Sheltered by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online Page A

instead of this smoky breathing that wasn’t really doing anything to her anyway.
    He’d said she should feel like a warm bath filled with marshmallows. And although she was getting the warm bath thing, she felt almost certain it wasn’t because of the pot.
    “I really don’t think anything’s happening,” she said, the moment he pulled away. Only her voice came out all funny—lazy, somehow. And when he spoke, his voice sounded that way too.
    “You sure?” he asked, while her body sagged against the rail around the porch steps. Of course she almost missed and slid right through the gap to the grass beyond, but that didn’t mean anything. And besides, he was there to grab ahold of her suddenly bendy body.
    “Whoa there, Miss-Nothing’s-Happening,” he said, but weirdly she didn’t feel bad. She didn’t feel clumsy, like usual, or like she’d proven her lack of coolness again. She just felt…easy.
    “Did I almost fall? I definitely almost falled.” She paused, thinking. “Fell. I almost fell.”
    “I think falled is right.”
    “It’s not. You’re weird.”
    “I know. Want some more?”
    She thought about his ghost-lips again, and came close to saying no.
    “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
    “Close your eyes this time,” he said, and though a piece of her wondered why he might request something like that, most of her thought that piece was an idiot.
    So she just closed them, and after an interminable amount of time felt him move toward her. Slow, slow, and like that word. What was it, again? Sensuous , she thought, as he drew close. Everything had been cloaked in sensuousness, to the point where details seemed fuzzy and languid.
    Like the cuff of his sleeve stroking over the back of her hand, or the feel of his breath stirring against her lips. Her lips had grown seventy thousand nerve endings between yesterday and right now, and they seemed to buzz whenever he moved.
    The buzzing got louder when he put a hand in her hair.
    He did it in the exact way she’d seen people on TV do it—like they needed to pin another person in place before they could…do whatever. Only Van wasn’t going to do whatever , was he? He just needed to hold her there so he could breathe the hot smoke into her lungs, like giving someone the kiss of life only backward.
    And if his mouth sort of skimmed hers when he did so, well, what did that matter? He likely didn’t mean it. It was just an accident, just an accident, and then his lower lip brushed over her upper lip and every single molecule in her body froze in place.
    He had touched her. She couldn’t get around it—the seventy thousand nerve endings told her the truth of the matter. Everything tingled in that general area, and the tingles got stronger and more insistent when he did it again.
    Once could have been an accident. Twice was purposeful, full of meaning—like a real kiss, only so gentle and barely there she couldn’t quite count it as such. She had to frantically think of other words to call it, as he repeated the slight contact over and over.
    Kish , she thought, but unfortunately he chose that exact moment to remove the H and replace it with a second S.
    Of course she immediately thought of a million different things at once—how he felt, the moment his mouth covered hers, so soft and firm all at the same time. How he tasted—like that burning tea flavor and like something else too.
    Mint , she thought, but mint wasn’t quite right.
    She didn’t get long enough to figure it out, however. He pulled away just as her mind paired mint with something sweetly spicy , and began searching through her mental catalog for actual flavors.
    The catalog was sparse, like everything else in her head. The manual in her mind entitled What to Do When Someone Really Kisses You said just three words—
    Go very still.
    As though she’d become a deer some time in the last thirty seconds. She was a deer, and he was…a Buick .
    “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, once he’d