They collapse at once.
I lift my free hand and slide it to the nape of her neck, fingers sinking into the soft warmth of her skin, into her hair. I pull her toward me, not carefully, but like a man whose been holding himself back for years and can’t anymore.
Her breath leaves her in a soft gasp as our mouths meet.
The kiss is ferocious.
Desperate.
Nothing like the careful, hesitant brushes we’ve avoided until now. This is heat and hunger and history crashing together. My mouth moves against hers like I’m trying to tell her everything I can’t say out loud. Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, as if she’s been waiting too.
The world narrows to the press of her body, the taste of her, the sound of her breath hitching against my mouth.
I didn’t know I still had this in me.
And I can’t stop.
The moment stretches.
The rest of my sanity snaps.
My mouth claims hers again, harder this time, deeper, like I’ve been starving and only just realized how bad it’s been. I don’t ease into it. I don’t test. I take.
Her lip’s part with a sound that punches straight through me, something small and broken and unmistakably needy. I taste her, both familiar and different all at once and the realization that I’ve been denied this for nearly a decade, drives me nearly insane.
My tongue slides against hers, mapping, relearning, reminding myself of every way she responds. She melts into it instantly, like her body remembers before her mind can interfere.
My other hand moves without permission.
It finds her thigh, warm and solid beneath my palm, fingers curling as I draw her closer. Her skirt rides up as she shifts, breath hitching, and the sound that leaves her mouth isn’t quite a moan but isn’t far from it either.
That sound undoes me.
I deepen the kiss, devouring, slow and relentless, and she makes another noise, this one a soft whimper that vibrates straight into my chest. My pulse slams. Everything inside me accelerates.
The hand at her nape slides down, tracing the line of her neck, the strap of her dress, the familiar curve beneath it. I brush over her carefully at first, reverently, like I’m afraid she’ll disappear if I touch her too boldly.
She arches anyway.
I know her body.
When I tease her, just barely, she gasps, the sound swallowed between our mouths, and I have to brace myself to keep from losing control completely. Her fingers clutch at my shoulders, nails biting through fabric, and I feel her trembling under my hands.
It’s too much but still, not enough.
I guide her down carefully, lowering her back against the tree, grass cool beneath her, moonlight silvering her skin. I follow her there, my mouth leaving hers only to trail along her jaw, her throat, down, slow, deliberate, like I’m memorizing her again.
She shudders beneath me.
I take my time.
Not because I want to torture her, but because I want to remembereverything.
The way her breath stutters, the way her hips move without thinking, the way she whispers my name in plea.
When I finally put my mouth to her, the reaction is immediate and unrestrained. Her body bows, her hands fisting in the grass, breath breaking apart in helpless sounds she’s clearly trying to hold back.
I don’t let her.
