unREASONable by Arya Matthews
Track 14
Alexandra
I move as though attracted by some invisible force. I steal another quick kiss from Marshall, nothing more than a brush of my lips against his. Barely touching. Breaking a barrier. Testing the waters. Saying hello. I swear he’ll laugh at me, and serves me right. I’ve completely lost it. What was I thinking? Why did I kiss him?
Marshall cups my face with his hands and kisses me once more. This kiss lasts a couple seconds longer, but he’s still testing the boundaries. Marshall’s hand slides to rest on the side of my neck. His fingers are strong but soft. Heat rushes all over me as though his touch ignites my blood. I can’t describe it any other way.
The kiss that follows is all in. Like jet fuel, my emotions—frustration with his hostility, my curiosity about him, my desire to fit with his tribe, my longing for a friend, and my drive to prove him wrong—burn with painful intensity.
He tastes like milk and chocolate.
I grab handfuls of his curls because I have to make sure it’s real and not a hallucination induced by an obscene amount of spicy food. No way it’s real. I’ve snapped and gone mental, that’s what it is.
We’ve been fighting so much. He hates me. He’s just messing with me. He can’t mean it. I won’t deny I want him to mean it, but tomorrow I’ll walk into the rehearsal room and he’ll glare at me as usual, or worse, ignore me. I can just see it.
I’m an idiot.
I pry my fingers away from him and hop off the couch before it goes too far and Marshall annihilates what’s left of my heart. He won’t have much to begin with after I’m done thrashing it for this betrayal.
“Wait.” Marshall jerks me onto his lap.
He presses his face against my back. It feels so tender and good I almost scream at him to stop.
“I know you think that I hate you, but I don’t.”
I twist to face him. “Impossible.”
Marshall runs his hand through my hair and tucks a lock behind my ear. “I thought so too.”
My heart liquifies under his caressing gaze and fingertips that travel down my neck to my collarbone to my shoulder. I can barely restrain a pleasant shudder. No one has ever touched me like this before. No one has ever kissed me before, but I’m never telling him that. I won’t give him another weapon against me.
I manage to say, “Peace then?”
Marshall falls backward into the couch cushions. “I’m trying.”
What an intriguing response.
“Trying?” I lie on my back, legs draped over his lap. “Am I that difficult to be around?”
“Increasingly.”
That makes me smile. “How so?”
“With you, everything is different.” Marshall shifts his position and plants himself over me, holding his weight on one arm next to my side. “It just is. It all looks and feels different now. Everything sounds different. I have to think about everything I do and say. I have to make sure I respect your boundaries, smile, be totally neutral around you. It is impossible to be neutral around you, Alexandra.”
“Trust me, I know that. You’ve been anything but neutral.” I joke with him, but I dissolve in the way he breathes out my name. When our eyes meet, the world is no longer the same. Black and green—colors of Marshall’s hair and eyes—is all I see.
Whatever’s coursing between us is complicated and dangerous. I’m dying to explore it, but my survival instinct kicks in.
“Good night, Marshall.” I slide off the sectional, grab my new bass, and run to the guest house. Thankfully, Marshall doesn’t try to stop me.
I’ve never considered it a possibility, never had a single what-if moment where I imagined Marshall holding me the way he did a minute ago, kissing me, telling me that I’ve upturned his life in every sense imaginable. I never thought I’d want this. Him. When I was offered to join Project Viper, love was the last thing on my mind. It was all about a new life. I worked hard for his approval, not his affection.
And now everything will be different for me as well. Again.
Or maybe it won’t be. Maybe we’ll burn through our unexpected attraction with a few more kisses and he’ll lose interest in me. And it’s fine because I finally won. Marshall Jones was nice to me, without any reservations, even if only tonight.