I had laid my head on his chest, having given up the fight pretending I didn’t care. As if I didn’t feel the heat that came from the sparks between us. His arms were around me, my legs intertwined with his. Neither of us said a word; we didn’t have to. His hand traced a lazy path up and down my back. I closed my eyes, trying to force away the voice in my head that reminded me that summer was almost over. And then, he would be gone. And I would be here. But I couldn’t get it to shut up. I slid off the hood, pulling him with me.
He gave me a questioning look. “What’s wrong, Malibu?”
I didn’t know how to answer. There were simply too many things racing through my mind and not enough words. So, like I had on the porch all those months ago, I kissed him. The feel of his lips had become familiar to me. But the hundreds of kisses and stolen moments we had shared were not doing a thing to still the racing of my heart. So, with trembling hands, I pushed my hand under his shirt and ran my palm across his defined stomach. I felt his breath stutter, and as I started to trace the V ofhis abdomen before pulling at the waist of his jeans, he stopped me and stepped back.
I stood across from him and could feel every mile that was about to open between us. It had been a long time since I was so certain about something, even though it was making my whole body shake. I could see in his gray eyes that he had seen the line I had drawn in the sand, and how close I was to crossing it. How badly he wanted to cross it too. Then, not daring to break eye contact, I slipped my hand into my back pocket and pulled out the silver foil square like an offering. It had been burning a hole in my jeans all night. His eyes widened as he glanced from me to it and back again.
“We don’t have to,” he said first, hands flexing uselessly at his sides. “Holly, we don’t.”
“I know,” I said. “But I want to. We’ve been dancing around it. I can’t keep lying to myself. I…I want this. I want you. In a way I’ve never wanted someone before. Please.”
He opened his mouth, closed it. Then he closed his large hand over mine. The foil crinkled and my breath caught. It nearly broke me, the way he was careful, the way he would rather go crazy than rush me. His thumb brushed my jaw, like a question mark. “Are you sure, Malibu?”
“Yes,” I answered, shivering. “But slow.”
His eyes sharped to a steel gray when I tugged his shirt over his head, but he never moved an inch. I knew he was waiting for permission to touch me. I closed my eyes, steeling myself, then guided his hand to my breast and encouraged him to explore the rest of me. My heart was trying desperately to escape my ribcage, and I gasped when he bent his head, burying his face in the crook of my neck. His lips traveled down my jaw, to the sweet spot where my neck met my shoulder, and then he kissed my collarbone. When he ran a calloused thumb over the skin of my breast, I didn’t stop him. He tweaked my nipple through thefabric, taking the way I leaned into him as the green light that it was.
I slipped out of my top, letting it fall to the ground. The reverent way he looked at me as my bra followed just made me want this more. I kissed him again, surprising us both as I moaned when his tongue pressed against my lips and pulling him into me when I opened for him. He groaned, hands traveling over every inch of my skin. When he cupped my breast in his hand, I whimpered and he froze. But I smiled softly, and he didn’t take his eyes off mine as he traced the curve of my body to my ass which he squeezed before lifting me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he laid us down in the grass. The moon was our only light, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t love his infuriatingly patient touch, like he thought I might vanish if he pressed too hard.
I did vanish, a little. Everything blurred until there was only heat and him and the sound of my own pulse. When I flinched and closed my eyes as he touched my inner thigh, an echo of an unwelcome memory, I felt him go still above me.
“We can stop,” he said into my hair, voice breaking. “Say it and I’ll stop.”
I swallowed, throat thick. “No,” I whispered, and pulled him back to me. “I want to. Help me forget what his hands felt like on my skin.”
His breath left him in a rough sound. He gathered me closer like we were the last two people in a world that had never once been kind. His hands weren’t cages. They were doorways. Every place he touched rewrote something, and every place I touched saidmineback to him in a language older than both of us. He slid my shorts off my legs, and settled himself between me. I bit my lip as I took the condom out of the wrapper, and we both trembled when I slid it on him. He gave me one last questioning look before lining up and sliding into me. I whimpered, but mygrip on his thighs urged him to keep going. Slowly, we found a rhythm. And it feltgood. I had been so afraid, for so long…but he made me feel whole.
Jackson was painfully gentle, the steady movement driving me insane. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled his face to mine. I kissed him, then trailed kisses down his jaw and over to his ear. I nipped at it, and he moaned, so I did it again. “Harder, handsome. Faster.”
“Malibu…”
I dragged my nails down his back, lifting my hips to meet his and rolling my body under his, taking him even deeper. That was all it took.
A firestorm erupted.
He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that quickly turned frantic. Each thrust dragged a gasp or a moan from my lips. The air filled with the sounds of our joining—skin slapping against skin, ragged breaths, the rustle of grass beneath us.
He drove into me, again and again, and we let ourselves drift, and somehow landed exactly where we were meant to. I let myself feel every hard ridge of his cock, and it was as if my body had beenmadefor this, for him. The friction was exquisite, a building coil of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.
Jackson groaned, “Fuck, Malibu. You feel so right.” He picked up the pace, until he was slamming his body into mine. He muttered an oath, or maybe it was a prayer and buried in his face in my neck again, going faster still when I started moaning his name. “Malibu, baby. That might be my new favorite sound. Let me hear it again.”
“Jackson…” I sobbed, my head thrashing side to side.
“Look at me,” he ground out, his pace becoming desperate. “Holly, look at me.”
My eyes flew open, fixed on his which were glazed with passion. In that moment, with his body pounding into mine,with the stars pricking the violet sky above us, the pain I had carried for so long drifted into the night.
“I’ve wanted you since senior year,” Jackson gasped, his hips pistoning. “You have no idea. You’ve had my heart. You’ve had mymind. Every damn thought.” He punctuated each confession with a deep, claiming thrust. “You’re all I see.”
Something broke in me. A final wall, not shattered by force, but dissolved by the sheer, overwhelming truth of his words, by the physical proof of his desire rocking into my very core. A tear traced a path down the side of my face, cool against the flushed heat of my skin. He wiped it away with his thumb and then, never taking his eyes from mine, traced his way to my clit and began to rub circles there in time with each thrust.
My climax hit me suddenly, violently. My body arched off the ground, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, one hand pulling on his hair. I pulled him down for a kiss, moaning his name into his mouth. He kissed me back, tongue sweeping inside like he was desperate to memorize my taste. The stars in the night sky melded with the ones he made me see. Then he buried himself as deep as he could go and came, his release slamming through him in wave after blinding wave.
Jackson collapsed atop me, careful to keep his weight on his elbows, his forehead pressed to my shoulder. Our hearts hammered a wild, syncopated rhythm against each other’s chests. The world came back in pieces—the scent of crushed clover, the cool of the evening air on his sweat-slicked skin, my body trembling as I came back to earth.
Slowly, he pulled out, disposing of the condom in the grass. He gathered me to him, turning us onto our sides, my back to his front. He wrapped his arms around my, holding me tight against the shivers that were now wracking my frame.
I was quiet for a long time. Then my hand found his where it rested on my stomach, and I laced my fingers through his. Ibrought our joined hands to my lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
