Lost King by Piper Lennox (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

frost how good this feels. How I never want it to end.

When it eventually does, Theo slides out from underneath me and kisses the inside of my quaking thighs, then the backs, all the way up my spine. His hands cover mine on the headboard, arms surrounding me.

“I just had the craziest thought,” he says.

“Don’t say it.” I know what he thought. I know exactly what he’s feeling.

Because, God help me, a piece of me is feeling it too.

“I won’t.” He watches me watching the snow, counting the branches where it shakes loose in the wind. “Just promise me something.”

I lean my head back against his shoulder and nod.

“One of these days, when I do say it—don’t say it back because you feel like you have to. Not if you don’t really feel it. Just promise you’ll tell me the second you know for sure.”

I smile. “Do I have to be sure?”

He lifts my hands off the headboard and draws me against him, lowering us from the window. I sink to the mattress with another brushstroke of kisses, all the way down my front this time.

“Not completely,” he says.

When he gets to my inner thigh, he sinks his teeth in. It draws an aftershock from my body. I feel him smile.

“Just sure enough to know you’ll never want to take it back.”

His mouth lands on mine again. Our tastes melt together.

I fall asleep in his arms. It’s not until I wake, somewhere just after dawn, that I realize I never actually made the promise.

“‘Not official,’ my ass.”

I cut my eyes to Clara when she joins me by the Keurig. “Good morning to you, too.”

She smiles and elbows me out of her way while she digs through the bowl of coffee pods. “You two are definitely a couple. I don’t care what you call it.”

I shake my head at her…though I’m secretly inclined to agree, after last night.

“We haven’t actually called each other ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ yet,” I point out instead, more to remind myself than her. That thought I had last night sounds all the crazier in broad daylight.

Not that it’s any less true, but still.

“There’s a sunroom at the back of the house,” Clara says suddenly, all high-pitched and singsong like she’s letting some secret slip she wasn’t supposed to.

Hint taken. I take mine and Ruby’s mugs through the living room, nodding at her on the sofa as I pass so she’ll follow.

The sunroom is more what I’d call a greenhouse: the steel-framed structure is covered in glass, including the ceiling. Sheets of ice glitter in the early sun. It’s got an even better view of the mountain than in the living room.

Guess I owe Clara my thanks. This is a pretty romantic spot to make things official.

“It’s perfect out here,” Ruby sighs happily. She joins me in a freestanding hammock in the corner. It faces out, so all we can see is blinding white. The faint blue of the sky washes out entirely, it’s so bright.

“It is. And…it’d be even more perfect if you were my girlfriend.”

Ruby laughs into her coffee. When I don’t join in, she twists to study me. “Oh, are you asking?”

“Trying to.” I tug my collar, feigning nerves. She laughs and sits back against my chest.

“What changes if I say yes?”

I stretch one arm out to the wall, leaving a handprint on the fogging glass as I set the hammock in motion. “I get to introduce you as my girlfriend, for one thing, which would be a lot less complicated, and invite way less teasing and questions. Which brings me to Pro Number Two: Clara would be thrilled.”

“Hmm. I’d hate to disappoint her.”

“Number Three: Wes will also be thrilled, because once I’m happy, he’ll be able to give me shit guilt-free.”

“All solid reasons,” she nods, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

“The fourth benefit of being official: I’ll be happy.” I kiss the top of her head, then rest mine there. “And if you’re my girlfriend, I get to send you flowers and text you cute shit all the time, and try to make you even half as happy as you make me.”

We swing back and forth in silence. Outside, fresh snow flutters in circles, caught on the wind before it can touch the ground.

“Being official will also make me feel a lot less crazy for thinking what I did last night.” I run my thumbs across her knuckles. “You have to admit: thinking, ‘I might be falling for my girlfriend’ is a much saner thought than ‘I might be falling for this girl I met three weeks ago in the hardware store.’”

She looks straight up, craning her neck to look at me. “You said you wouldn’t say it.”

“I didn’t say it. Just pointed out that the thought itself makes way more sense, once we do this thing properly.”

Her snort is accompanied by another smile. She looks back at the perfect scene ahead of us. That clean, blank slate.

“I’ll be your girlfriend,” she says. I feel her blush bleed right through her sweater.

“Then I’m your boyfriend.” I bear-hug her until the hammock threatens to tip us out, loving the sound of her laughter as it hits every single pane of glass.

We stay out here until, a few decibels at a time, the house grows louder through the screen door behind us. When the conversation turns into two people frantically arguing over balloons, Ruby and I exchange confused looks and sit up.

“Oh,” she laughs suddenly, getting out of the hammock to grab our mugs, “they’re arguing about the parade.”

I laugh, too, gathering her into one last hug and a deep, groping kind of kiss before we go inside.

“Another benefit of you being my girlfriend: I fucking love the irony that I’m