Stepping closer, Reagan put her hands on her shoulders and tried to project calm into her. “Hey, slow down, okay?
I’m not charging by the letter here. Come on. Come sit.”
Libby shook her head. “I have to get this out,” she explained, taking a huge cleansing breath as if it might help her start again.
Reagan left the stool she’d been pulling out from under the table and returned to her side. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Taking her hand in hers, Libby started again. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she explained so softly it sent a shockwave through Reagan’s chest. “Since the moment I met you, it was like reconnecting with someone I’d already known. Like we’d been inseparable friends in some past life.”
Reagan tried her best not to bristle at the word friend.
That’s the last thing she wanted to hear.
“I’ve never felt so completely myself around another person. Never been able to share all the superstitions I was raised with for fear of looking crazy. I mean who else understands the miraculous power of Vick’s VapoRub?” She smiled for the briefest moment, sending Reagan’s heart soaring. “I’ve never been honest about my quest for that one spiritual teaching that makes me make sense to myself before.”
When Libby paused and her eyes welled up with tears, Reagan wanted so desperately to hold her close. To confess
her own feelings, but Libby wasn’t finished and more than anything she wanted to hear what she had to say.
“You’re the first person I’ve truly wanted to know. I want to know everything about you. Every dream. Every nightmare. Every success. Every failure. And it’s not just that I never expected to feel like that about a woman, it’s that I never thought it was my lot in life to feel this at all. I think I convinced myself that to be truly great at finding love for others I’d have to settle for something mediocre myself.
Something adequate that wouldn’t take my attention away from my work. And if not that, then . . . nothing at all.”
Reagan frowned. It was such a tragic and skewed view of the world. Her gaze drifted from Libby’s wild eyes to her trembling lips. She was so thirsty for them she could hardly stand it.
“And then I met you,” Libby said, a tear spilling onto her cheek and racing toward her jaw like it was on a mission.
“And you woke something up in me. A longing for more. A hunger. And now, I can’t stop thinking about you. And I wish so badly that we hadn’t started as a lie because I’m so afraid
—”“Stop being afraid,” Reagan said as she swooped forward, cupping Libby’s face as she wiped the tear away with her thumb. “I’m not afraid. And nothing I feel for you is a lie,”
she said before pressing Libby’s mouth to hers.
Libby wrapped her arms around her neck and pulled her in like a drowning woman desperate for oxygen. Parting her lips, Libby overpowered her and took decisive control of the kiss.
The sharp edge of the worktable pressed into her spine, but Reagan barely registered the pain. Every cell in her body was engaged in the act of being kissed. Each swipe of her bottom lip was a promise Reagan wondered if Libby could keep.
With a soft moan and a deepening kiss, Libby pressed her warm body closer until her small chest was against hers. In a lust-filled haze, Reagan ached to get closer. To lose the thin fabric separating their bare skin.
Libby’s hand slid down her neck. Leaving a trail of pulsing heat, she ran her palm up Reagan’s torso and stopped just short of her bra’s underwire. At the new touch, Reagan wanted more, but she pulled back instead. She left the lips she’d been dreaming about and rested their foreheads together.
“What’s wrong?” The way Libby’s mouth quirked, her pink gloss smudged, made clear it was a taunt and not a question. “Are you worried another one of your students is going to wander in?” Each word was punctuated with a kiss down the column of Reagan’s neck and over the collarbone exposed by her loose tank top.
Reagan closed her eyes, throwing her head back to indulge in the sensation until the pulling ache for more became too painful. “Hey, you’re the one that keeps coming to my place of business to maul me.”
When Libby laughed, her lips brushed against Reagan’s shoulder, sending a pulse of desire ripping through her core.
“This isn’t exactly what I came here for,” Libby confessed against the shell of her ear.
Reagan’s imagination raced. She nearly whimpered at the possibilities. “What do you want?” She hadn’t intended on sounding quite so wanton, but there was only so much control a person could have.
Libby ran her fingers through Reagan’s hair as she leaned back to look at her face. Wrapping her arms around her waist, Reagan struggled against the distraction of her nails scraping her scalp in the best possible way.
“I came to ask you out,” she explained with a lopsided grin.
“Haven’t we been on eight or nine dates already?”
Reagan asked, her eyes glued to her soft lips as she yearned to return to them.