The International Kissing Club

by Ivy Adams

  “Hey, no one told you to strip,” she answered indignantly.

  “Well, I couldn’t let you get arrested on your own, could I? You wouldn’t last a minute in a Chinese prison.”

  “And you would?”

  “Let’s hope neither one of us has to find out.” And then he jumped over the edge of the fountain, landing with a huge splash at her feet. “Holy shit, it’s cold!”

  “You’re crazy, you know that, right?” she said, looking down at him, squatting in the freezing water.

  “That’s pretty much like the pot calling the kettle black,” he said, standing up. He was so close that his hip brushed against hers. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  She shrugged. “See? You don’t know everything about me. I can be spontaneous.”

  “Yes, but now I’m questioning your sanity.”

  “You can leave anytime, you know. No one’s making you stay.”

  Guiran stepped back just a little, let his eyes rake over her from head to toe. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  He reached behind him, picked up his jacket. Slid it over her shoulders. Then brought his right hand up to cup her left cheek. “It just so happens,” he said with a grin that suddenly made her knees tremble, “that crazy looks good on you. Really, really good.”

  Mei tried to answer, but her brain was as frozen as her body. If he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to end up with hypothermia and probably frostbite as well. In fact, she could get stuck with—

  Screw it. She was done waiting. Burying her hands in Guiran’s soft, silky hair, she tugged him forward until his mouth met hers. At the first touch of their lips, fireworks exploded all around her. It looked like Chinese New Year had come early.

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  Chapter 17

  Piper

  “Are you ready to go, Piper?” Sebastian’s voice floated down the hallway toward her, along with the sounds of his parents and Simone leaving for their day in the country. They’d invited Piper and Sebastian to go with them, but Sebastian had wanted to spend the day in Paris instead, and Piper had wanted to stay with him.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” she answered, pulling up the IKC Facebook page on her laptop. She’d been so busy lately with school, and Simone and Sebastian, and her stupid, humiliating art classes that it had been a few days since she’d posted anything. She knew her friends would be worried if she didn’t at least let them know she was still alive.

  Sure enough, Cassidy had posted, “Ariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiel? Where are yoooooooooooooou?” just the day before.

  Instead of answering, she scrolled through the numerous other comments on the page, from girls who had begun tallying up their points and marking their kisses on Mei’s widget. There were a bunch of them, way more than the last time she’d looked, and she couldn’t help feeling a little proud. She and her friends had sparked a kissing revolution. Girls taking control of their own destinies. How cool was that?

  Piper certainly felt like she had seized control of her own fate since coming to Paris—it was easy to do what she wanted here, to do what felt right, instead of always worrying about how her mom was going to react or how Germaine would use her actions against her.

  Not wanting to think about Germaine or her mother, Piper continued to skim the comments, stopping only when she found one of Izzy’s from a couple days before, saying she was keeping a close eye on Tanner. It seemed so strange to see those words, stranger still to think about Tanner when being with Sebastian had completely obliterated him from her mind. Tanner had been a silly crush, while Sebastian was so much more.

  She knew that wasn’t what the other girls wanted to hear, though, so she typed back a flippant, “As long as that’s all you’re keeping on him,” before continuing to look for Mei’s status. She was dying to know what her friend had been up to in China. She really hoped Mei had met a guy as amazing as Sebastian.

  But when she finally found Mei’s comment—buried beneath a flurry of postings from girls she’d never heard of—it gave her pause. “Hey, Ariel, you look so happy in those pics you e-mailed us! Good for you—does this mean the angsty artist is a thing of the past?”

  Piper stared at the words for nearly a minute, absorbing them. Worrying about them. For so long she had needed to force herself to get up in the morning, to pretend that her life wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. To ignore the snipes and gibes that came at her from everyone but her three closest friends.

  She hadn’t done that in France, not any of it. The realization felt strange. But how could she be anything but happy here? The city was amazing. Marie, Simone, and Gus were the family she’d always longed for. Her friends at school were great. And Sebastian …

  She sighed. Sebastian was amazing: witty, intelligent, and so sexy that she nearly melted whenever he was in the same room with her. He listened when she talked, let her bounce new and exciting ideas off him. He even let her drag him all over the city, to places she knew he’d been to a million times.

  And when she didn’t have a plan, didn’t have any idea what she wanted to do or where she wanted to go, he always had the coolest suggestions. They’d gone to some of his favorite haunts, off the beaten path and not listed in any tour book she’d ever read. The clubs, cafés, markets, and galleries he brought her to had shown her an entirely different side of Paris—one she really liked.

  He’d even taken her deep into the city’s underground, into the catacombs she had read about for years but never thought she’d have a chance to see. The whole trip was awesome—spooky and dark and, with Sebastian at her side, more than a little hot. Who would ever have guessed that an underground cemetery could be so … stimulating?

  She never wanted to leave Paris. Sure, she missed her friends, but they were pretty much the only reason she wanted to go home. Her mother, her sister, Germaine—the idea of returning to Texas to be their scapegoat once more was almost unthinkable. She’d tasted freedom, tasted what it was like to be part of a family that genuinely liked and respected her, and she had no desire to go back to the way things were.

  Skipping from the IKC page to her personal one, Piper tossed off a quick update on what she’d been doing. Then clicked over to Sebastian’s page to see if he’d said anything about her. The last time he’d posted had been the weekend before, after they’d gotten back from Versailles. “Belle fille. Des moments de plaisir. Intéressant art. Merveilleux weekend.”

  Beautiful girl. Fun times. Interesting art. Great weekend. Though she’d read the description before, it still made her grin. He’d called her beautiful and the weekend they’d spent together great! What more could any girl want? She glanced over at his relationship status. Oh yeah, that. Why hadn’t he changed it? They’d been dating for weeks, yet his status still said single. She’d changed hers soon after the Louvre, and it was starting to bug her that he hadn’t. He probably just hadn’t thought of it yet, but still …

  She sighed, then logged off Facebook and checked her e-mail superquick. She and Sebastian were going to be out most of the afternoon and she wanted to see if her grade was up for the big project she’d just turned in for art class. She’d worked crazy hard on it and was hoping—

  Yes, there it was. An e-mail from her painting teacher, Madame Amirault. Closing her eyes and muttering a quick prayer, Piper clicked on it. Maybe this time her teacher would understand what she was getting at. Maybe this time she would actually like what Piper had done—God knew, Piper had poured her newly shiny heart and soul into the piece.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes—and felt all the excitement drain out of her in a rush. A C-. She skimmed the comments—too juvenile, too sweet, too boring. Not enough zest.

  Tears burned in Piper’s eyes, and she lowered her head to the desk with a thunk. What was she doing wrong? She had given everything she had to th
is project—to every project she’d done since arriving in France—but it didn’t seem to matter. In class, both of her art teachers—Madame Amirault and Monsieur Blanchard—were always on her ass, always saying her attempts were childish, that they lacked passion. Depth. Vitality.

  Yet she’d never felt more passionate, more vital. Never felt anything as deeply as she’d felt these past few weeks with Sebastian. And still she’d disappointed them. And more importantly, she’d disappointed herself.

  “Hey, are you ready?” Sebastian poked his head in the room she and Simone shared. “The movie starts in half an hour.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” Shoving her disappointment—and worry—to the back of her mind, Piper sprang up and yanked on her jacket. Then she grabbed the scarf Sebastian had bought her the week before when they’d been out and she’d been freezing. As her fingers fell on the soft, purple cashmere, she realized again just how much—and how quickly—Sebastian had become a part of her life, almost as if he’d always been there.

  He’d made the past two weeks the most fantabulous of her life. And when she was with him, nothing mattered but the way he smiled at her.

  The way his eyes crinkled just a little bit at the corners and sparkled with laughter.

  The way his fingers felt—warm and slightly calloused from all his sculpting—when they stroked down her face.

  Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she was taking all the feelings she’d always had for her art and giving them to Sebastian instead …

  More mixed up than she had been in a long time, Piper ducked her head and started down the hallway.

  “Hey, is something wrong?” Sebastian asked as she passed him. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “I’m just thinking.” She shook her head. “I got a crappy grade on my latest art project, and it put me in a bad mood. I’ll get over it.”

  “That sucks.” His mouth twisted in sympathy. “I know how hard you worked on it.”

  “I work hard on everything, but it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? I think I’m hopeless.”

  “You’re not hopeless.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against his chest. “Not even close.”

  “Then why do I feel so useless? I swear, I can’t do anything right.” She could sense the tears beating at the corners of her eyelids, but she blinked them back.

  “You can’t think like that, Piper. I’ve seen some of your work. You’re really good.”

  “I wish my art teachers felt the same way.”

  He brushed a soft kiss against her forehead, and Piper shivered, despite her misery. “They will. It just takes time to get in the groove with a new teacher. It’s normal to make some mistakes as you try to figure out what they want from you.”

  She pulled back, looked at him, surprised. “Has it happened to you?”

  He laughed. “Oui. Of course. Even us pot makers can mess up sometimes.”

  Piper blushed at his reference to the insult she’d hurled at him a few weeks before. It was doubly embarrassing considering how gorgeous his work really was.

  Shrugging it off, she grabbed her purse and opened the door. “Come on. We’re going to be late for the movie.”

  “You know,” Sebastian said, his arms coming around her from behind, pulling her against his long, well-muscled body. Piper felt everything inside of herself go ooey-gooey at the contact. “We don’t have to go to the movie.”

  “Oh yeah?” She grinned. “And what should we do instead?”

  “Guess.”

  His soft, full lips made her shiver as he pressed kisses up and down her nape, and Piper leaned into him, relishing the contact. Relishing what it felt like to be held by a guy who really cared about her. A guy she had truly fallen for. Big-time.

  Forget the movie, she’d be happy to stay right here forever.

  Turning, she looked up into the deep, dark indigo of his eyes and felt herself melt. Not just her body, which, admittedly, was completely into what was going on, but her heart as well. It had flipped over in her chest at the sight of his smile, at the feel of him against her, and she wasn’t sure how she was ever going to get things back to normal again. Or even if she wanted to.

  Reaching up, she framed his face with her hands.

  Stroked her thumbs over his sharp cheekbones.

  Imagined, not for the first time, what his face would look like in charcoal on her sketch pad or in oils on the easel Marie had let her set up in the corner of the living room.

  He was so beautiful standing there, his impossibly long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks while a couple days’ worth of stubble darkened his jaw.

  So different from Tanner or any of the other boys she knew in Texas.

  So much more than she’d ever imagined.

  She brushed a finger over his lips and he smiled—not the cocky grin she’d seen so much of the first day they’d met, but a soft, sweet curving of his mouth that he reserved just for her. Then he nipped gently at her fingertip and her heart went crazy. It beat a wild, messed-up tattoo that had her nerves jangling and her breath catching in her throat.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

  She shook her head. “I’m cute. That’s a far cry from beautiful.”

  “Shh.” It was his turn to put a finger on her lips. “You’re beautiful to me.” His voice wasn’t as steady as usual, and she realized, in awe, that the trembling she felt wasn’t coming from her. It was coming from him, from the strong body he had pressed so tightly to her own.

  The realization that she affected him as much as he did her swept through Piper, made her feel powerful and alive. Made her feel as beautiful as he insisted she was.

  “Sebastian—”

  He didn’t let her finish, his mouth replacing the finger that had slowly traced the curve of her lower lip. And then he was kissing her. Softly, sweetly, and finally with an edge of desperation that simply destroyed her.

  Her knees trembled, turned to Jell-O, and she grabbed onto the lapels of Sebastian’s jacket to keep herself from falling. He pulled away just a little and she thought maybe he would laugh at her inexperience, but there was nothing amused in the deep, wild eyes that stared into her own. Just a darkness, a need that echoed the one spreading through her at an alarming rate.

  He shifted a little so that his arms were tight around her waist, holding her up even as he pulled her body flush against his own. Piper wrapped her arms around him in return, relishing the feel of his broad shoulders beneath her hands. The solid warmth of his chest and stomach against her own. And as she did, everything slid into place. All of her worries, all of her fears, all of the uncertainties about what her future—their future—held slipped away, and it was just her and him and the incredible rightness between them.

  His lips skimmed down her throat and she gasped, then sifted her fingers through his dark, silky hair and pulled his mouth back to hers. He tasted like Marie’s rich, dark coffee. Like the raspberries and cream they’d had for breakfast. Like the smooth, soft chocolate she’d become addicted to her first week in Paris. She couldn’t get enough of him.

  He must have felt the same way, because the kissing went on and on and on.

  Piper didn’t know how long they stood there in the hallway, kissing and touching and tasting. Long enough for the grandfather clock in the living room to chime once, and then a second time. More than long enough for her toes to curl and her entire body to start shaking.

  Finally, Sebastian pulled away, his breathing heavy and his eyes hot. “I’m okay with skipping the movie,” she whispered.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his gaze searching her face.

  “Yeah. Absolutely.” She reached for Sebastian’s hand, tangled her fingers with his as she wondered if there was a way for her to slip out for a few seconds, just long enough to put on the bustier she’d bought weeks ago in Dallas. Then decided it didn’t matter. Nothing did but being with Sebastian.

  They moved slowly down the hall to his room, and butterflies flit
ted back and forth in Piper’s stomach as she realized they were really going to do this. Five weeks ago she would have said she wasn’t ready for it, but that was before she’d met Sebastian, before she’d fallen in love. Now, being with him seemed natural. And if she was nervous, so what? It was normal. Right?

  The second Sebastian’s bedroom door closed behind them, his mouth came down on hers again. Hard. For the space of one breath, two, before he pulled away. “You make me crazy, Piper,” he whispered against her temple.

  Everything inside of her went soft. “Me, too,” she answered. “I can’t think when you touch me.”

  She crossed to the bed, sat down, completely overwhelmed. By the feelings spinning inside of her, by the way Sebastian was looking at her, by the knowledge of what she was about to do. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to pound right out of her chest.

  Sebastian followed, but instead of sitting on the bed, he sank to the floor in front of her. Took her hands in his and pressed soft, tender kisses in the center of her palms. She shivered even as her nerves settled.

  And then he was sliding her jacket off her shoulders, pressing her back onto the bed, stretching out beside her. Piper gasped at the feel of him, tried to ignore the brief flare of panic that shot through her. She’d never been on a bed with a guy before, never let one unbutton her top before, never let one kiss the sensitive skin of her stomach before.

  It felt strange.

  But this was Sebastian, she told herself. It was okay to let him touch her. Okay to be with him—

  “Hey.” Sebastian pulled away a little and looked at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” She swallowed, wrapped her arms around him tightly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’re shaking.”

  “It’s fine. I’m just—” Nervous? Excited? Terrified? “Cold.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at her for a long time, his eyes so intense that it felt like he could see all the way to her soul. Then he smiled and reached down to the foot of the bed, pulling his comforter over them.