“Three!”
“It is.”
Ari feels his right hand move up her spine all the way to the back of her head, and God, she reallycanfeel everything through this coat. They stop the half-hearted swaying, even though the song isn’t over. His fingers twist slightly in her hair.
“Two!”
The prickly sensation running along the back of her neck is probably from the wind kicking up. It’s not because he tugs her head back a little bit and looks at her in that way that makes her feel completely exposed, even though she’s wrapped in a thick layer of polyfill and down. She closes her eyes.
There must be a “One!” but neither of them hear it.
Her head tilts to the right and she feels Josh’s lower lip graze hers. That tiny amount of contact ignites something in her chest. Ari grabs at his lapels, pulling him closer, parting, opening, inviting. He obliges with a trace of caution, pressing in again.
His lips are soft and tentative against hers, the friction warming them against the winter air. He pulls back for a moment, just far enough to search her face. His expression is resolute but he’s waiting for something. Ari lets out a shaky exhale and nods.
He doesn’t move yet.
“Josh…” She’s about to tug at his coat again, when he suddenly lowers his head, moving just past her left cheek.
Her breath hitches as Josh’s nose brushes behind her ear, followed by his lips. He pulls her hair again, this time to the right for better access to her neck. Her whole body shivers as his mouth passes over a thousand tiny nerve endings, all of them firing at once. Her stomach tightens. How is he doing this? Why does he have this innate sense of where and how she wants to be touched?
Some first kisses are hurried—an awkward tangle of hands and noses.
But Josh takes his time, spurred on by little whimpers that she can’t hold in, moving lazily down her neck and kissing along her jawline until they come face-to-face again.
This is the first point at which they could—should—stop.
But they don’t.
The celebratory roar of a million strangers recedes into the background. Ari murmurs his name just before she pulls his head down, so their lips meet again. Some element of his restraint snaps as he slides his tongue into her mouth with an urgency that leaves her breathless.Josh’s fingers move across her collarbone, thumbs meeting at the base of her throat.
That’s the second point at which they don’t stop.
The third is when his hands find their way under her puffy coat, meandering down the bare skin of her back, and then slipping beneath the silky fabric of the dress. He palms her ass and she can’t help moaning into his mouth and he could take one step and back her up against that wall.
There’s a part of Ari’s mind that’s throwing caution tape all over the encounter. The acceptable boundaries of “just friendship” are getting pulled and stretched to the point of imminent tearing.
But they don’t stop here, either.
Because something is incrediblyrightabout it. There’s a pleasant ache in her belly and a tangled web of surging emotions andwho the fuck cares about friendship when you can feel like this instead of being numb?
She’s reaching up to run her fingers through his hair—something she’s always thought about doing, if she’s honest—when a loudCRACKrips through the freezing air, snapping both of them out of their shared feverish haze.
They both recoil. Ari knocks against the back wall and Joshpulls his hands away like an old-timey schoolmaster smacked them with a ruler.
A sustained cheer erupts from somewhere to the south.
The thing that finally stops them from committing a misdemeanor is the starting pistol of the New York Road Runners Midnight Run.
They stare at each other for what seems like a full minute, both of them waiting for the other to do something. It would be easy enough to just step forward again. She could bite her lip. He might shrug and glance at the ground. They’d get back into it with a certain shyness this time. With more intention.
But as two, five, ten seconds pass, the strange, electric energy that enveloped them dissipates like a breath in the cold air.
Maybe it hadn’t been the pistol. It could have been a lightning bolt thrown down by the goddess ofFor Fuck’s Sake, Don’t Run This Friendship Off a Cliff.
Her throat is burning with the urge to explain why the kiss shouldn’t be the start of some epic romance. That they can just stay right where they are. Or, wherever they were yesterday. If one more precious thing in her life falls away, it’ll be unbearable.
But the world is still spinning a bit, like she’s just stepped off a carousel.
