“Are you sure about that?” she shot.

“We talked and drank and…that’s it.” Wasn’t it? “We were friends, Tess.”

“I thought so too. And then you kissed me. You told me you wanted to date, kissed me all night, and forgot me by the morning.”

I found that night in my memory and flicked through it. But the end was a blank space. I didn’t remember anything until the next morning when I woken up, half-hanging from the bunk with a thumping headache and a stiff neck.

“I … I don’t remember.”

“I know you don’t. You didn’t remember when you came to work the next day either. When you patted me on the head and made out with Ivy in storage.”

I shook my head, half to argue, half to shake the cobwebs out. “No.” I pulled her closer, closer still, my eyes bouncing between hers. “I’d never forget you.”

“Except that you did. Because that’s what you do. I didn’t mean anything to you—nothing seemed to—so excuse me for assuming things hadn’t changed.”

“Tess,” I said, the word bouncing off her lips and into mine.

“What?”

“I owe you a real kiss.”

“No, you don’t.” The words trembled, her tone belying their meaning.

I let her arm go, my hand sliding up the line of her jaw, the shape fitting in my palm neatly. “Yes, I do. All I need is five minutes.”

“F-for what?” she breathed.

“To change your mind.”

A shift of permission—the simultaneous intake of breath, fluttering of lashes, tilting of her face, parting of lips. For a protracted heartbeat, I gazed into the face of submission, held it in my palm.

And then I took it for mine.

Lips, a hot crush of lips, soft and eager, willing and earnest. A noisy breath, the scent of earth and life and loam filling my lungs, filling my mind.

I was slammed back in time with a jolt.

The moonlight in the greenhouse, the sigh from her lips, the sweetness of her, the fire in me. Tess. Whiskey on her breath. Her mouth, her tongue had been timid, inexperienced. She’d had to go home—I didn’t want her to. I’d wanted her to stay. I’d wanted her to stay forever, and I’d asked her to, first with my kiss, then with my words.

My grip on her tightened, and I pulled her closer—this Tess, my Tess—as if the taste of her, the feel of her against me could prolong the memory. There was nothing timid about her roaming hands now, nothing inexperienced in the way she wound around me. We went up like a torch in a twist, a tangle of arms, our bodies locked and seeking the other. There was no space—the flame had devoured the distance, the air, her and me.

Consumed.

Her arms tightened around my neck, my hand hitching her thigh, my tongue sweeping the depth of her mouth and hers dancing against it.

I didn’t know who slowed, who came to their senses, who remembered the earth existed and tethered us. But the kiss broke. And I looked into the lust-drunk, blinking face of Tess.