...
❝He was the poison I was dying to taste on my lips.❞
...
I was a coward.
The coward who wanted to leave behind the wreckage of her life for the man who had tormented her for as long as she could remember. The boy who had spit venom at me gro...
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MY ENTIRE WORLD crumbled the second his mouth met mine. No, slammed on mine, breaking apart every thread that I'd sown together the broken pieces of my soul with as a child. The pieces that he had broken and stomped on with a vengeance that didn't belong to a boy so young.
Yet I was powerless to push him back and stop what was happening. I was shell-shocked to the very core of my body, every nerve and every cell tingling in anticipation, yet nothing could stop me from tightening my arms around River, kissing him back recklessly as if he was the cure to the venom he was simultaneously breathing into me.
But how could I stop when he kissed like that? Like a ravenous man, starved and hungry, as if only this kiss could relieve his pain. As if this single kiss was the salvation to every one of his sins.
I gasped when his hand threaded into the strands of my hair, pulling torturously and agonisingly, and he groaned, using the entrance to slip his tongue in, the first caress making my core ache in a way that made me pine for this boy.
A shiver wracked up my body, making me realise that my top was glued to my back and my hair was drenched from the sprinkles of ice-cold water that turned into a whole downpour. We'd shifted closer to the stream, leaving us only a few feet away from the gushing beauty that I'd always wanted to see up close but had only gathered to guts to do today. That, combined with the fact that I'd always wanted to pretend I was in some sort of Tamil or Bollywood movie and stand beneath the rain or a waterfall.
And River had made it seem exactly like that. He'd graced this stunning place with his otherworldly beauty, breathing it life and magic.
I forced myself to pull back, the cold suddenly overpowering the heat he'd spread throughout my body when realisation settled in sharply. Yes, this was a dance that we'd been playing for weeks, but the actual moment was like a slap in the face.
His eyes were a dark midnight against the azure of the waterfall behind him and when he stared back at me, so blankly and so unaffected, regret washed over me like a bucket of ice water.
Shit.
"I..." I started, slightly panting and taking a measured step back.
He raised a curious brow — his signature move, I realised — and waited as if to torture me with his silence.
"We shouldn't have done that," I blurted out, all at once and way too fast. "That shouldn't have happened. It can't happen again."
The corners of his lips curved up, almost as if he wanted to scoff. "It's not going to, Ribbon. I had no intention of repeating today so don't worry your pretty little head about it."
Something akin to disappointment started its slow descent and I forcefully shoved it back, narrowing my eyes at him. "Why did you kiss me at all?"
