At Your Most Beautiful, Harper Bliss [books to get back into reading .TXT] 📗

made him into the person he is, which is a son who just wants his mother to be happy.”

“Quinn, sweetheart.” There was no way Maya could wiggle herself out from underneath Quinn when she straddled her like this. “I have to go. I’m teaching in less than two hours.”

Quinn huffed out some air. “I think you should play hooky.”

“I’m the teacher. I can’t play hooky.”

“When’s the very latest you have to leave?” Quinn’s big blue eyes looked down at Maya.

“Fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh, no way.” Even though Maya had to leave, she loved it when Quinn spoke to her in a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone of voice—as though, for her, it was simply not an option that she and Maya couldn’t spend more time together. “Traffic isn’t that bad.” She curled her body closer toward Maya’s. “And we haven’t properly celebrated yet.” She kissed Maya’s neck.

“We can celebrate all weekend.” Maya tried to push Quinn away but it was only a feeble attempt because she wanted Quinn as close to her as possible.

“If you stay ten more minutes”—Quinn kissed her way down Maya’s neck to her collar bone—“I’ll take you dancing tomorrow.”

“Ten minutes? Will that be enough?” Maya was already prepared to stay much longer than that. Seeing Quinn in her element last night had aroused her. Watching her surrounded by her friends and family— and people who loved what she did—had been electrifying. And that string of kisses down her neck was helping as well.

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Angus had asked her last night, with his gaze firmly planted on Quinn. “And how foolish you would have been if you hadn’t listened to me when I talked some much-needed sense into you?”

Maya had hated doing it at the time, but she’d had to agree with him.

“Ten minutes will be plenty of time if we go into the bedroom now,” Quinn said. “Griff doesn’t appreciate it when I squirt lube all over the couch, especially during her ‘year of no’.”

Maya chuckled as Quinn hopped off her. She followed Quinn into her bedroom, not caring any longer that her bed was too narrow or her mattress too lumpy. She could see now that her frustration about those things had mostly been fear in disguise.

Quinn slammed the door shut behind them in case Griff came home, then wasted no time pushing Maya onto the bed. She came to lie on top of her, pushing her body into Maya’s, kissing her deeply.

Maya held her tight and let the physical sensations, as well as all the feelings she had for Quinn, wash over her like an avalanche that swallowed her whole. She didn’t resist anything—she’d done enough of that. Quinn was right. Everything would be all right. But Maya also knew that, from the vantage point they’d had before, it had been impossible for either of them to see.

Usually prone to whispering sweet nothings in Maya’s ear during foreplay, Quinn was silent today. After they broke from their kiss she just gazed into Maya’s eyes, leaving Maya to wonder what was going through her head.

Maybe it was the same thought that occupied most of Maya’s brain—that she was so in love, she could withstand the wrath of Quinn’s mother if she had to, the disappointment of her father, the looks they would get in the streets, the gaze of strangers upon them who were no doubt debating whether they were mother and daughter or something much more interesting. None of it mattered because they were together.

Now there was a thought Maya had never been willing to entertain because how could she? How could all those things no longer matter simply because she’d fallen in love with another person? At the time, she couldn’t know what she now knew. That love did that to you. It took away the doubts and the fear and replaced them with something magical, something so delightful that it obliterated any remaining uncertainty.

Quinn kissed her again and Maya kissed her back even more ferociously. She slid her hands through Quinn’s hair, grabbing at her, needing more of her. No wonder Maya felt like she’d been catapulted back in time to her teenage years, because despite her age, this all felt so new to her. The intensity of her desire. Her sheer need for Quinn. The quickness of her arousal. For years, she had wrongly believed she was beyond all that. She had secretly hoped her move to New York might change that—that she might find someone in this vast city who could make her feel like that again. But never in a million years had she expected that person to be Quinn Hathaway. And never had she expected it to be so all-consuming. So thrilling. Nor so devastatingly frightening at first.

Quinn reached for Maya’s hand that was buried in her hair. She kissed her palm, looked into Maya’s eyes, then pinned Maya’s hand above her head. When Maya moved her hand, reaching for Quinn again, Quinn curled her fingers around Maya’s wrist and placed it above her head again. She narrowed her eyes as she locked her gaze on Maya. Oh, so it was like that.

At least Maya still had her other hand to feel Quinn with, to cup her delicious breasts with. But Quinn swiftly reached for Maya’s free hand and pinned that above her head as well. What would she do next? Tie her up?

“Keep them there,” Quinn whispered. As if she didn’t trust Maya to follow this simple instruction, she curled her fingers tighter around Maya’s wrists. Maya looked above her head and saw a couple of letters of the word Radical from Quinn’s tattoo. She’d become so familiar with Quinn’s tattoos that her brain automatically added Acceptance. She might as well do that—radically accept anything that was happening and anything she was feeling. Not only because Quinn told her to, which was surprisingly arousing in itself, but also because the position Quinn now held her in left her tantalizingly vulnerable and exposed to Quinn’s