But it’s not why I’m doing this.
The defiance is the icing. Johnny is the cake.
The way he listens when I talk. Really listens, like my words matter, like he’s storing them somewhere safe. The way he makes me laugh without trying, and when I laugh, he watches me like he just won something. The way he doesn’t try to manage me. Doesn’t tell me what to think or where to stand or who to be.
I want him. The rebellion is just a bonus.
“Couch,” I say against his mouth, and Johnny doesn’t hesitate. He surges off the stool and lifts me, and my legs wrap around his waist on instinct. The muscles in his arms bunch as he carries me across the room and I’m struck by how easy it is for him. How effortless. Like I weigh nothing. Like he’d carry me anywhere I asked.
He lays me down on my back and settles between my thighs, tipping my chin up with two fingers before he kisses me again. Slower this time. Deeper. His tongue traces my bottom lip and I open for him, and his arms tighten around me like he’s trying to eliminate every last inch of space between us.
The weight of him between my thighs turns my brain to static. He braces himself on one forearm, the other hand sliding into my hair, and we kiss like we’re trying to memorize each other.
Outside, the last daylight has gone thin and copper. The breeze from the window smells like low tide and the neighbor’s wood smoke. Johnny’s skin is warm everywhere it touches mine.
He pulls back and strips his shirt over his head. I’ve seen him half-naked before, cleaned his wounds, traced the edges of scars he didn’t remember getting. But this is different. This is his body offered, not injured. The muscles in his shoulders flex as he tosses the shirt to the floor, and I run my palms up his stomach just to feel them contract under my hands.
He reaches for the hem of mine. Slow. Watching my face the whole time.
I help him. Lift my arms, let him pull it up and off, and then I’m beneath him in just my bralette. The sheer white fabric that doesn’t match my underwear, which is plain lilac cotton, because nobody warned me this morning that I’d be making a decision that would require better lingerie.
Really nailing the seduction, Natalia. Stunning work.
Johnny doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. His eyes drop to the bralette and stay there with an expression that makes my skin flush from my collarbones to my hairline. Then he lowers his mouth to my breast.
The wet heat of his tongue through damp material makes my back arch off the cushion. He sucks, gentle and then firm, and the pull radiates straight down through my belly. I grip his hair. My hips lift against his without my permission, and I can feelhim hard against my inner thigh through the thin cotton of his pants.
He shifts to the other side, nosing the fabric away so his lips find bare skin, and the direct contact tears a sound out of me that bounces off the walls. High and sharp and nothing I would ever willingly make in front of another person.
I clap my hand over my mouth. Johnny lifts his head.
“Don’t.” He pulls my hand away. “I want to hear you.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who just sounded like a smoke alarm.”
He grins against my collarbone. “Sexiest smoke alarm I ever heard.”
The ache between my thighs becomes unbearable.
“I want...” The word catches. I don’t know how to ask for what I want because I’ve never had to. Never been allowed to. My hips do the talking instead, pressing up against his hand.
Johnny reads it. “Tell me what you need.”
“...Touch me.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds like someone braver. “Please?”
His fingers drag down my stomach, and every inch of skin he crosses lights up and begs for more. He finds the waistband of my jeans. Button. Zipper. Each tiny metal sound enormous in the silence.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
I lift my hips and we work my jeans down together. He tugs them the rest of the way off and drops them on the floor, and the casual confidence of it makes my stomach flip.
His hand tracks back up my inner thigh, and when his fingers brush the cotton between my legs, my whole body clenches. I’m soaked. Embarrassingly, no-possible-way-to-play-this-cool soaked, and he hasn’t even really touched me yet.
His thumb presses against my clit through the fabric and I jolt. He circles once. Twice. My fingers dig into the couch cushion hard enough to feel the springs.
Then he slides his hand beneath the cotton and touches me bare.
