But I let him reel me in all the same and hook my fingers into his belt loops. His body feels good against mine. Comfortable.Right. But I can’t be sure it’s the same for him. Am I the first lad he’s ever touched like this? Do I want to be?
Yes.
But Lord, I want so much more too.
His lips are so close. I lean in the tiniest amount, but he doesn’t take the bait. Not in the form of kissing me, anyway.
He does relax a bit, though. Enough to shift his hand from my wrist to my hip. Mirroring the touch on the other side. And god, these baby steps are fecking heaven.
Incremental bliss.
I take another chance and abandon his belt loops. Ghost my palms under his jacket.
I’m still above his clothes, but Sab shivers, and digs white teeth into his full bottom lip. “I don’t think I’d survive hooking up with you.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“I have a kid.”
He says it like a confession, and it’s time for one of my own. “I know you have a daughter. I’ve seen you with her in town.And…” Sab’s dark brows are already up, but they raise a little more as I shift and guide him the last few steps up Figgy Mount. To the highest point around here where you can see Firefly Hill and the church on Aurora Street. Cosmic Avenue and the road behind it. “I live on Cinnamon Row.”
Sab blinks. “You do?”
“Yup. I’ll show you when we go back, but I figure you should know your face wasn’t new to me when I came up on your van last week.”
Sab absorbs that, and I wonder if it’ll piss him off. If he’ll read more into it than the simple chain of coincidence that brought us together.
Maybe I should tell him I’ve seen him in his garden too, but it sounds creepier than it is without showing him my house and the proof I haven’t had much choice in the matter.
So I don’t say anything.
Again, I wait, and I don’t mind the quiet as he sorts through whatever’s going on in his brain. Logan’s like this, though I’ve never been waiting on him deciding if he wants to?—
Wants to what?
I don’t actually know. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t spent all week thinking about the filthiest shit we could do together. But now I’m with him, other things eclipse those thoughts. Things I’ve never really thought of with anyone else.
I want to kiss him.
I really,reallydo.
But I want to see him shiver again too. See how deep that bite into his bottom lip can go before another sound breaks free. I want to hold his face and coax his gaze from where it’s descended to the frosty ground. To see if that shadowed scruff on his face is as soft as it looks.
These unfamiliar musings, though…they don’t last long. Don’t get the chance. Sab moves, fresh cut pinewood and vanilla swamping my senses. He’scloser, filling the narrow space between us, and just like that, I’m caught.
By his wide eyes and flickering gaze.
By the weight of his hand on my chest.
Steady.
Warm.
Honest as a faint tremor wracks the palm resting on my body as if he’s trying to remind himself I’m real. As if he’s trying to find the courage to?—
Soft lips graze mine, a breath of contact so light I almost think I’ve imagined it.
Then it comes again, a second, slower pass that has my heart knocking hard in my chest, something akin to shock flaring in my veins.
