She shudders under me as if I’ve just whispered an erotic secret in her ear. “Everyone deserves someone who makes them feel the way you make me feel.”
“I only speak the truth.”
“In that case, I need you to answer a question for me.”
“Anything.”
She’s quiet for several long moments, and I use the time to kiss a path from her ear down to her collarbone, and her measured breaths go jagged. “Easton, is this a ‘just because we’re in Paris’ thing?”
I lift my head reluctantly before I reach her breast. “What? What does that mean?”
She pulls out of my arms, and I feel her looking at me in the darkness, but I can’t make out her features. We’re supposed to be sleeping, but I should’ve known I couldn’t sleep with her naked next to me and insisted we keep the lights on. I want to see her. All of her. “It’s okay,” she says. “If this is, like, something we only do once. I can understand that.”
I take her face in my hand, skimming my fingers over her soft cheek. “You know what I’ve been asking myself since we got here?”
“What?”
“If there’s a way I can have you without being the reason you give up your dreams.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you even want me, Easton?”
“Because you’re Shay.”
She laughs. “That’s not actually an answer.”
“Well, why do you want me?”
She scoffs. “Because my heart beats faster every time you’re close. Because any time I know I get to see you or talk to you . . . any time I’m even expecting a text message from you makes me feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. Because when I have your attention I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
“Yeah.” My voice shakes, as unsteady as this feeling in my chest. This is all so tenuous, and I’m fucking terrified I’m going to screw it up somehow. “It’s pretty much the same for me.”
“You feel like the luckiest girl in the world?”
I release her hands and grab her sides. I trap her with a knee on either side of her waist and tickle her. She squirms with laughter under me. Then her back arches and our bodies are flush again and we’re not laughing anymore.
I lower my mouth to hers as I slide my hand up to cup her breast. “Come see me this summer,” I say against her lips. “Come visit me in L.A. before training camp. I know you can’t stay—you need to finish your degree—but visit, sleep with me, and be there when I get home every night.” I swallow hard. I don’t know what I’ll do if she says no. I’ve never wanted anything more. “Everything after that we can just take a week at a time.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll be there.”
I grin. “Does that mean Shayleigh Jackson’s going to be my girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. I’m so convinced I’m going to wake up from this crazy dream any minute now.”
I nuzzle my face in the crook of her neck and pinch her nipple. “Then let me prove you’re not dreaming.”
Shay
Paris with Easton is nothing short of a dream. I can’t imagine a life in which this day doesn’t remain one of my favorite memories.
I told my professor that a family friend was in Paris and got permission to spend the day with him while my classmates continued with previously scheduled activities.
Easton and I used every second we had. We took a boat ride down the Seine, walked up the steep hill to Sacré-Coeur, and shared gelato from a street cart outside an art gallery in Montmartre. When we walked the streets of Le Marais by his hotel, he insisted on buying me this lavender-and-lemon-scented soap, and a pretty pink-and-purple scarf. I tell myself it’s a good thing he has to leave tonight. If he didn’t, I’d probably get myself in trouble trying to get out of more time with my classmates so I could be with him. But I don’t want him to go. In Paris, we’re in this bubble—a microcosm where Shayleigh Jackson and Easton Connor isn’t an absurd joke but an actual possibility.
His driver takes me back to the dorms to drop me off before he heads to the airport, and he kisses me so long in the back of the limo that I find myself straddling his waist again.
He groans and grips my waist with the possessive strength I love so much. “You’re going to make me late for my flight.”
“Sorry.” I blush, but there’s no real embarrassment. Not after all we shared last night. “I know you need to go. I just don’t want you to.”
He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and studies my face. “I don’t want to either. But I see you next month, right? You’re not going to chicken out on me? You’ll fly to L.A.? Stay with me in Laguna?”