“Let’s have a nice, easy time out here.” I laid back next to her. “Let’s breathe. Come on. In?”
She sucked in a breath, waiting on me to instruct her more. She was giving me so much power. I felt so honored that she was letting me have this make-believe time. “Out.”
She pushed the air from her lungs.
“Look again at those beautiful stars,” I whispered. “Not so scary, are they?”
“Space is too big,” she said. “Gives me the creeps. Like somebody could be watching.”
I hummed. “What would you be if nobody was watching?”
Her eyes went sad. “Free.” She sat up a little and sipped the champagne, wiping her lips with the back of her hand before putting the bottle next to her in the grass. “What would you be?”
I took a deep breath. I loved to pose big philosophical questions to other people, but it was more to decide if those answers fit me. I didn’t like to answer them myself because I wasn’t fully sure who I was. “Understood.”
Annie’s hand found mine in the grass. I turned on my side to face her and nudged her to do the same. Her green eyes walked up my chest to my face. “I think I’d like to learn more about you,so I could understand.”
This sweet, beautiful person. I let go of her hand and slid my arm under her head, giving her a pillow. “I want you to be free.”
She laced her fingers with my other hand, looking at our joined hands together. No rings. No commitments. Just two souls finding each other in the grass under the stars.
The weed took some of the edge off, but I was still nervous getting this private time with her. I worried that my questions were too philosophical, too personal. And still, I went on. I’d only be around her a couple more days. I could try out a version of myself that I wished I could be.
“What would make you free right now, Annabelle?”
Her fingers untwined from mine, moving to touch my cheek. Her thumb passed over my jaw, fingers caressing under my ear. “This?”
I nodded, and slowly, softly, so delicately, we met in a kiss. I couldn’t believe how silky her lips were, how much I could feel what was her and what was me, and what was somehow shared space. My hand moved into her hair as we deepened the kiss, still so very slowly. Her tongue was tentative, just barely crossing the threshold of my lips until I returned the taste.
It was quiet, gentle. It wasn’t slamming someone against a door. We weren’t tearing each other’s clothes off. We were feeling everything. Every careful stroke of her lips was more tender than the one before it. Her hair felt so wonderful in my fingers, but I caressed down her shoulders to pull her closer to me. Music from the wedding droned in the distance, providing a delicate soundtrack.
I tugged her waist and she rolled me to my back. As she settled on top of me, she gazed down at me. “Okay?”
“Hell yeah.”
I’d never made out with a woman. I’d kissed one, but never this soul-consuming, fire-stoking variety. Annie was everything. Her knees in the grass on either side of me, her arms leaning againstmy chest, and her hands cradling my face. My hands made the journey down her back to the hem of her dress, sliding to touch her smooth skin.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Fuck yes. Touch me.”
Her hips writhed on top of me as I squeezed the backs of her thighs, then up to her firm ass. Her hand trailed down my body, cupping my cock through my pants.
“Big boy, huh?”
I chuckled, feeling self-conscious. “Uh, yeah. Maybe? I guess?”
Her eyes were wild in the low light as her fingers stroked me through my pants. “You like that?”
I moaned out some sort of affirmative. I couldn’t believe it. I was maybe going to have sex with a woman. And not just any woman, because I could have been having sex with any woman if I wanted. I got enough offers.
It was Annie. And Annie wasn’t just any woman.
I knew it was ridiculous. After all, I hardly knew her. Yet, there was this inexplicable bond between us, an unspoken connection that seemed to transcend words. It was something I sensed the moment our heads collided at the airport, a bizarre intimacy born from accidentally hurting each other. And she was Kitty’s best friend, so that had to be some kind of endorsement.
I also knew I was foolish to have any sort of feelings after twenty-four hours, particularly for a woman who was fresh off a heartbreak. Really fresh.
But it was a wedding weekend, and maybe for this one time, I could just go with it and not worry about what came next. It was make-believe for me too.
