I shrugged and tried to look away from him but couldn’t. My eyes were drawn back almost immediately. “I can’t help it.” I sounded like a six-year-old caught with her hand in the sweetie jar.
He shook his head. “Do you want me to look back?”
“I think I’d prefer it if you said you can’t help it either.” Clearly, alcohol was doing the talking for me at this point — or at least, I wanted to blame the alcohol.
Jesse shook his head. “We can both help everything. There’s always a choice. I want to look back, but if you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
“Are you always this controlled?”
“Yes.”
His eyes were blazing.
“It isn’t a magic trick, Jerrica. You can’t choose how you feel about someone, whether you’re attracted to them, but you can choose if you do something about it. It’s just sometimes it’s difficult to make the right decision or to know what the right decision is.” He shrugged. “I’ve made a fuck ton of wrong decisions. Bad ones.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen any vulnerability on Jesse’s face. His eyes softened in their intensity, and it felt as if he was trying to read my thoughts. I wasn’t a difficult person to read. There were no difficulties at beating me in poker, and I was the worst person to hide the fact I was keeping a secret — not that I let secrets go easily.
“Would kissing me that night have been a bad decision?” Thank you champagne and spiked Pimms for sponsoring those words.
Jesse didn’t say anything; he just smiled and looked away, staring at the ground as if it held all the answers.
“Tell me.”
He looked back up, slowly, his eyes straight to mine. “Yes.”
“What about kissing me now? No strings. Just one kiss.” I just needed to know how it felt. Would it be as good as it was when I imagined it? Would every nerve and fibre in me be electrified? Or would this have been fuelled by my imagination and a seriously long drought of orgasms other than self-induced ones?
“Just one kiss?” He now looked tortured.
I nodded. “One kiss. That’s it. No more.”
I closed the few steps between us, stealing the space. Jesse didn’t retreat or move away. I didn’t expect him to, but he didn’t move towards me, either.
Stepping up on tiptoes, I put my hands on his shoulders and brought my lips to his. His hands finally caught me, holding my waist, his head dropping so the distance between us wasn’t as great.
He had also made a choice.
The press of our lips against each other was slight at first, a feather of a kiss. I pulled away, my heart thundering in my chest, every pulse banging out a beat that was almost unbearable.
I made the mistake of opening my eyes and looking at his.
Heat.
Want.
Lust.
Oxygen left my lungs, then my mouth was back on his, and this kiss wasn’t slight or soft. It was hard and potent and rich.
My fingers dug into his shoulders; my breasts pressed against his chest. He tasted of beer and something sweet, his mouth fighting with mine for dominance, although I knew he was going to win. His hands had dropped to my ass, cupping me closer to him. His teeth nipped at my bottom lip, capturing it and then sucking briefly, the sensation causing need to pool between my legs, sweet heat that I knew wouldn’t be cooled down with anything I could do.
How could this be just one kiss?
It was Jesse who ended it. His hands running up my sides and over my breasts, eliciting a whimper from me, while his eyes — those dark, simmering pools of unknown thoughts — drank me in.
One kiss was never going to be enough. I would spend the next five and a half months like a schoolgirl with a crush on her older brother’s best friend, knowing he was too far out of my range, having just dreams of him, remembering this moment when I was alone in bed or in the shower.
But at least I knew he wasn’t unaffected. The rock-hard length pressed against my stomach that I felt grow during the kiss had told me that.
