The Kiss

THE KISS

by

Sotia Lazu

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Sotia Lazu

The Kiss

Copyright © 2012 by Sotia Lazu

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination.

Thank you
,
Sofia, Kysira, Mari, and Lauriel, for all you’ve done for me and this story.

Thank you
,
Andrei
,
for everything. I love you!

Chapter One

Lips covered hers, stifling any words of protest that might have tried to escape—hot lips, firm and pliant at the same time, that fit perfectly against her own. He let out a breath in her mouth, and she tasted alcohol and tobacco before losing herself in the kiss. His tongue didn’t waste any time with gentle probing before invading her mouth. His fingers tightened and loosened their hold on her hair.

She sucked on his tongue and felt more than heard the moan that rose up in his throat. She wanted to touch his face, trace it with her fingertips, but her hands refused to do anything more than bunch his shirt in their grip, holding onto it as if onto life itself.

She pulled back to catch her breath, and he let go, brushing his stubbled chin against her cheek for a moment. Blindly, she sought out his lips again, but they were nowhere to be found.

The lights came back on, and everything was exactly as it had been before the blackout. She was sitting alone at her table, studiously trying to avoid catching the eye of her ex boyfriend and his friends at the next table while waiting for Alan to get back with their drinks.

And she had no clue who’d just kissed her.

***

She and Alan had been flirting for weeks before he’d finally asked her out. They’d been smiling as they passed each other in the hallways, and he’d winked at her once for letting him cut in front of her in the queue at the campus cafeteria. That was when he’d asked her name, too—which had led to hours of speculating and giggling with her roommate that evening. She, on the other hand, had made sure to never slouch when he was around and always have on fresh lip-gloss when she smiled at him.

He was the quiet type, the one who seemed to always be ready to talk about poetry, but at the same time edgy enough to keep a girl on her toes. The fact that he had those big, dark eyes and pouty lips helped his case of course, but it was the air of mystery he exuded that made girls swoon in his wake. Nobody knew where he’d spent the first two years of his studies or where he’d lived before that. Eliza, sophomore in college and with only one relationship in her past
,
that hadn’t exactly left her with the best of memories
,
would not be the one to resist him. He’d asked her out. She’d said yes, and meant,
yes please, with a cherry on top
.

Truth be told, she’d been hoping for dinner and a movie when he’d said he wanted to take her out, but
The Zoo
wasn’t all that bad. Not when she was with him. He’d picked her up at the dorm, told her she looked beautiful, and kept on treating her like a princess by getting the car door for her, holding her hand on the way into the club, and sending those mysterious smiles of his her way.

Things started going screwy when they sat down at the table Alan chose. The club wasn’t packed yet, but Eliza knew it would be.
A lo
cal band was performing that night, and people would soon be streaming in, so they were lucky to find a spot that close to the stage. Or so Eliza thought, until she saw her ex-boyfriend and his buddies sitting at the table to her right. She hadn’t noticed them when she’d first sat down, as Alan had been saying something incredibly profound. She really couldn’t remember what, but she recalled his eyes had been shining, his brow had been furrowed, and he’d seemed sad. When she
did
see the guys in the next table, it was too late to do anything but turn her chair sideways
to
keep them at her back
,
and focus all her attention on her date.

Alan was talking about his last relationship. She could sense a lot of repressed feelings there, and felt honored she was the one he’d chosen to open up to about it. She smiled encouragingly, but he suddenly stopped talking and took hold of her hand in both of his. “Enough about me,” he said. “I want to know all about you.”

She smiled, flattered by his interest. “Well, there’s not much to tell, really.” She lowered her eyes to the table, wondering where to start. “I’m a sophomore, as you kn—”

“Actually…can you hold that thought?” He looked somewhere behind her and let go of her hand, smiling disarmingly. “I’ll get us something to drink.”

“
I’ll have a diet Coke.”
She had to say it to his back; he was already leaving the table by the time it took her to decide whether to be offended or not by his apparent lack of interest. If he weren’t that cute, she’d have probably written him off. She knew she was being shallow, but a guy like Alan taking her out was enough to make her forego her better judgment.

The moment he was out of her sight, an annoyingly familiar voice reached her ears. “Well, look at that, Greg. That guy dropped her faster than even you did.”

Oh,
yay
. The jerks had seen her.

To his credit, Greg said nothing, but
Nate
, best friend to the ass formerly known as her boyfriend, went on. “I mean, this one didn’t even get to sample the goods.”

“Cut it out, Nate,” Greg said flatly in that voice that used to make her shiver with lust and now just left her cold.

“Ah, come on. Let a man have
some
fun, will you?” Nate wasn’t the type to give up, and Eliza sadly knew it.

She turned and glared at him. “What exactly is your problem?” She hoped she sounded disinterested enough. In all honesty, every time Nate decided to make fun of her, she wished the earth would open and swallow her whole, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of backing down.

“Don’t have one.” He sounded as cool as she wanted to seem. “Don’t need one. I don’t like you.” Green eyes sparkling, he high-fived another guy—Ethan-
something
—who’d obviously found his come-back inspired.

Nope, he sure didn’t like her…which was a pity. He was gorgeous, a real-life Adonis, with his green eyes, angelic face, and sculpted body. The eye-candy effect was ruined by the scorn he always directed towards her. He had
dis
liked her ever since he’d first met her, when she and Greg had still been together.

“Well, there you go then.” She waved a hand dismissively. “
That’s
your problem. Deal with it.” Inwardly, she prayed she’d heard the end of it.

A guy chuckled, and she knew it was Bill, the most decent of the group. He had always been nice to her, pre- and post-breakup, and now she graced him with a thankful smile.

He winked at her, then turned to Nate. “She and Greg don’t see a reason to be mean to each other. Leave it alone, already.”

He was wrong, of course. Boy, did she see a reason to be mean toward Greg, but she’d chosen the high road, and he seemed to respect that. Greg hadn’t always been so magnanimous, of course. Not when he’d told
the guys
how useless she was in bed, after he’d taken her virginity.

Not when Nate had mocked her for being easy for weeks afterward, while Greg just smirked.

She’d never found out what had made Greg change his tune; he’d just appeared at her house one day and apologized for everything. She hadn’t believed him, but for the year and a half after that he’d been more than civil.

Which was more than could be said for Nate, who was now leering at her. “Maybe I want her to be mean back. Nasty even.” He waggled his tongue at her. “Come on. I bet you’ve learned a few tricks since
Care-Bear
here popped your cherry.”

She wanted to punch him. Hard. He had no right to rub her face in it or use her old pet name for Greg—stupid though it was. She was glad the lights were dim and hoped he couldn’t see her blush.

The moment that thought crossed her mind, there was a loud
puff
and the lights went out. If Nate said anything else, it was lost in the protests of the crowd, who were afraid the musicians wouldn’t be able to perform without electricity.

She was too grateful for the reprieve the blackout gave her to join in the protests. Alan wouldn’t be able to find their table easily until the lights were back on, and by the time they did, Nate would hopefully have found something else to keep him occupied.

She felt a shift in the air around her, as though someone invaded her personal space. At first she thought it was just someone trying to make his or her way around her table, but then fingers brushed her naked arms on their way up to her neck. She was too stunned to react when they got tangled in her hair and warm breath caressed her cheek.

And then he kissed her.

That kiss…

Now the lights were on again, and Alan was approaching their table, drinks in hand. There was no way he was the one who’d kissed her in the dark; he’d been too far away.

She pouted. Her hands flew to her hair to tuck wayward locks randomly back into her ponytail. She was sure she looked the way she felt: flustered.

***

Eliza tried to get the kiss out of her mind the rest of the evening. She really did.

The band went on, and for a while she managed to just enjoy the music and the company. Alan had obviously sensed something had shifted in her view of him—maybe it was that she no longer hung on his every word—and tried his best to be his most charming self. He complimented her hair, her eyes, and her sense of fashion. He even told her he’d noticed her the very first day of classes, and that she’d looked gorgeous in that short pink dress she’d been wearing when he first saw her.

Eliza hadn’t owned a short pink dress since she was eight years old, and hadn’t attended the first day of classes because of the flu. Still, she appreciated the effort. She nodded and smiled, all the time wondering how on earth she hadn’t noticed sooner that the man was full of crap. They’d never had an actual conversation before, but she should have realized that everything about him was rehearsed. His smile was just the right amount of sad and promising; he had the puppy-eyed look down to a T; and when he was supposedly paying attention to what she was saying, he was covertly scanning the crowd.

Alan Mayfield
,
the guy she’d been pining over for a while now
,
was a player, and she never would have found out if it hadn’t been for her mysterious kisser.

And
that
was how her mind went back to that kiss—the most perfect kiss she’d ever shared with someone outside her imagination. Having no clue
who
the guy she’d shared it with was made her want to scream.

Alan was saying something about how her fingers were graceful, like a pianist’s, while caressing her wrist with his thumb. While he enjoyed the sound of his own voice, she considered the men at the tables around her. Only those close enough could have possibly had time to kiss her and get back to their table before the lights went on, and there were only three tables that fulfilled that condition.

Alan offered to go for a second round of drinks, unwittingly giving her time to evaluate her options. She recognized the cute, well-built guys sitting at the table to her left. The one in the middle was a teaching assistant, and the other two were from his dorm. Their usual clean-cut,
what-you-see-is-what-you-get
faces tonight sported stubble, and Eliza remembered hearing the TA—Cam or Sal, if she wasn’t mistaken—earlier that week, whining about an assignment that wouldn’t let him get any rest. She smiled at them, and they all smiled back. Oh, well.

She wouldn’t really mind if her mystery kisser was any of the three.

It could have been either of the guys sitting right opposite her, too, though she truly hoped that wasn’t the case. One was dressed like a biker, the leather pants and Harley jacket clashing with the thin wire frame of his spectacles and the glass of white wine in front of him. The other was just too flashy for her tastes; she never went for guys wearing more color than she did, and his turquoise jacket could surely be considered
more
, even if she’d had the entire rainbow on her.
The thought that she shouldn’t judge a book by its cover
briefly flitted by her mind, but her thoughts were drawn to the third table of possible kissers.

She’d have known if it had been Greg. His lips were drier, and he’d always made that sound when he’d kissed her
. S
ome kind of combination between heavy breathing and a moan. It had once made her hot, but the thought of it now raised her hackles. There was no way it had been Ethan, either. Ethan would have stuck his hand up her skirt or grabbed her boobs if he’d kissed her, plus he was clean shaven. Nate was out of the question, too, so that left Bill, who was now giving her an adorably goofy grin.

Nate noticed and smacked the back of the other man’s head, rolling his eyes dramatically.
God
, he never failed to get on her nerves. Worse, he obviously thoroughly enjoyed it.