Tori’s eyes were wide and her pupils dark. Her lips were kiss-swollen and her cheeks flushed. I opened my mouth to say something—hell if I knew what—when her palm pressed lightly to my chest.
“Are you about to tell me we should slow down?” she asked.
Her voice, low, raspy, and frayed with heat, cracked through me like lightning across a summer sky.
I let out a shaky laugh, answering honestly. “I don’t know what I was about to say.”
For the first time, uncertainty flickered in her eyes. She blinked up at me before lifting her chin, almost defensively.
“Why did you ask that?” I prompted gently.
Her teeth lightly caught her bottom lip, and I was abruptly aware of the swollen, hard length of my cock. “I’m not sure. All I know is I don’t want to stop.”
Only Tori had this effect on me. Every time I thought maybe I had my balance with her, she kicked my feet out from under me. It was a kind of chaos, and yet it felt so fucking good. “I don’t want to stop,” I said honestly.
“Good.” I could feel the heat of her palm just over my heart as its beat raced along.
“I don’t want you to think this is just about sex,” I added.
Uncertainty flickered in her eyes again, and I felt the sting of her pain on my own heart. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. I like you, Tori.”
Tori’s hand twisted a little bit on my chest, and she shifted on her feet. She was quiet for several long beats before she nodded. “I like you.” She cleared her throat. “And it’s not just about sex. Not for me.”
Her palm stretched open across my heart again, sliding up, her fingers dipping into the very spot where she had dropped a kiss earlier. Everywhere she touched felt like flames on my skin. Her hand slid up further, curling around my nape and tugging me down slightly.
It was the easiest thing in the world to tumble into another kiss, to claim her mouth again, to savor the way she felt. The kiss once again started slow, yet it rapidly escalated. Our teeth clanked. It was messy and wild until we broke apart once again, the sound of our breath heaving in the air around us. We were plastered together. The evidence of my arousal pressed just above the cradle of Tori’s hips. She swallowed before glancing over her shoulder. I followed her gaze to see that Bella was still sound asleep, still snoring.
“Come here,” she said, stepping away and catching one of my hands in hers.
Alaska was filled with small houses like Tori’s. Her entrance led into an open living room, kitchen, and dining area with a tall, peaked ceiling. There was a small balcony railing up above, and she led me over to the stairs that were off to one side. With every step I took, I could feel the drumbeat of my heart thumping faster and faster, picking up its pace. We crested the top of the stairs, which had a small open area with some bookshelves and a pair of chairs.
Although it was mostly dark out, I could see that the view would be beautiful with just the outline of the mountains and the moon shining above them outside the windows. Tori led me through a doorway into her bedroom with a bed against the wall topped with big, fluffy pillows and a quilt.
She stopped at the foot of the bed before turning to face me. Once again, she looked a little uncertain. I wanted to know all the answers, to understand her.
“This is my bedroom,” she announced. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, a little giggle slipping out, the sound itself spinning around my heart.
“Is it now?” I teased lightly.
She giggled again, and I loved the pink flush on her cheeks. “I always leave a lamp on.” She gestured to the lamp that was, in fact, turned on over beside the bed on the nightstand.
“So let’s have this conversation first,” she announced.
“What conversation?”
“Birth control,” she said flatly.
“I have a condom,” I said, because I always did.
Not that I got all that much action, especially not since I’d been helping take care of my mom, but old habits die hard and all that. My mom had been a stickler about that and had sat me down to give me a whole lecture about birth control and STDs and safety and protection and health and so on. Since I’d been a teenager at the time, awkward didn’t even come close to capturing how I’d felt, but I’d taken every word she said to heart.
Tori took a quick breath as she nodded. “Okay. It’s um..” She twisted her hands together in front of her before clearing her throat. “Not a big thing, I guess, but I do get checked every year just to be safe. And, it’s been, well, a while,” she added.
“We have to get checked at our annual physical. It’s protocol. I guess it makes it easier,” I said with a shrug.
“Okay.” Her shoulders rose with a breath.
