Wherever he’s at right now, I can’t reach him, but I can feel his hammering pulse against my fingertips, and medically, that can’t be healthy.
My chest nearly brushes against him when I take another step forward. “Tieran. Come back to me.” My voice is a whisper, and it cracks on the words. I brush his sweat-and-rain-soaked hair back from his face. “Please.”
My body seems to take over, because I’m suddenly flushagainst him, raising the extra couple of inches he has on me, and placing a kiss on his cheek. “Come back.” Another kiss to his other cheek. “Banter with me.” A dangerous kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Make me laugh on the inside even when I won’t show it on the outside.” My words are a whisper against his lips.
“Please.” I fully give in, kissing him squarely on the mouth.
Once. Twice. The third time, I linger, bringing my hands down to rest on his chest, letting my nails dig in, hoping it will give him something to anchor himself to.
At first, he remains still, but then his breathing starts to level out, his lips loosen, and his hands find their home on my waist, gripping me tight, as if he never wants to let me go.
When I start to pull away to check on him, his hold tightens, tugging me back in as he deepens our previously chaste kiss.
I should stop this, but I couldn’t if I tried. I want to be selfish for him when he’s always so selfless for everyone else. He needs me to tether him so he doesn’t drift too far into his mind, into that black hole of self-doubt plaguing him daily.
Maybe it’s cowardly, but in this dark closet, I can pretend our circumstances are different, and we’re just two people who can’t deny feelings as mountainous as Everest itself. Giving in to them wouldn’t feel like a cataclysmic error in judgement, but rather, a relief as freeing as a dam bursting. So yeah, maybe in this shadowed broom closet I can admit without repercussion that I’m being selfish for me too, because I want this—him, more than I’m ready to admit..
Tieran’s grip on my hip tightens. My hands shift from his chest and wind up around his neck. My pulse pounds in my ears, and he’s sighing into my mouth, and in a singularly foolish moment of no turning back, I run my tongue against the seam of his lips.
The dam breaks.
Tieran turns us so my back is flush against the wall, knocking random objects we can’t see onto the floor as he crowds my space and takes my mouth again. The ground beneath my feet wobbles, and the ground splits in half, ready to suck me into the Earth’s core for giving in to this when I shouldn’t.
I don’t care.
Itiscataclysmic,but it’s not an error in judgement like previously presumed. Something that feels this right could never be an error.
His tongue sweeps in, knocking out all my good sense and making us both groan. He’s everywhere, his hands skating down my back and skimming the top of my ass, the taste of him on my tongue, the smell of sweat and grass andTieran—it all creates a cocktail that’s getting me drunk.
This is why I should have avoided this, why I shouldn’t have given in. I won’t be able to give this up now that I really know how it feels to be held by him, kissed by him, with no convenient explanation.
One of his palms moves up to cup my face as he tips my head back to deepen the kiss, his tongue gliding deftly against mine. An embarrassing whimper escapes me, and I can feel him smile against my mouth. I tug on his hair, and the husky rumble of a laugh that bubbles up his throat is like music to my ears.
Worth it.Whatever comes of this moment will be worth it to hear that sound again.
His kisses slow into something more tender, something that makes me feel things I would rather ignore, and when he pulls away, my body inadvertently follows him.
He settles his forehead against mine and hums, a beautiful smile touching his mouth.
I’ve never been happier to see his dimples, and something in my chest loosens.
A suspicious gleam enters his cobalt eyes.
“What?” I ask, wary.
He shakes his head. “If I had known an anxiety attack was what would get you to kiss me again, I would’ve crashed out a long time ago.”
I slap his chest and step away, but I don’t get far before he’s pulling me back, kissing me one more time.
A couple daysafter our kiss, I received a text from Tieran with an address and time. It would seem his eagerness to get me to experience new things isn’t going away. The flutter that ran through my stomach upon seeing the invite was embarrassing, and the giddiness I feel days later is even worse. I’m loath to admit it but I like the attention, because his brand is different from the kind I’m used to—the kind that typically veers into scrutiny.
He thinks aboutme, what would challenge and excite me in equal measure. The nature of the activity itself doesn’t matter; it’s the fact that he assessed a need I refused to acknowledge, and he’s following through. I feel seen for the first time.
Until I moved to London, no one cared whether I worked from seven in the morning until well after midnight. I had what everyone wanted—money, fame, success. I was living the dream, but I wasn’t living, was I?
So, what have I been chasing? I have everything, working sixteen hour days to maintain a dream I’m not sure I ever really wanted, and I still feel unfulfilled. Life has been happening all around me with or without my participation. Is that really what I want for the rest of my life?
Tieran has been gently pushing me out of my comfortzone since we met, and after every encounter, I’ve felt more alive. Irritated, but alive.
