Veritas (12 page)

“Got it.
” Grey did not pull her hand away, but instead left it wrapped lightly around Lauren’s jaw. Her eyes darted over Lauren’s face, from her lips to her eyes that sparkled with both surprise and desire, and she let out a shaky sigh as she began to lean in closer.

“This is a really bad idea,” Lauren whispered, her eyes fluttering shut as Grey’s breath landed lightly on her lips.
Bad idea or not, she could not find the willpower to pull away. Her stomach fluttered with anticipation as Grey’s mouth hovered just out of reach, warm and soft and full of promise, and her heart leapt into her throat when she felt the air in front of her stir.

“Maybe.” Grey ran the tip of her nose over Lauren’s cheek. “But all the best ones are,” she murmured as she closed the gap between them and finally captured Lauren’s lips with her own.

Kissing Grey was like nothing Lauren had experienced before. Grey’s lips were so soft, almost hesitant in the way they molded to her own, like Grey was waiting for her to pull away. She knew that she should stop this, but her heart had swooped up into her throat the moment Grey’s lips landed on hers, and she found herself powerless to resist.

Grey tasted like mint and cream, and the fingers against her jaw were steel silk. Lauren could feel the air shift around them as Grey leaned into her, and desire—hot, white, and all-consuming—flared in her veins as the last of her resolve to do the smart thing disappeared. She reached for Grey, her fingers twisting blindly in the loose fabric of
Grey’s shirt as she pulled her closer.

She could not contain the low moan that rumbled in the back of her throat when Grey’s tongue swept slowly over her lower lip, tentatively seeking more. Her nipples
became instantly, impossibly hard as she opened her mouth, and the shaky whimper that fell against her lips as Grey’s fingers threaded through her hair sent a delicious tremor of anticipation rolling down her spine.

Grey gr
oaned as Lauren’s mouth slanted over hers, opening wider and inviting her in deeper. Her pulse pounded in her ears as Lauren’s tongue swirled around her own in a sensual dance of exploration and need, and her stomach swooped and dove at the feeling of Lauren’s body arching into her. Warmth she had thought she would never feel again swept through her with every languid swipe of Lauren’s tongue around her own and with every flex of the redhead’s fingers in her shirt. She fisted her hands in Lauren’s hair, holding her in place as she took control of the kiss, every ardent clash of lips less restrained than the last. It was madness. Sheer, unexplainable insanity, and she craved more.

A shrill wolf-whistle and catcalls drove them apart, and the world they had all but forgotten slammed violently back into place. They came apart slowly, cheeks flushed with a combination of arousal and embarrassment, and Grey cleared her throat softly as she carefully untangled her fingers from Lauren’s hair
and made a half-hearted effort to smooth it back into place.

“I…”
Grey’s voice trailed off and she shrugged, her lips curling in a small smile as she looked at Lauren. Her heart raced as she held Lauren’s half-lidded gaze, and she shook her head as she trailed her fingers down the sides of Lauren’s throat, unwilling to let go of her quite yet.  “Wow.”

Lauren bit her lip and smoothed her hands over the wrinkled fabric of Grey’s shirt that she had been holding onto. The lust-fueled fog that had filled her from the moment Grey’s hand had landed on her face dissipated, taking the carelessness it had wrought within her away with it. Reality, cold and sharp and painful washed over her, and she sighed as she looked over Grey’s shoulder at the group of twenty-something men in cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts that had interrupted them. A part of her was annoyed that they had intruded, but there was a larger part of herself that was grateful for the interference because, no matter how muc
h she enjoyed kissing Grey, it should have never happened.

She should have never allowed it to happen.
Grey was not over Emily, and she knew that she looked too much like her for this to be a wise decision.

Grey turned to follow Lauren’s gaze, and she rolled her eyes at the grins and thumbs up the men were flashing at them. “Assholes,” she muttered, shaking her head as she turned back to Lauren. Her breath caught in her throat at the distant look in Lauren’s eyes, and she swallowed thickly as she reached out to run a gentle finger over
Lauren’s kiss-swollen lips. “Lauren?”

The gentle touch pulled Lauren back to herself, and she forced a small smile as she carefully avoided Grey’s gaze. “It’s getting late. We should get back to the boat.”

“What?” Grey’s brow furrowed with confusion as she watched Lauren practically leap from the bench and wrap her arms around herself. She quickly followed, reaching out with her right hand to grab hold of Lauren’s elbow. “What’s wrong?”

Everything
, Lauren thought.
She closed her eyes, unable to stand the raw emotion burning in Grey’s gaze. “Can we just talk about this back on the boat?”

Grey’s eyes darted
automatically to the
Veritas
, and she was relieved to see that the lights in the salon were still off. Whatever way this conversation was going to go, she knew that they were not going to want an audience. “Okay.”

The air between them crackled with tension and confusion and a latent, simmering yearning for more as they made their way wordlessly back to the
boat. Grey kept stealing glances at Lauren as they walked, but Lauren’s expression gave nothing away and Grey wished that she had some clue of what was going on inside her head. From the way Lauren had kissed her, Grey knew that the electricity she had felt between them was not just a figment of her imagination, but she was not feeling at all encouraged by the way Lauren was walking beside her now with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle.

Once they were finally back on the boat, Grey murmured an apology to Lauren as she eased past her to unlock the sliding doors to the salon.
Lauren did not make a sound as she stepped out of the way, and Grey closed her eyes as she threw the doors open, letting the heavy glass roll silently on their tracks until magnets on the frame grabbed each one and locked them into place.

Grey’s stomach sank as she stepped into the salon, convinced by the way Lauren was acting that she was going to get some version of the it-was-a-mistake-and-can’t-happen-again speech.

The clarity Lauren had hoped to gain during the walk back to the boat evaded her, and she sighed as she followed Grey inside. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest when the lights flickered on, and she hovered just inside the threshold as she watched Grey wander further into the salon, hoping that the physical distance between them would help her think.

She blinked hard and tried
to force herself to forget the taste of Grey’s kiss. If she could just forget the way her skin tingled where Grey held her, if she could just forget the way that kiss had made her feel, then she could say the words she knew she needed to say.

But when Grey turned expectantly toward her,
dark eyes shining with defiance, daring her to say that it was a mistake, Lauren could not form the words. It might have been a case of desire overriding common sense, but Lauren could not force herself to say that kissing Grey had been a mistake. It had been stupid and reckless and, god, probably the worst thing she could have possibly done, but the truth was that she wanted Grey. Had wanted her from the moment she first laid eyes on her. She wanted to feel Grey’s hands on her skin, and she wanted to touch her in return. She wanted to kiss Grey, her lips practically tingled with the desire to do it again, and she was just not strong enough to deny it.

Lauren held Grey’s gaze as she closed the distance that separated them in four long strides. She watched uncertainty and hope flicker in Grey’s eyes as she reached up to cradle
her face in her hands, and she let out a soft sight as she leaned in and claimed Grey’s lips with her own.

It took Grey a split-second to react to the crush of Lauren’s mouth against her own, but when she did, it was like gasoline to a flame. Her han
ds shot out, blindly wrapping around Lauren’s waist and pulling her in closer until their hips were pressed tightly together. She moaned as Lauren’s hands slipped around her head, the redhead’s arms locking behind her neck as a demanding tongue pushed boldly inside her mouth.

Lauren’s head swam at the feeling of
full breasts pressing into her own as Grey spun them around until the backs of her thighs connected with the edge of the counter. Grey’s hips shifted against her, and Lauren groaned as a lean thigh snaked its way between her own. Their kisses grew deeper, hotter, and hungrier as their hands roamed over each other’s bodies, fingers tangling in hair and tugging as hips rocked together in an unconscious dance of wanton abandon.

It was the feeling of an insistent hand sliding possessively over her breast that snapped Lauren from the lust-fueled fog she had been lost in, and she
sighed against Grey’s mouth at the feeling of Grey’s thumb dragging over her nipple. It felt good. Goddamn, it felt so good, but she
needed
to know that it was her that Grey wanted. “Grey?”

Grey laid a string of kisses over Lauren’s jaw to her ear. “Hmm?” she hummed softly, flicking her tongue over Lauren’s earlobe as she ran her thumb in s
low circles around her nipple.

Lauren reached up and covered Grey’s hand with her own. “I just need to know. Is this
—” she squeezed the hand on her breast lightly, “—just because I look like Emily?”

Grey froze at the sound of Emily’s name, and pulled her hand slowly from Lauren’s breast and let it fall to her waist. She closed her eyes, leaned her temple against Lauren’s, and took a long, slow breath in through her nose, inhaling the sweet scent of Lauren’s perfume. She focused on the way her heart beat inside her chest, slowly, steadily, and she felt a gentle warmth radiate through her, like Emily was reassuring her that it was okay for her to move on.

She pressed a chaste kiss to Lauren’s cheek and then took a small step back, not so far to lose contact with Lauren, but just enough that she was no longer pinning her to the counter.
Her eyes roamed slowly over Lauren’s face, over kiss-swollen lips and dark, gray-green eyes. Lauren’s cheeks were flushed, and her hair was in mild disarray from the way she had been running her fingers through it. Grey shook her head as she finally answered Lauren’s question. “No. This is not because you look like Emily. If anything, it’s in spite of the fact that you do.”

The breath Lauren had not realized she had been holding left her in a
long, drawn-out stream. “What do you mean?”

Grey
shrugged and ran her hands through her hair as she tried to find a way to explain it all. “I did not want to feel like this toward you,” she said, perhaps a little too honestly. But, she figured, they were discussing Lauren’s resemblance to her deceased fiancée, so there really was nothing that could be more of a mood-kill than
that
. “I would have fired you that first day if I knew how to cook well enough to do the job on my own.”

Lauren nodded, not particularly surprised by the confession.
“I thought I had done something to make you hate me and, for the life of me, I could not figure out what it was.”

“
You reminded me too much of her,” Grey said softly. “But then…I dunno.” She shook her head. “It was little things, I guess, that began chipping away at me without me even noticing. I mean, you’re obviously different people, but it was hard, at first, to see that when looking at you reminded me of her. But the more time we spent together, the more I started to see it. You’re much more driven—I don’t think I can name one person who would choose to work during their first vacation in a decade. Emily was content to just go with the flow, not really looking to do more than enjoy life. You like the quiet, you enjoy just sitting back and taking it all in like me… I mean, Emily always sat with me like you’ve done these last few days, but she didn’t crave the quiet. It’s just…” She shrugged. “You’re just different. You express yourself differently, New York brusqueness mixed with Midwestern sweetness. You move with a purpose, like every motion has to accomplish something. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Grey…”

Grey sighed. “I know. All of this would be so much easier if looking at you didn’t remind me of her, but I
liked
kissing you. And I would really like to do it again.”

Lauren nodded slowly as she processed everything Grey had just said. “
I liked it too. I would be lying if I said that I’m not attracted to you, and I’m not looking for this to be anything serious, but I don’t want to compete with a ghost. I don’t want to be with you, and know that you’re thinking about her.”

The left side of Grey’s mouth quirked up in a small smile, and she shook her head almost sadly as she reached up to tuck an errant curl behind Lauren’s ear. She lingered in the touch for a moment before she let
her hand fall away. “It wouldn’t be like that.”