“Good God, I don’t think you could have said anything more perfect if you’d lived to be a thousand.”
“You like that, huh?”
“Yes oh yes, I really like it.”
“I like it too. You pull me through.”
“Wow I was really wrong about thatsaying something more perfectthing. It took you all of ten seconds,” she said, though she didn’t realize how true that was until he really did it. He put his hand through the gap, and her heart did a little dance. He was honestly letting her be the Morten Harket. She was the pencil-drawn superhero, and he was the ordinary guy who wanted to be in her world.
Everything was so easy, once she put it that way. Suddenly she was clasping his hand with almost no effort at all, and then she was leaning forward, and maybe he was leaning forward too, and none of it had to mean too much because the space between the films was so small. It was possible to believe it couldn’t happen, right up until the point where it actually did.
The shadows closed around them both, and there it was. His mouth touching hers. Her mouth touching his. Wild, crazy explosions going off inside every inch of her.
For a second they were so intense she was kind of afraid they were escaping her body. She couldn’t see because her eyes were squeezed shut, but it certainly felt as if fireworks were popping around her head. The heat surrounding her was strong enough to singe her skin, and she was sure she could hear those short, sharp cracks.
Not that he would have minded—fireworks seemed to be going off for him too. She could tell they were before he’d even pulled away. It was in the tender, near-shivering way he touched her. It was in the sense of him, like something suddenly drawn so taut and tense. And when he finally broke the kiss, he only confirmed this theory.
He was breathing harder than she was. One of his hands was gripping the shelf above, and it was doing it so tightly she could see the split in his skin between white and red. His eyes were heavy lidded; the blue had fallen down into darkness.
But the best part was his parted lips. Theylookedlike they’d just kissed someone, even though they’d barely kissed her at all. They looked slick and swollen, and most of allpersuasive. Christ, she wanted to kiss those lips again. And hedefinitelywanted to kiss her lips back.
“Well...” he said, so breathless it sent a tingle through her. “That was...”
“Yeah, that was.”
“Want to do it again?”
“It’s possible I do.”
“Maybe without a bookcase in the middle?”
“I can see how that might be better,” she said, but even as she did so, she could feel her shakes intensifying. In a second, there wouldn’t be anything between them. And he was probably going to expect more than a closed-mouth sort of affair.
Hell,shewas expecting more.
She wanted more.
She just wasn’t quite sure on thegiving itpart. Kissing the back of her hand simply wasn’t the same as trying to do it to an actual man. Actual men did not keep very still unless she moved her arm around a bit to give the whole thing some variety. They moved completely independent of any of her wishes.
Like right now, holy shit he was doing thatright now. She expected him to stay around there until she came to him, but he was coming around to her. Hestrodearound to her. It gave her about ten seconds to straighten her t-shirt and shake the nerves out of the ends of her hands, before he was on her.
He was on her like men in movies were on women they hadn’t seen for eight thousand years. She actually saw him in slow motion as he rounded the corner—arms swinging heroically, t-shirt pulled taut over his broad chest, long legs eating up the space between them in a single stride.
Then finally his hands reaching for her face.
He was going toholdherfacein hishandsas he kissed her. And she was definitely going to come apart when he did. She knew she was before he’d even clasped her to him. Her lower half had already begun to lose coherency when his lips found hers, and after that it was just dissolving time. Her whole body went so limp she had to hang on to his wrists to keep standing.
But once she had, the door was open for other things. Terrible things, like using his arms to haul herself closer to him. Though in her defense, he was just so tall and she was too damn short, and if she was going to do this at all she needed the extra leverage. Getting up on tiptoe just wasn’t enough. Grabbing and pulling was required, because Holy Mother of God was kissing an amazing thing.
Or maybe it was more that kissinghimwas an amazing thing. His lips were butter-soft. He tasted of peppermint. And he made it so easy, everything was so easy. All she had to do was follow the slow, sliding rhythm he settled into—insinuating her mouth against his in that same manner he’d just used, then sucking just a little on his lower lip. Not enough to really call itsuckingif she was being pedantic about it, but enough to give her a strange thrill every time he did it.
It felt sort of like he’d decided to pull away, but was reluctant to let her lips go. And once he realized he was on the verge of cutting the kiss short, he dived right back in there. He pushed his mouth right up against hers, in a way that should have been too much but instead was never enough.
Mainly because of the rolling way he went about it, she thought. He didn’t shove his lips against hers. There was no crushing or bashing or storming of her battlements. It was more like being gently rocked through a kiss—which sounded absolutely bonkers but was pretty close to making her pass out.
She just didn’t know what to do with all this heat pouring through her. Was this much heat normal, over a simple kiss? It seemed completely excessive even to her and her zero experience of these things. In some places it was getting close to pain, and the more he did the closer it got. His hand slid down her back and suddenly the faint pulsing sensation in her lower belly was something else altogether.
It almost felt like athudding. Like someone had made a fist inside her and was trying to pound their way out—only not half as terrible as that seemed to suggest. None of this was terrible. If it was pain, it was the sweetest sort she’d ever experienced. And if she was afraid, this fear was some kind of new good type. It had to be, because when he finally decided to slide his hand all the way down and over her ass, terror seized control of her body.
