“Sooo,” I said, nuzzling his temple. “You don’t like it when I surprise you, huh? That’s very possessive and controlling. Maybe you haven’t changed as much as you think.”
I could feel him scowling through my skin and delighted in the way it tickled. “I assumed we were supposed to be completely in sync after we started dating,” he grumbled. “I was told the best couples understand each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences.”
“Ha! Where’d you get that advice, an internet quiz?”
“Well excuse me for wanting to be romantic!” he said, his voice rising in pitch.
Oh, sweet banter. How I missed it.
“Quentin, I love you, but I don’t want to merge with you,” I said, tugging on his sideburns. He needed a haircut soon. “You’re going to have to accept a surprise every now and then.”
He paused. Then he looked up at me. His face had a wild, Cheshire grin smeared all over it. “Do you know what you just said?”
“That you’re going to have to deal with surprises?”
“No. The other thing.” I backtracked, puzzling over what he meant, until it hit me.
Oh god no.
“You said it!” Quentin crowed. “You said it first!”
I could feel the blood rushing upward through my neck and into my cheeks. “That doesn’t count!” It wasn’t supposed to be a contest between us—who said the three words of doom first. Except of course it was. It had been our unspoken battle to the death for a long time now.
“You will never live this down,” Quentin said. “My victory stands for all time!” He shimmied along the ground in a butt-wiggling, taunting dance.
I tried to get my hands around his neck, but he grabbed my wrists and fended me off. “Yunie owes me ten dollars!” he shouted as we struggled.
“Quentin, I will kill you!”
“But how can you kill what you looooove!”
I wanted to shut him up, so I did, the best way I knew how. I attacked his lips with mine, smothering the four-letter L-word right out of him. He let go of my arms, freeing me to run my fingers through his hair in what was possibly and without exaggeration my favorite thing to do in the world.
Without breaking our kiss, he gripped me under my knees and hoisted me into the air. I thought he wanted to keep me there, suspended in time and space, until he took a step to the side and pinned me against the tree, hard enough to send a shower of leaves down around us. I gasped in the thrill of his body crushing even deeper into mine.
I kicked off the trunk and toppled forward onto him, folding myself in half to stay in contact with his mouth. My hands dove for the skin under his shirt and ran into his tail wrapped around his waist, a boundary that would have been unfamiliar to anyone but me.
“Wa—” he said, his words muffled by our never-ending kiss. Lying on his back like that, he couldn’t draw his head far away enough to speak clearly, so he resorted to grabbing my ponytail and yanking on it sharply. “Wait!” he said again, clearer this time.
I scowled at him as angrily as I ever had. Quentin looked up at me like it wasn’t his fault we’d stopped. “Nineteen, remember?” he said. “Your words, not mine.”
Ugh. I remembered. Past-Genie could be a real drag. Now-Genie wanted to cut ties to every inhibition she’d ever had, to feast, to howl at the moon with glee. If I could have chosen to be two different people at that moment, I would have.
But he was right. And in the spirit of taking him seriously, I slowed the roaming of my hands to a crawl, and then finally to a rest. Under the fabric of his shirt I drummed my fingers against the rock-hard resistance of his abs, conquered territory that I wasn’t ready to give up yet. They would have to redraw the map as far as I was concerned.
“Fiiiiiiiiiine,” I grumbled. “We won’t break my rule. My stupid, stupid rule.”
Quentin nodded sagely. Right before he grabbed my hips, arched his spine, and flipped me over so that he was on top.
“We won’t,” Quentin said, his expression of prudence replaced with
the most wicked smirk I’d ever seen. “But we can skirt it pretty close.”
I grinned and pulled him back in for more.
? ? ?
I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock vibrating. I reached over to hit the snooze button but ended up slapping Quentin in the face.