Blind Speed Dating Writing Contest!!

So, this week's post comes to you a day early, because I am a part of Cupid's Literary Connection Blind Speed Dating contest!!! I am already in the agent round, so this post is for HONORABLE MENTION ONLY, but I thought I'd also enter the kissing scene competition portion of the contest because, you know, kissing scenes are fun.

So here is the kissing scene from my manuscript A TERROR OF DARKNESS. Avar, a werewolf, has just helped chase off some Parisian guards who want to arrest Rose and, well, chop her head off (this is the Reign of Terror, after all). Enjoy!

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“You saved my life,” she breathed. He grinned at her.

“You seem so surprised.”               

                                                                                        

Rose could not stop herself smiling; her breaths became short, giddy laughs. He was there, standing in front of her with that silly smirk on his face, there, solid, real, when she thought she would never see him again.

“You came back.”

“I came back,” he repeated with a nod. “I-”

He broke off, dropping his eyes for a moment, and when he looked up again he stepped in towards her, raising a hand to brush her tousled hair away from her face. 

“I finally found someone I could never run from,” he said. 

Words Rose could not say caught in her throat, tangled in surprise and wonder and something she could not define.  His hand, still resting gently against her cheek, tilted her face towards his, and he kissed her. 

At first, his lips were feather light and hesitant on hers, and for a moment Rose was convinced that she had never woken from those fevered and unattainable dreams. But no, it was real, beautiful in its impossibility, and her hands found his shoulders, pulling him closer to her. The cold, tight feeling that had lodged her chest after he had gone melted in an instant, chased away by his hand at her waist, his fingers in her hair. Rose gave herself up entirely to that moment, that kiss, letting everything else slide away, except the thought that for once in her life someone needed her as much as she needed him. 

Avar pulled away, letting Rose catch her breath, but she felt even more giddy with every fresh gasp of air. He looked guilty, but she could not stop smiling, hardly able to believe the strange and wonderful thing that had just happened. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should not have presumed – we are – different, we cannot-”

Rose shook her head, silencing him. 

“None of that matters,” she said, her face an inch from his. “Remember? We are not so very different, you and I.”

And she reached up and kissed him again, his arms wrapping securely around her. None of that mattered; their differences were imaginary, and no one could tell her otherwise, not anymore, not ever, and especially not in that quiet little alleyway, a deserted street at the heart of Paris. Just then, for those silent, stolen moments, they were all that mattered, the only two players in a perfect and precarious world of lovely dreams.