Gilded Lily Read online

  A sigh slipped out of me. “Oh, that is so nice.”

  “It’s climate-controlled, humidity-controlled, warm even in the thick of winter. Come on, we can sit back here.”

  I brought the mug to my lips, blowing on the surface of the tea to cool it a little before taking a sip. The crisp scent of green tea mixed with fragrant jasmine drew the tension from my shoulders, eliciting another sigh.

  He stopped at the table in the back where we’d looked over the florals yesterday. But the buckets were all gone, moved up to the front so Tess could finish the arrangements, the table empty. He took a seat on one of the stools, and I sat next to him, hooking my heels on the bottom rung.

  “Feeling any better?”

  “I am.”

  “Tell me why your day sucked.” He leaned against the side of the table, propping his head on his fist

  “Well,” I started, “I had a dozen back-to-back meetings, and my only meal was a hot dog in the back of a cab. I think I’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-two cups of coffee, which would explain my heart palpitations. The rain, getting soaked, sitting through hours of the Felix sisters heckling wedding bands. Shall I go on?”

  His smile tilted. “They heckled the bands?”

  I rolled my eyes at the memory, laughing softly despite my irritation. “Alexandra booed three of them. Sofia insulted one—she stood up, walked to the stage, and spent a solid ten minutes tearing them apart for any and everything she could come up with. I don’t know how the saxophone player’s mustache had anything to do with the merit of his musical skills, but when she called him a pedophile, he quit on the spot.”

  “Oh my God,” he said on a laugh.

  “They’re a nightmare. During a cover of a Four Tops song, Natasha hitched up her skirt and twerked for the cameras. To ‘Baby, I Need Your Loving,’ for God’s sake. I would have been impressed if I hadn’t been horrified. On TV, her snatch will be blurred out, but in real life, I had a front row seat to two of her orifices I never wanted to see. Which is especially mortifying, given that my ex is intimately familiar with that particular region of her body.”

  The truth of it stung the second I spoke the words.

  Kash’s face darkened, his lips uncharacteristically flat, brows serious. “She’s got to know what she’s doing to you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s aware.” I took a sip of my tea.

  A noisy, angry breath through his nose. “Why would she do that? Why would she torture you that way?”

  “Because that’s what she does. She’s the youngest of four attention whores. They’re a circus, four gorgeous clowns with gags galore. Except instead of squirting flowers and hand buzzers, it’s exhibitionism and insults. They’re in constant competition with each other, and Natasha is queen. I suppose it’s her right as the youngest. And they’re rewarded constantly on social media and through their show for their shitty behavior.”

  “I’ve never watched it,” he admitted. “Just never sounded interesting to me.”

  “Me neither. I mean, I’ve watched a few episodes because they’re my clients and I thought I should give them a fair shake since everybody knows they’re a shitshow. I wanted to judge them on their own merit. But I think the show has created a drama machine. Their audience craves it, and so they keep delivering. I just don’t think assholes are funny. It’s why I hate Seinfeld.”

  I watched him for a reaction. There was always a reaction—the admittance was blasphemy in some circles.

  But Kash only smirked. “Well, they are all assholes.”

  “Thank you,” I said, gesturing to him. “I just don’t think it’s funny to be a jerk. Call me crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy. Not about Seinfeld and not about the Felix Femmes.” He paused. “How’s everything else going?”

  Brock. He meant Brock, and I let loose another sigh. “I don’t know. I’ve got it all packed up in boxes where I can’t see it in the hopes that I’ll forget about it.”

  “And how’s that working out?”

  “Terrible. But what else can I do? Wallowing won’t do any good. I’d rather keep trucking in the hopes that, at some point, it won’t hurt so bad.”

  A flash of emotion shot behind his eyes, there and then gone. “What’s been the hardest part?” he asked honestly, so sincere.

  I answered instantly, before I had time to think, having already dissected and cataloged the entire affair. “The hardest part is being wrong. I was stupid to trust him. I should have known better. I could have avoided all this if I’d been smarter. If I’d paid more attention.”

  He waited for me to continue, but when I didn’t, he said, “I think it’s worth noting that the hardest part isn’t losing him.”

  “It’s not,” I answered definitively. “I’m more confused about how I dated a guy with calf implants.”

  A laugh burst out of him, and I smiled at the sound, though my heart twisted.

  “It just seemed right, you know? In my grand master plan of life, he was exactly the right man for me.” My mind pulled that thread, adding, “Maybe that’s been the real hard part, the truth under the truth. Realizing that the infallible plan was in fact fallible. That what I thought I wanted isn’t what I wanted after all.”

  “As someone who seems to operate strictly by rule and plan, I can imagine that’d be hard,” he said simply.

  I was struck by the truth of his statement, a flick of a tether in my heart. It wasn’t so much what he’d said, his observance no revelation, but in the way he’d said it. In the soft assurance of his face and his solid presence. For the first time in a very long time, I felt understood and heard, and by a man who didn’t know me at all.

  It was safety, I realized, and the feeling struck another chord.

  “Ivy said I should find myself a rebound.” It was a test, a gentle probing for a reaction.

  It was offered by way of the warming of his eyes and the ticking up of one corner of his lips. “Did she?”

  “She did,” was my only answer. I took a sip of my tea, watching him over the rim of my mug.

  “Well, they say the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody.”

  A laugh, nervous and tittering, jumped out of me.

  “You looking for volunteers, Lila?”

  My laughter died at his directness. “That’s silly,” I hedged, certain I misread his meaning.

  “Is it?”

  I opened my mouth to oppose but closed it again. Then, I snagged a thought. “I’m not really in a place to make pragmatic decisions.”

  “On a rebound?”

  “On much of anything. But yes, that too. How can I willingly involve someone in all of this? It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “The biggest danger is to the reboundee,” he said. “And I happen to be immune.”

  The proposition hung in the air for a moment, simmering between us. There was no mistaking his intention, and a shocking rush of yes whispered through me.

  “Immune?” I asked quietly. “How?”

  A pause. “I already know what things are between us and what they’re not. You’re not looking for anything serious, and I’ve never been one for the notion. The reason rebounds exist, why they happen so often, is that when you’ve been hurt, a distraction makes you forget the pain. And I’ve been told I’m an excellent distraction.”

  That smile, tilted and teasing. But his eyes were dark and full of promises.

  He stood, closing the space between us with little more than a shift. My mug disappeared from my hand, placed on the table by his. But I hadn’t seen the action—there was only Kash, towering and sturdy and safe. His smile faded as his gaze hooked on my lips.

  “I can make you forget all about him,” he promised. His hand, warm and rough, cupped my jaw, thumbed my cheek. “Is that what you want?”

  My thoughts were a tangle, jumbled by his proximity. By the heat of him radiating into the chill of my skin, the damp of my hair. The scent of him sliding over me, around me,
pulling me into him without thought or permission.

  Something in my mind yelled through the fog to stop, to think. To make a pros and cons list, to be rational. But with Kash looking at me like that, holding my face like he was, none of it seemed to matter except for one question, the question he’d asked me.

  Did I want to forget Brock? I pulled the thought from the mire, searched for my answer.

  And that answer was clear and true as daylight.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Deliberately, slowly, he framed my face with both hands, tilted it up to the sky. Moonlight burst around him in a halo, the sound of rain against the glass of the greenhouse, the musky scent of earth and fragrant flowers. The moment held, quiet and still. And just when I thought maybe he’d changed his mind, he shifted, slanted, tilted my face with tender force, and brushed his hot lips to mine.

  A sharp, simultaneous intake of breath, the kiss first a brush, then a seam, then a heady tangle of lips and tongues. We twisted together, relief palpable and anticipation tangible as I stood on shaky legs without breaking the kiss. My hands slid up his chest, over his shoulders, around his neck, into the silken depths of his hair. Our bodies were flush, his hand in the small of my back without knowledge of how it’d gotten there, holding me to him as if he couldn’t get me close enough.

  I was no longer cold. There in the circle of his arms, I was on fire.

  Nothing about the kiss was delicate and yet it held a gentility, an exploring tenderness. His fingertips tasted my skin with exquisite demand, precise and deliberate as they trailed the length of my neck, the line of my jaw, the tender space behind my ear. With the slightest squeeze of possession, he tilted my face, angling to delve deeper into my mouth. And with a sharp breath through my nose, I did the same.

  How long had I done without this? How long had I been denied wanting and being wanted? Had I ever? Or had I wasted my years with the wrong kind of men, for all the wrong reasons?

  It’s only that I hadn’t known this existed.

  That Kash existed.

  Compliant and yielding, I held on to him, kissed him with feverish lips, with no thought as to what to do and no desire beyond what he could give me. When his hips pressed me against the table, I felt the weight of that desire, hot and hard. I breathed a moan into his mouth, triggering a flex of his hands—one on my jaw, one on my waist—hips shifting at the sound.

  The hand on my ass moved to my thigh, gathered my skirt in crawling fingers, hitching it high. His fingertips licked at my skin as he tugged until the fabric was around my waist. Free at last, my thighs parted, making way for his hips to press that solid steel against the seam of my body.

  A shock, hot and sharp, shot down my thighs, up my torso, eliciting a gasp that broke the kiss.

  When my drunken eyelids parted, they revealed the sight of Kash looking down at me in the moonlight.

  His big hand cupped my jaw, thumb stroking my bottom lip in a gesture of ownership, drawing a fluttering flex at my center.

  Hot was my desire, pent up and tugging at its chains. And Kash held the key in the palm of his broad hand.

  Down my neck that hand moved, down the V of my shirt to unfasten the button between my breasts with a flick of his fingers.

  His voice was thick, rough. “When was the last time he made you come?” Flick, and another button undone, along with my composure.

  I rolled my hips into his. “A month,” I whispered. “Maybe two.”

  “Unacceptable,” he breathed, angling for my lips, his broad hand sliding into my gaping shirt to cup my breast, his calluses snagging on the silk, but I didn’t care. He could shred it to bits if he wanted to.

  He could do anything he wanted to.

  And as if he heard the thought, he did. A frustrated groan preceded him hooking me around the waist. An answering yelp of surprise as my legs wound around his waist. A giggle against his lips before I kissed him, arms circling his neck to hang on, though my grip was useless. He palmed my ass with one hand, which was strong enough to hold me up while he snatched the flannel blanket off the stool with the other. Gravity shifted as he turned, bouncing as he walked me somewhere unknown, and I didn’t care where. I was too busy tasting him, too occupied with his lips, too absorbed with cataloging the way he felt against me.

  He stopped, tipping me gently, loosening his grip to encourage me to let go of him, but I didn’t. I flexed my arms and legs, keeping me resolutely locked around him. Kash laughed into my mouth and popped my bare ass, the snap and sting earning him what he’d asked, though he didn’t let me go until my feet were on the ground.

  “Stay,” he commanded like I was a puppy.

  But didn’t tell me to be still. I watched him spread the blanket between rows of blush chrysanthemums, undoing my blouse and shucking it. I dropped it without care onto the dirty concrete and shimmied out of my skirt, impatient and aching.

  He was right—it was unacceptable that I’d been unattended for months. That the man I had been with couldn’t be bothered with my pleasure, only his own. That I had to take what I needed, frustrated and ignored.

  Kash turned and stilled, his eyes dragging down the length of my body, then back up. Hungry appreciation zinged between us. His empowered me. Mine was heavy with the desire to get his clothes off, including that T-shirt, which I only just noticed said, Gardening Makes Me Thorny, framed by classic American tattoo roses and thorns.

  I drew my bottom lip into my mouth. When it came to Kash, gardening made me thorny too.

  “Take that off,” I ordered, nodding to his shirt.

  His lips flicked into a smile, his eyes locked on mine as he reached over his shoulder to grab a handful of shirt. He pulled it off in what felt like slow motion, first exposing the deep ridges and flats of his abs, the canals of his hips. The breadth of his chest, the discs of his pecs. Down one arm and over his head, his eyes instantly connecting with mine again. And then, the shirt was gone.

  “What else do you want, Lila?” he asked, a challenge behind a sideways smile.

  Panting. I was panting, too hot, too eager to contain so much heat. “Fuck me up,” I said without thought or care beyond that moment.

  “Oh, I plan to,” he promised, devouring the space between us to scoop me into his arms and kiss me in the same motion.

  With a twist, he spun me, backed me toward the blanket, laid me down. Pressed me into the ground with his weight, crushing and restraining and the closest thing to perfect that I could imagine. His skin was on fire, smooth and silken over hard muscle, and my hands learned every curve, every valley. Every ridge and every dip. His kiss deepened, hips rolling, body pinning me, hand sliding from my jaw to my neck, gripping it only strong enough to keep me still. And there his hand stayed, though his lips strayed down, collarbone to breastbone to breast. Hot mouth over peaked nipple, soaking the silk between tongue and flesh. Without permission, my back arched in offering, neck held to the ground, hips grinding his torso, hating the distance between us. But he didn’t linger. He released my neck, hand taking the place of his tongue on my breast, teasing my nipple tighter as he moved down my ribs, spending a long moment acquainting himself with the dip of my belly button.

  Flashes of what he was about to do burst behind closed lids. Anticipation, the tip of my desire aching in wait for connection. And that wait was excruciating as his nose dragged the flat of my stomach, down the nude silk of my panties, around the peak of my hood, circling the tender flesh before trailing down, down the line of me. The flat of his tongue in the valley of my body, wide lips closing to draw me into his mouth.

  My lungs expanded with a tear of pleasure, contracted with a sigh of release. Heavy lids crept open, seeing first the moonlit glass of the greenhouse, smattered and streaked with rain. Down to the lush mum blossoms dotting a thicket of green. Down to the black of Kash’s hair, my pale fingers buried in his locks. The draw of his brows in concentration, the crescents of black lashes against his cheeks. The flat of his strong nose.


  The pink of his swollen lips. The glimpse of his tongue. The anatomy of my body, every detail visible through the drenched silk.

  I whispered his name, and his lids fluttered open, hand hooking my thigh, hitching it wide. His other hand trailed the hem of my panties next to his mouth, slid underneath. Found my heat, spread me open. Slipped inside.

  My head lolled, lids too heavy. His hands grazed my breasts, annoyed to find them sheathed. Clumsily, impatiently, I shifted to unhook my bra, sliding it off my arms, tossing it away. And then, Kash was impatient too. He broke away, leaving the wet fabric cool and sensitive without the hot pressure of his mouth. Square fingers hooked in the hips of my panties and tugged them down my thighs, over the bend of my knees, off my feet, gone.

  I thought he’d nestle himself where he was but felt the heat of him over me just before he kissed me, lips salty and insistent. But only for a moment—he wanted something else.

  My hands were in his hair again, drawn there like they were meant to live in the lush tresses of darkness. I watched through slanted lids as he closed his eyes and paid homage to my breasts, his fingers tracing the curve, cupping their weight, testing it in discovery. Lips closed over my pale nipple, the sweet pinch of his gentle teeth, the sweep of his tongue. And then, down he went again.

  I mewled, not wanting foreplay or fingers or tongues. I wanted him, every single inch of him inside every space I contained.

  He paused at the sound, slowing his pace, teasing my center with one, broad fingertip. “You’re impatient,” he rasped.

  “Please,” I whispered as he lowered his torso, settling between my legs. “It’s been too long. I don’t need all that.”

  “I disagree,” he said, hot breath against my core, palm spread over the flat of my stomach, legs spread and resting on his broad shoulders.

  And the moment his lips closed over me, I disagreed too.

  My awareness shrank to the point where he was latched to me, my nerves zinging toward the point of contact. Heat in my thighs, pooled low in my belly, a drawing from deep within me with every flick of his tongue, every stroke of his fingers. My hips flexed into him, against him, and he met every move with equal and opposite force.