Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 263

Chapter 263

DOMINIC

Celeste was quiet for a long moment, and then she spoke, her voice soft. “You’ll find out everything as time goes on ”

I nodded. “Okay.”

After a while, I told her it was time for supper, and she followed me to the kitchen with a skeptical look on her face

“This time,” I said, opening the refrigerator, “if I cook for you, no one will interrupt and make you lose your appetite ! guarantee it.”

She shook her head and reached past me for a bowl. “Do not worry. I will do the cooking.”

“You are my guest.” I tried to take the bowl from her hands. “You deserve to be pampered. It is in the rulebook.”

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She raised an eyebrow, holding the bowl out of my reach. “Guest? I thought this was supposed to be my home now.”

I looked at her with a defeated expression, my hands falling to my sides. “You have me there.”

“Besides.” She set the bowl on the counter. “I feel guilty. You put so much effort into cooking for me the last time, and I barely touched it. I want to make it up to you. Let me do this.”

“You can make it up to me some other time. Right now, you need rest. You have been through enough.”

In the end, we had fruit for supper, sitting across from each other at the marble island, the silence comfortable and full. She ted me a strawberry, and I bit her fingers playfully, and she laughed and called me a child.

We watched a short comedy series on N*****x, and she laughed so hard she cried, her head falling back, her body shaking with the force of her mirth, and I watched her more than I watched the screen, memorizing the sound of her joy When the credits rolled, she was still wiping tears from her eyes, her cheeks flushed, her smile so wide it transformed her entire face

I considered her question, turning it over in my mind, letting it settle “There are too many things to count cannot point to a single quality or moment. But just the thought of having you close to me is enough to make my heart beat taster, enough to make my pupils dilate, enough to make my entire body respond to you like you are the only anchot in a storm Icannot explain it scientifically. I can only feel it.”

She smiled, soft and vulnerable, and I reached out and cupped her face in my hand. “What I told you the other night was the absolute truth. This is the same way I felt the first time I saw you. I should not have let you go then. I should have tought for you

from that very first moment. You were the one, Celeste You were always the one My only one ”

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Something shifted in herevesand I moved closer and kissed her, slow and deep and full of everything I could not put into words Her lips parted under mine her hard came up to cup the back of my neck, and we stayed like that for a long time, trading soft, unhurried kisses that said more than any declaration ever could.

When I finally pulled away, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, holding her like she was the most precious thing in the universe. I held her for minutes, for hours, for an eternity that I wished would never end. “Goodnight, Celeste.”

“Goodnight, Dominic.”