“Then don’t take it away again.”
“I’ll try.”
We stayed like that for a long moment, holding each other, and I could feel some of the tension that had been building between us starting to ease. This was what I’d been missing: not just the attraction, but the comfort of being close to someone who understood me.
But as the seconds stretched on, I became aware of other things. The way he smelled, clean and familiar and distinctly him. The solid warmth of his body against mine. The way his breathing had changed, becoming deeper and more careful.
When I pulled back to look at him, his eyes were dark and focused on my face with an intensity that made my pulse quicken.
“Adan,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yeah?”
“I think we should?—”
I kissed him.
It wasn’t planned, wasn’t a conscious decision, but an instinctive response to the way he was looking at me. But unlike the first kiss, which had been brief and shocking, this one immediately deepened into something more urgent.
His hands came up to frame my face, and I pressed closer, backing him up against the door as the careful control we’d both been maintaining shattered completely. This wasn’t the tentative exploration of the first kiss—this was need, pure and simple, seven days of tension and avoidance and forced distance exploding into desperate contact.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, amazed by how soft it was, how perfectly he fit against me. He made a sound low in his throat when I bit gently at his bottom lip, and the sound sent heat racing through my system.
“Adan,” he gasped when we broke apart for air, but he didn’t try to stop me when I kissed him again.
This time, he kissed me back with equal intensity, his hands sliding from my face to my shoulders to the small of my back, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us. When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, trying to process what had happened.
He sighed. “We shouldn’t have?—”
“Probably not.”
But neither of us moved away. I couldn’t look away from him. He was so damn gorgeous, his lips slightly swollen from kissing, his normally perfect hair messed up from my hands.
“This doesn’t solve anything,” he said quietly.
“Doesn’t it?”
“It makes everything more complicated.”
“Maybe. But it also proves that we can’t pretend this doesn’t exist between us.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his hands still resting on my back, his body still pressed against mine.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But we figure it out together instead of you making unilateral decisions about what’s best for both of us.”
“And if this ruins everything?”
“Then at least we’ll ruin it together.”
Despite everything, that made him smile. “You have a very unique approach to problem-solving.”
“It’s worked for me so far.”
“Has it?”
“Well, I got you to kiss me twice. I’d call that a success.”
