Cupid's Assistant {Completed}

Cupid's Assistant - Chapter Eight

For a second, I lost all thought. All I could feel were his lips against mine and my hands tangling in his soft blonde hair as our bodies pressed against each other. I could feel the body heat radiating off of him as we stood flush against each other, not one inch of space between us.

There was only Ashton and I, the only two people in the world. Everything else—the sounds of laughing children and seabirds ahead, the smell of salt water and deodorant, the marble sand beneath my feet and the sand ten feet away—melded into the distance. All I could hear and smell and touch and feel was Ashton so breathtakingly close to me. His scent, masculine and earthy and woodsy, filled my nose and blurred my senses, and it felt like fire traveling up my veins and setting each nerve ending alight with desire.

I felt like someone who had been underwater for years and had finally reached the surface. Like Ashton’s kiss was the oxygen I desperately needed to survive. Like without his kiss I would’ve been lost in a deep, dark abyss. I hadn't realized until this very moment exactly how much I had missed his kiss. How much I needed him close to me; to feel and to hold and to touch.

Then I realized what I was doing. I was letting my guard down, and I was kissing Ashton. I was doing exactly what I had been trying to avoid doing for the last six weeks. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do this to Ashton or Hunter or myself. In the end, it would just end up hurting everybody, and nobody would come out of this happy.

With great mental and physical strain, I pulled back, feeling like it physically hurt to do so, and looked down, not wanting to meet his caring eyes and see what reaction he was having.

“We can’t,” I whispered, disentangling myself from his hold. I dropped my hands from around his neck and stepped back away from him until I had created a safe distance between us. Immediately my body felt cold without his against me, and my lips tingled from the passionate kiss we had shared.

“Why not?” he cried, his voice shaking with passion and emotion. I could hear the hurt and disbelief etched plainly in his words. “Mia, you can’t deny it. You love me as much as I love you. Don’t lie and say you don’t. I could feel it in your kiss. You feel the same way as me. So why can’t we just be together?”

“Because in the end we’re both just going to get hurt,” I said, stumbling back a few steps in order to create some more distance. I felt like if I didn’t, I’d just jump at him and kiss him again, and I couldn’t do that. I needed to regain my self control, even if it felt like it was slowly and painfully torturing me.

“And you don’t think this is hurting us?” he asked, gesturing to the large amount of space I had created between us. “Just give us a try. That’s all I’m asking, Mia.”

“No, Ashton!” I yelled sharply. I needed him to get the message and understand that we were done. There was nothing more we could do. The more he argued, the more it hurt me, and the more my walls came tumbling down. “We can’t, okay? We just can’t.”

He stepped forward and cupped my cheeks with his warm, calloused hands, staring into my eyes determinedly. “I’m not giving up on you, Mia.”

I shook my head. “We can’t do this. This doesn’t change anything.”