What do I think? I think I want to crawl on top and attack you with all the sexual frustration I’m feeling!
I fist my hands, doing my best to squelch the lust shaking me. A part of me wants to scream yes, a southern part, but my mind knows it’s pointless. “Meh,” I respond, and it seems to shock him.
“Meh, she says,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Did you really just say meh, like it’s a word?”
I repeat the noise slash word again. Cal laughs, and the happy sound has me joining in.
“Kissing is overrated,” I state in my defense, and that has Cal’s thick, dark eyebrows rising, so I try to explain. “I’m not a cynic, but in my experience, which, granted, has been limited, I’ve been left underwhelmed by the whole swapping spit thing. It’s not magical like in the movies or in books. It’s just … well, meh!”
It’s true! Although, my kiss barometer might be broken. My first kiss was brief and unwelcome after a forced couple’s date of mini golf in high school. I’d just wanted the wet interlude over with. Besides the terrible kiss, the guy had been bad at putt putt, too, and he’d had the nerve to say it was my fault it’d been so bad. That I was an oddity or something. Still, I tried again. My first boyfriend had given me all the feels, but once the time came, my gut was sending off alarms that it wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. I’d stubbornly told myself to shut up, but it was like making out with an octopus that wanted to suction off my face. After that, I’ve considered kissing a romantic myth up there with unicorns.
“Silly girl, you’ve just thrown down a gauntlet. I have no choice but to kiss you now.” He says this with an exaggerated, put-upon sigh. “And not for good luck, but to protect the tradition of kissing and to prove that it doesn’t deserve the indifferent noise you have given it.”
He rises on one elbow and leans over me. My eyes narrow further and, of course, his smile only widens. He lifts the blanket and moves closer.
I can easily roll to the side or push him away, and he seems to be giving me this option with his cautiously slow descent. His warm stare rakes over my face, as if questioning me. His brown eyes look even darker in the night, especially as they get nearer to mine. I feel the tension between us ignite my skin, and my heart pounds harder in my chest. No warning bells in my gut this time, just a confusing knot of eagerness.
I tremble as one of his hands cups my face, tracing my jaw and sending sparks of desire throughout my body. Still, he doesn’t kiss me, just hovers with his lush mouth a breath away from mine, sending sizzling sensations through my aching lips without even a touch. Gently thrusting his hand through my tangled hair, he tickles the nape of my neck while tilting my face up toward him just so.
Then, his kiss is everywhere—in the hollow of my throat and across my collarbone—and I emit a low moan. The scruffy stubble on his jawline lightly trails the slope of my neck, sending additional shocks to my sensitive skin. Okay, so I think neck kissing is something I can get behind. Oh, most definitely!
He still hasn’t touched my lips, and my eyelids are drifting closed in surrender. He licks at the seam of my mouth, and my eyes fly open to find his staring back. He nods slightly as if that was his aim, for me to look at him before he finally leans in to capture my mouth. I briefly spy a meteor blazing behind him, and then my vision tunnels and my only thought is this kiss.
He nudges my lips apart with his and slowly enters. It’s like a gong reverberating in my soul when our tongues touch, so far from the confused tangle I’ve experienced before. No, this is more like a rhythmic massage and I’m rubbing back. I hear a low growl vibrate in his throat and I want to chase after it, to swallow it up. He shifts and pins me down to the quilt with his long, lean body. His weight is delicious, and the kiss intensifies several notches. I had assumed we were already at the pinnacle, silly girl indeed. I thought I’d been kissed before, but I was so wrong. Cal kisses me like I am everything he’s been missing, like he can’t get enough.
I can’t get enough. I surprise myself when I tug on his disheveled hair, like I’ve been itching to do since the moment I saw him. It’s silky, too, softer than I had imagined. Following my lead, his hands are now fisted lightly into my hair and he’s cradling my head, bringing our lips closer, making our kiss deeper. I feel his hips rock into mine and, wow! If the hard rod of steel molded against my lower thighs is any indicator, Cal is just as consumed by our kiss as I am. Some secret part of me loves the way his body reacts to me. The power of knowing this ignites me further, and I’m clawing him closer, like some wild sex kitten.
My wandering hands leave his scalp and travel down his muscular back, and I’m loving the feel of his strength. I need more. Slipping my hands up under his hoodie, I am rewarded with the steel of his abs and the heat of his chest. I gently scrape my nails up to his pecks, reveling in the feel of him. Beneath my fingertips I can feel goose bumps break out across his hard chest, and I can’t seem to stop my hands from exploring. For the first time, I want more, so much more!
“Jesus,” Cal whispers against my mouth, rubbing his lips over mine, back and forth. He pulls away an inch, and I remove my hands from underneath his sweatshirt, already missing the warmth of his body on mine. The coolness of the air on my scorched skin raises the hair on my arms and hardens my nipples to the point of delicious, pleasurable pain.
My gaze follows the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing is shallow, and thanks to me, his hair is more tousled than it was earlier. Of course, it looks even better than before.
“April,” he says through labored breaths, and I’m surprised at how much I like hearing him say my name. “If you describe that as meh, I’ll throw you back down right now and finish what we just started.”
I almost choke on my tongue but remain silent as I weigh my options. His threat doesn’t sound so bad.
A sparkle lights up his eyes. “Don’t even try me,” he warns. “I mean it, and I don’t care who’s watching.”
That has me glancing around with enough force that I’m surprised I don’t have whiplash. I’d forgotten my friends and half the student body are here. I can’t believe I was that caught up. How embarrassing! Over my shoulder, Jax is looking at me as if she is holding back her laughter. Damn, so much for keeping this to myself or proving that I was right about kissing.
Trying my best to hide my flustered emotions, “Meh!” I taunt with a smile, and Cal’s eyes double in size.
Yes, I’m Thatcher College’s biggest liar. That kiss was better than anything I’d ever imagined or experienced before. But why did it have to be with Cal Chase? I’m “not like” the girls he brings to his room, I remind myself. The memory of that accusation has a different kind of fire soaring through my veins now. I rise to my feet and tug my comforter so it’s solely around me.
“I think the show is over, folks,” Amerie says before I can speak, temporarily defusing whatever unspoken tension that has passed between me and Cal.
She’s got that right!
There is already a herd of students packing up and leaving, so we gather our things, too. As we walk back to our dormitory, Cal tries to talk to me, but I shush him and look pointedly at my friends. To his credit, he gets the hint, but given the set line of his mouth, he’s not happy about it.
As we near the quad again, Jax stops abruptly and it causes a chain reaction, and I almost bump right into Cal’s backside.
“Look,” she says pointing toward the old fountain to the left of us with a copper statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, inside it. However, the statue isn’t visible for a change, obscured by what looks like an insane overflow of bubbles. Some of the foam is rising into the air like low hanging clouds, while more froth spills out onto the green.
“Was there a foam party tonight that no one told us about?” Brady asks part annoyed, part confused.
We shrug and continue through the bubbly mess. Cal bends down to scoop up a handful of suds and blows it playfully towards me. Laughing, I dodge out of the way before it can land on me. I’m tempted to do the same back at him, but I have my hands full holding the blanket aloft so it won’t get wet.
