There’s something in her voice, in the way she’s looking at me, that makes every alarm bell in my head start ringing.
She’s vulnerable, devastated, not thinking clearly.
Taking advantage of her emotional state would be unforgivable.
But then she reaches for me, her hands fisting in the front of my shirt, and every rational thought I’ve ever had disappears.
“Please,” she whispers, and the word breaks something fundamental inside me. “I just need to feel something real.”
I should step back.
I need to maintain the boundaries that have kept our relationship functional for years.
I need to remember that she’s nineteen and devastated and not capable of making clear decisions right now.
Instead, I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing away the tears on her cheeks.
“Bianca,” I say, her name a warning and a prayer all at once.
“Please,” she says again, and then she’s rising up on her toes, and her lips are touching mine, and every boundary I’ve ever maintained dissolves like smoke.
The kiss is desperate, hungry, full of years of suppressed attraction and her current emotional devastation.
She tastes like salt from her tears and the cherry from her chapstick.
And I’m lost.
My hands slide into her hair, and she presses closer, like she’s trying to disappear into me.
Like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s just collapsed around her.
And maybe I am.
Maybe right now, in this moment, I’m the only person who can give her what she needs—something honest and real and uncomplicated by family loyalty or protective lies.
But even as I kiss her back, even as every cell in my body responds to her touch, part of my mind is screaming warnings.
She’s vulnerable.
She’s hurt.
She’s making decisions based on emotional devastation rather than clear thinking.
And I’m taking advantage of that, no matter how much I want to pretend otherwise.
But Christ, she feels perfect against me.
Like something I’ve been waiting for without realizing it.
The way she responds to my touch, the small sound she makes when I deepen the kiss—it’s intoxicating and dangerous and absolutely wrong on every level that matters.
“Bianca,” I murmur against her lips, trying to inject some rationality into the situation.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers back. “Please don’t stop. I need this. I need you.”
And those words—I need you—shatter the last of my resistance.
I pull her closer, my hands spanning her waist, and she melts into me like she belongs there.
