth, freezing. I wait for her to pull away, to slap me, to call me crazy. But tentative hands come up to frame my face, and then they're grasping my cheeks tighter, pulling my lips more firmly to hers. She's kissing me back.
She's kissing me back!
I lose my head, because it's everything I dreamed of yet so much more. Her mouth yields against mine, soft, pliant, hot. So fucking hot. I tilt my head, kissing her deeper as my hand slides around her back, my fingers splaying over the material of her dress. One of her arms wrap around my neck and I pull her tighter against me, melding out bodies together until she's on my lap, he knees on either side of my thighs.
Her tongue caresses mine, our backs arching into each other.
When she pulls back, there's so much confusion in her eyes that I don't know how to handle it. “Walt,” she whispers hesitantly, but she doesn't pull away.
I don't want her to think about anything right now, because if she thinks about this then she'll stop. And God, I don't want her to stop.
Threading my fingers through her hair, I bring her mouth back to mine.
Chapter 7
Ibbie
THE SECOND WALT'S lips touched mine, I forgot my own name. I forgot that we'd spent the last year hating on each other, that I'd dated his jerk hole of a brother, that his grandparents were just downstairs and this was super inappropriate. Because Walt, he knows how to kiss. He kisses like he knows every one of my secret desires and fantasies and is using them against me, to own me. And I. . .I want to be owned by him.
With a pleasured little grunt, he spins us around smoothly and presses me into the plush bed. His body leans over mine as he kisses me with more heat and power than I've ever been kissed in my whole life. I've kissed plenty of guys before, because hey, I love to kiss, but never has there been this passion with any of them.
One of my hands strokes the soft skin at the back of his neck, and the other clutches the material of his shirt, desperately holding him against me. His hands are everywhere; cupping my face, lacing through my hair, stroking my thigh, brushing the sides of my stomach. It's like he wants to touch every inch of me and he can't get enough.
I feel like I've lost all control of myself, of my lips, my body, my soul. This is the guy I've hated for an entire year. This is the guy who's hated me. The guy who's tortured me, who I've gone out of my way to screw with. And yet the moment his lips touched mine it was like none of that mattered anymore, like in a way, it had all been leading up to this. This right here, in this bed, in this room. I don't know if it's just the kiss though, because tonight I saw a completely different side to Walt, a side I've never seen before. I saw a guy who was sweet to his grandma, who had so much respect for his grandpops, who cared about his brother's fiancee and was more protective of me than anyone has ever been in my entire life. I like this Walt. I never thought I'd use the words like and Walt in the same sentence, but I do. I like him.
Walt's lips leave mine and I immediately crave the contact, but he kisses down my neck, pushing aside the sleeve of my dress so he can press his hot lips into my shoulder. I come undone, lifting my chin in the air and squeezing his waist between my thighs. How is it that he can make me feel this way when before today I've felt nothing but disdain for him?
“Ibbie,” he utters fiercely before he covers my mouth with his once more. He kisses me like. . .like I'm the air he needs to breathe, like I'm the light he needs to see, like I'm the heat of sunlight touching his skin for the very first time. He doesn't just kiss me, he worships me.
I open my mouth and welcome his tongue, brushing it with my own. I want this. I want him. So badly. A part of me wishes that I could rationalize this away as a hate kiss, but there's nothing hateful in this. Not from either of us. This feels like he needs me, and in this moment I feel like I need him too.
My hands move to his broad shoulders, clinging on, desperate to hold him against me – though I don't think he's in a rush to go anywhere. His body is heated over mine; heated and hard in places I'm soft.
I don't know how much time passes, minutes or hours or days, but eventually our kisses slow. Walt leans his forehead against my cheek for a moment, then pulls back to look down at me. His eyes give nothing away.
That was. . .
That was unexpected.
“What the hell just happened?” I ask when I can breathe again, my voice barely above a whisper. Now that his lips aren't fused onto mine and robbing me of all reasonable thought, bewilderment is firmly taking a hold of me. I'm not sure I even know which way is up right now.
Walt shakes his head silently, unable to speak. His eyes, those dark depths I'd always thought were so cold, are filled with so many emotions I can't even begin to sort through them. But they're not cold, not at all. How could I have ever thought they were? Obviously I wasn't looking hard enough.
“Ibbie,” he breathes finally when I cup his cheek with my hand. His expression is dazed. “I-”
“Walt, Ibbie!” his grandma calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Dessert is ready! Get down here before your ice-cream melts!”
Walt closes his eyes in defeat. “Be right down, Grandma!”
“I'm so confused right now,” I admit to him quietly when her footsteps move away.
“I know.” He nods as if he has so much more to say, but he doesn't offer up any kind of explanation as to why that kiss just happened. Instead, he rolls off of me and stands, holding out a hand to help me up.
“Oh my God,” I mutter when I catch a look at myself in the small mirror on the dresser. Nope. Just so much nope. My lipgloss has been thoroughly kissed away, my neatly styled hair is now wild around my shoulders and my chin is red from stubble rash. I look one hundred percent kissed. No, I look one hundred percent ravished. Doing my best to make myself presentable, I pat down my hair and reapply my gloss, but his family are going to know what we were doing up here for sure. Oh God, the shame. His grandma is going to think I'm such a hussy. And Aleix. . .he's going to know that I went from making out with one brother to the next and. . . Oh wait, I don't give a hairy monkey's bare butt about what Aleix thinks, the lying jerk. But still, they'll know what we were doing and that's just totally cringe.
I, on the other hand, have no frigging idea. What were we doing up here? Because we sure as heck weren't acting like the regular Walt and Ibbie. That's one thing I do know.
When I turn back to Walt, needing answers, the expression I catch on his face steals my breath away and stops me in my tracks. There's so much longing in his eyes as he looks at me, though he quickly hides it away, shoving it back behind a blank mask. But I saw it there. He was. . .he was longing for me. For me. The guy who hates me was longing for me.
Oh boy, the confusion. It's eating me up.
He moves forward to stand in front of me, putting his forehead on my shoulder. “We should. . .uh, we should get downstairs,” he says quietly. “Don't want the ice-cream to melt.”
All I can do is nod in reply.
+++
AFTER DESSERT, WALT'S grandma hugs me for the longest time and tells me to come back whenever I want. Even without Walt. She's so nice.
Walt and I are silent when we climb into his car. I almost feel like throwing a barb at him just for old time's sake.
“Where are we going?” I ask a minute later when he doesn't take the road that leads back to the city. Instead, he circles back around behind his grandparents' house and turns off on an old dirt road.