Page 4 of Sounds Like Love
“Willa,” Sebastian grumbled under his breath.
Below us, hundreds of people shouted, “KISS! KISS! KISS!” like they could peer pressure me into locking lips with a guy I’d rather toss over the railing.
“Well, this is awkward,” he observed.
“Do you think they’d notice if we ran for it?”
“Yes. We should probably just give them what they want.” He turned his gaze to me and, with the spotlight on him, I could finally see the glimmer of cerulean in his eyes, magnetic and alluring.
I stared, mouth dry. “I … uh—do you mean—?”
“KISS! KISS! KISS!” the crowd cried.
“Kiss!” Willa Grey cheered from the stage. Incorrigible.
I froze with indecision. My cheeks felt so hot I might as well burst into flames.
Sebastian tilted his head slightly away from the camera, his eyebrows furrowing. “We don’t have to,” he murmured, so low that I was the only one who could have heard. A private out, just for me.
In all his bluster, this was the first honest thing he’d said all night.
I wondered whatthatSebastian Fell was like.
The bright and poppy ghost of “If You Stayed” hummed through the air, taunting me. The bridge’s A major chord was sharp, the rhythm vibrant like a pink highlighter.
Willa drew her microphone to her lips again and serenaded the crowd, the lens of her camera never leaving us. “‘Kiss tonight goodbye if you have to go, and tell yourself you’ll come home.’”
I wrote those lyrics for the Joni Lark who had been ten years younger and drunk on the kind of longing that came with spinning around to her favorite song. Someone who believed that if music truly was the food of love, then Orsino was a fool to think he’d ever get sick of it.
I hadn’t been that girl in so long, I could barely remember her.
And I wanted to.
I wanted to remember what that felt like.
“‘What we could be if you stayed—if you stayed, if you stayed,’” she sang longingly, remorsefully, “‘we could be.’”
So as the crowd roared, I reached up and threaded my fingers into Sebastian Fell’s messy hair and pulled him down for a kiss.
Chapter2(Your) Electric Touch
A SHOCK SIZZLEDthrough me.
Bright.
Buzzing.
A lightning strike that filled my veins with Pop Rocks.
The crowd was so loud I couldn’t think. My head turned to static, a radio that had lost its signal.
Sebastian ran his thumb up the side of my neck and under my chin and sank deeper into the kiss. His mouth opened, tongue sliding along my bottom lip. He tasted like spearmint and Diet Coke, and this close the smell of bergamot was almost overwhelming. The hands framing my face were gentle. Just a moment longer, I thought, letting myself turn to putty in the warmth of his fingers against my cheeks. I hadn’t been kissed in a long time, and certainly not by someone who handled me like I was a delicacy.
For a breath, a second, a time immemorial, there was only this electrifying touch—his soft lips,and his hands traveling to my hips.
The kiss was desperate and deep and wanting, and inside of it was something new—
A melody.
