Her Kiss (Griffin) (7 page)

Only she was trembling like a leaf.
I bit my lip. Man. I had to move
slow
—slower.
The problem was, I just wanted to attack her. I mean
,
I only had three minutes with her. Three frickin’ minutes—then she was
going to go back to Poser, and I was going to have to go back to pretending I
didn’t care. But this getting to touch her bonus was going to make it harder.
Way harder.

I was careful not to put my hands
on her waist because I remembered last time—how it made her jump.
Instead, I gently brought my hands up to either side of her smooth, soft face.

Just the feel of her silky skin,
heat shot through me. Plus there was an added bonus, I felt her do this
pant-like, passion-filled intake of air. Like my touch took her breath away. It
sent happy
fireworks
through my body.

Slowly, tenderly my mouth
cautiously lowered to hers, our lips touching gentle, just tentative. Yet she
trembled in the best possible way. So I was enjoying this moment like it was
Christmas morning and I’d been a good, good boy.

I kept my eyes on her and kissed
her again—just soft.
Breathing
in her scent.
I was being excruciatingly careful. Taking my time. Making
sure she was enjoying herself. This was my Cookie Girl and she’d just been hurt
by her boyfriend, and I was a scary, scary guy. So yeah, I was going
slow
. My lips just softly brushing against hers, teasing and
coaxing, but gentle, gentle, gentle … until she made this tiny purr noise from
the back of her throat.

Every part of me came alive. I was
in love with that noise.

I wrapped my arms around her tiny
waist, pulling her closer to me, deepening the kiss, my hungry, eager lips wild
to cover hers more thoroughly. But didn’t. I was trying my hardest to keep
things slow.
Cookie Girl … Hurt by
boyfriend … Scary Guy
. She responded to my lips pressing harder against
hers with heart stopping shivers and a sexy as anything hot willing mouth … and
more purring.
Mmmm
.

I was in heaven.

This
was heaven—kissing my Cookie Girl.

As the soft heavenly kissing
continued, on and on, her trembling hands curled into my hair.

Oh
my gosh
!

Sharp desire sliced through me.
Man, slow!
I tugged her closer to my
chest, groaning against her warm moist heavenly mouth, thinking I might die
from this—keeping things slow. The girl was touching me. Of her own
freewill. Okay, I don’t think she had a clue what she was doing—that her
hands were in my hair, or what it was doing to my heartbeat. But that didn’t
matter so much. Or it made it better even. She was tangling her Cookie Girl
hands in my hair and didn’t have a clue. I was seriously dying.

I kept deepening the kiss, just a
little—well, tried to keep it just a little. The noises she was making
and the feel of her pounding heart was bringing me to my knees.

Still, even with all that—
all
that—I was
still
trying my hardest not to scare
her. But my slow, gentle kisses could only last so long, then my seduced
yearning mouth crashed against hers more heated, my tongue sliding between her
lips.

My passion grew every second as I
explored her delicious, tantalizing mouth like there was no tomorrow—and
she let me.

My mouth was devouring hers,
couldn’t get enough.

Only, curiously—she was
melting under my touch. Starting to fall over. I swear
,
I had to hold her up.

“You okay?” I pulled away slightly
to study her gorgeous blushing face.

She nodded, out of breath. I still
had to hold her up, though, to steady her, so I wasn’t sure.

She smiled shyly. “You—you’re
just a—a really good kisser.”

A fire burned inside me—for
her.

I gave a soft laugh and went back
to kissing her, savoring every second of it. I so didn’t mind holding her up.
At all.
I liked it—her weak in the knees over me.

I just didn’t want her dying on me.
I wanted her
imprinted
on me—my
werewolf cinnamon mate.

All too soon the closet door was
flung open, bright light pouring into our love shack (aka: closet).

I groaned in her mouth, but didn’t
let her go. I was going to keep kissing her until she made me stop—
if
she made me stop.

In my head, I was cursing out all
the people that voted for the “three minutes” in heaven, rather than the seven.
I hated them all. I wanted more time in heaven with this cinnamon-flavored,
purring girl.

My teammates cheered in the open
doorway, whooping and chanting like I’d made a goal on the ice.
That made me finally pull
away from delicious Ally.

I lowered my forehead against hers,
both of us out of breath and panting. I whispered in her ear, “That went by way
too fast.”

That seemed to wake her out of her
breathless kiss-daze. (Kind of weird my teammates’ chanting didn’t, but hey,
I’m a good kisser.) She scrambled away from me and out of the closet like it
was on fire.

My chest rose and fell as I watched
her go.

I drew out an amused, frustrated
sigh, because, well, she ran from me—yet
again
. But hey, at least she’d let me do all that kissing
stuff—with my tongue and everything. She hadn’t run away during
that
.

I left the closet with a big happy
smile on my face, smelling like cinnamon; liking this game,
strange
as it was …
people waiting around while you kiss in a closet. Most
hockey parties don’t go like that—you like a girl, you kiss her, that’s
it.…
But then again, you don’t end up getting to kiss girls
like Ally Grange that way, because her boyfriend wouldn’t get called into a
closet, and she wouldn’t need to show him he’s a moron.

So yeah, I liked the game.

CHAPTER 16

After my three minutes in heaven, I
stuck around the party.
Mostly because I enjoyed sneaking
looks at glowing Ally.
She
was
glowing. And her friends kept telling her. I think they mostly did that to make
Poser mad—but it only made
me
smile.

So did her blushing over her
friends’ gushing. (The girl has a great blush.)

Her friends kept telling her stuff
like, “You’re beaming.” And, “Wow. That must have been some kiss.” They were
doing it in fake whispers. So Poser could hear. And he did—hear them.
Even
I
could hear them
sometimes, and I was across the room with my friends—eavesdropping.
Though so were my friends.
Sort of.
They would hear
what Ally’s friends were saying, then give me a fist pound.

They were all astonished I picked
Ally to go into the closet with, of course. Though they thought it was
hilarious, and entirely just a joke to spin-up Poser. They thought that’s the
only reason I did it. The sad thing was, I figured that’s what Ally thought
too.

But, no shock to anyone, my picking
Ally
did
wind-up Poser. So did
Ally,
herself
. She was totally giving him the cold
treatment, just talking with her friends and pretty much acting like he didn’t
exist (but also kind of like she wanted to slap him—man, I wanted to see
that. Bad.)

Poser’s face was turning all
splotchy and red and he looked like he might cry any second. But hey, he
shouldn’t have gone into the closet with another girl. He was lucky Ally didn’t
kiss every guy in the room.

I kept glancing at Ally. I knew she
could feel my eyes on her, the way she kept
ceasing to breathe and
flushing
whenever I looked
her way,
but she refused to acknowledge my gaze, even when her friends nudged
her, whispering about me. Still, she’d look anywhere but at me.

Then once, finally, I looked up and
caught her sneaking a look at me from across the room. Finally! Our eyes met
for a second. A smile spread on my lips like I just won a trip to the moon. She
looked away lightening fast, of course, but not before I gave her a wink.

Man, I dug the girl.

Just catching her looking at me
unexpectedly like that made my pulse thump. And now—wild—a piece of
my heart was twisting and convulsing, longing for her.
What the—???

Hailey caught my moment of awed
confusion. She huffed and rolled her eyes. “She’s not your type, Griffin. Do
you—and her—and
all
of
us—a favor and knock it off.”

I gave a confused laugh. “Knock
what off?”

“The worshipping.”

Oh yeah. Hailey knew my calling
Ally into the closet wasn’t a joke. She knew Ally was my Heaven.

Just to change the subject, I
jutted my chin. “So, what’s my type?” I quirked my eyebrows with a grin, “You?”

Hailey turned red and looked away.
I’d never seen her blush before. Ever.

I just wanted her off the Ally
subject—that was the
only
reason I said that. But she had to
admit,
the way she
was getting so riled up was like a jealous chick. Still, I felt bad. I didn’t
mean to call her out.

“I was just messing with you Hailey.”
I don’t normally apologize. Or have moments of seriousness. And I don’t usually
call her Hailey. I call her
Pop-fly
, because in fifth
grade she caught my pop-fly and won that year’s baseball tournament. But the
word “Hailey” came out of my mouth, and that seemed to make her just as red as
the call-out.

This wasn’t my night. I mean, it
was
—with my Heaven. Definitely.
But not with my grouchy friend.

“Don’t worry about it,
Pop-fly
,” I soothed with a grin. “She seems to know she’s
not my type—though just for the record, I don’t have a type.” Then I
added, “But if I had one—it would be her.”

I don’t normally talk so straight,
but I guess I was still flying from my three minutes in heaven. So, curiously,
I put the truth out there—to someone. It was to Hailey because she was
the only person at the party that suspected the truth.
The
only
person.
Ally sure
didn’t. She had no clue she was my Heaven.

I knew that (for a fact) because I
heard her whisper to her friends when Poser stomped off to the bathroom and she
had a moment alone with her friends, she whispered to them adamantly, “Griffin
only called me into the closet to make Aiden mad—but at that moment,
I’d
wanted to make Aiden mad too.
But now I know it was a mistake, of course. That kiss …”

She made a groaning half-dreamy,
half-tortured sighing sound.

I totally understood the feeling.

Only I didn’t see it as a mistake.

***

“Did you have
fun
in the closet?” Aiden hissed to Ally.

It was the first thing he’d said to
her since she came out of the closet. I don’t think he went to the “bathroom”
when he said that’s where he was going. I think he downed a couple of beers,
feeling sorry for himself.

“Dang yeah, I had fun,” Ally
chirped, obviously trying to sound like she was on top of the world—and
like she didn’t have a loser boyfriend willing to go into the closet with a
skanky cheerleader that was making it painfully clear she was after Ally’s guy.

Ally flung her hair back and
squared her shoulders. “Probably as much fun as you had with Fauna.”

Poser narrowed his eyes at her.
“That wasn’t my fault.”

“Neither was
mine
, Aiden.”

Poser shook his head, looking like
he was disgusted with her.
That made me clench
my
fists, ready for action. If he said one mean word to her, I was going to throw.

Poser’s expression was totally
take that
as he snipped to Ally, “Fauna
texted me a second ago. I’m giving her a ride to her friend’s house to get her
car. She needs a ride—come on.”

Poser got to his feet, acting like
Ally would go along with his morbidly insane, highly inappropriate
arrangement—I mean, the guy had just finished
making-out
with the skank in a closet. Now he expected Ally to give
the girl a ride? That was beyond messed up.

It was like he was trying to force
a perverse punishment on Ally for going into the closet with me.

The guy was a dirt-bag. He needed
to go down. I was itching to do it. The only thing stopping me was Ally. I
didn’t want her to think that’s all I do—beat up little punks. Still,
that’s what I wanted to do—beat up the little punk.

Ally stayed where she was on the
floor, glaring witheringly up at her immature boyfriend like he was insane.
Which he
was.
She said tersely, “No thanks. I’ll
stay.”

“I’m not coming back,” Aiden
growled through gritted teeth.

Ally gave a long sigh and got up,
but not like she was going to go with him. It was more like she just didn’t
want to have to talk so loud anymore, since they were kind of making a scene.

She quipped, sounding way more
confident than she looked (since the room was full of drunk people—which
aren’t the safest drivers), “Fine, Aiden. I’ll find my own ride.”

I was at Ally’s side in a second.
(Totally not drunk, as I hadn’t had a sip of beer—hoping for just such an
opportunity. Score!)

I grinned. “I’ll give you a ride,
Grange.”

A small growling noise came from
the back of Poser’s throat. It was hilarious.

He opened his mouth like he was
going to protest—loudly—but then he snapped his mouth shut.
Without a word.
Instead of saying anything, he grabbed
Ally’s hand, trying to drag her toward the door with him.

Who does that?

Instead of going with him, Heaven
stayed planted, giving him a look that said,
‘Are you kidding me
?!
’

I exhaled slowly with a smile,
restraining myself from bursting out laughing since this seemed like an
inappropriate time. But come on. The guy was a walking joke.

Finally, Poser let out an
exasperated breath. In a tantrum, he slammed down Heaven’s hand and growled
through gritted teeth, “Ally, the guy’s not interested in you. He just wants to
piss me off. He’s never even
looked
at you before.”

I bit back another grin, quirking
my eyebrows at Ally. She had to know that wasn’t true. After all, I hadn’t just
noticed
her
before,
I’d
kissed
her before.
In room 204.
She had put me in a happy werewolf daze that
had lasted for weeks.

Fauna cozied up to Aiden. “I’m
ready to go,” she purred.

I choked back a laugh. Yeah, Fauna
was ‘
Ready to go.’
The girl was easy.
She was always ‘Ready to go.’ I’d never seen her
not
ready to go.

Instead of mentioning
this—which I really wanted to—but instead, my gaze cut to Ally. I
was worried for her. I mean
,
it had to hurt to see
Floozy Fauna snuggling up to her boyfriend. I raised my eyebrows at her, like ‘
What do you want me to do?’

I was really hoping she’d say,
“Pound the twerp.”

But she didn’t.
Of
course.
She was probably making up a sweet song in her head called “The
Night My Boyfriend Broke My Heart.” ’Cause that’s what it looked like. It
looked like her heart was breaking. Which did something terrible to mine.

Just seeing her hurting like that
made me wince.

Poser said it again through
clinched teeth, “Ally, when I go I’m not coming back.”

Heaven nodded, swallowing hard.
“Good, don’t. If you leave with her, I don’t want you to come back.”

Yeah,
Ally!!

Fauna flashed Heaven a wicked
smile. Then she tugged on Aiden’s arm. “Come on,” she purred. “I’ve got to go.”

But Aiden didn’t move. He stood
looking at Ally, and she stood looking at him. They both looked ready to burst
into tears. Which was bad. She wasn’t ready to break up with him.

I let out a disheartened breath.
“Come on, Fauna. I’ll give you a ride.”

Fauna blinked. “What? No. I want
Aiden.”

I smirked. “Yeah, no kidding. We
all know what you want. But you’ve caused enough trouble for the Innocents
tonight.” I pulled her towards the front door. “Come on. They want to make up.”

“But—but—”

I ignored her protests and led her
outside.

I could hear my teammates teasing
Aiden, “Look at Poser, he’s about to cry.”

But all I could think about was
Ally.
She
was about to cry.

I yanked my car door open for
pouting Fauna, waited for her to climb into the passenger’s seat, then slammed
the door shut.

She glared at me as I started up
the car. But then, as I drove her towards her friend’s house she started to
have a change of heart. In fact, she started flirting. ’Cause that’s
Fauna—love the one you’re with. (Or at least stir him up.)

She put her hand on my thigh as I
pulled up in her friend’s driveway.

“You can come inside and visit for
a while,” she offered all breathy and
I’m-an-easy-score
-like.

Her hand crept up my thigh. “We can
have some fun,” she purred.

I pushed her hand away, pissed I
was here instead of making sure Ally got home okay. “I’m not interested,
Fauna—not even slightly.”

“Geez, Griff. You seem mad,” she
pouted, acting like it was rude of me not to let her get me heated. “I’m the
one that should be mad. You dragged me away from Aiden.”

I glared up at the ceiling. “The
guy has a girlfriend. Leave him alone.”

Fauna scoffed. “Geez, what do you
care? You don’t even like Aiden. You took his
girlfriend
into the closet just to get him riled-up. It seems like
you’d be as glad as me if they broke up.”

My stomach shriveled. “Ally
wouldn’t be glad, though. She’d be hurt.”

Fauna blinked. Then she gave an
incredulous laugh—like she couldn’t believe her ears. “You can
not
seriously be into Ally Grange.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared
out the window.

Fauna made this huff noise. She
sounded irritated. Almost as irritated as Hailey always did when Ally was
involved in a conversation that had to do with me. Like just the thought of us
together made her mad.

Fauna’s voice was bitter, “You can
have pretty much any girl you want—why her?”

I could have pretty much any girl I
want? I was not aware of that. But either way—if I could or
couldn’t—unfortunately, the girl I wanted was Ally. And no, I couldn’t
have her. She normally ran from me. In fact, she wouldn’t let me near her
unless it had something to do with her boyfriend. Still, I wasn’t going to
discuss it with Fauna. I wanted the loser out of my car.

She wasn’t getting the hint though.
Instead she drawled out with an evil smirk, “Look Grief-Master, we’re alike.”

I raised my eyebrows at her, my
silent:
No way on earth
.

She laughed. “Yes we are! We’re in
the same boat.
The exact same situation.
Why don’t you
just
lead
her away from
Aiden?”

“She doesn’t seem to want to be led
away.”

Fauna shrugged. “So? You could just
lead
her anyway.”

I shook my head slowly, letting her
know—no matter what she said—we weren’t the same. Not even close.
“I don’t do that. Now get out of my car.”