The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I want to take your picture because I think you’re beautiful.”
His brows came together. His mouth worked around words that never came.
My skin buzzed with the strange electrical current that always hummed in his presence, and my heart knocked bruisingly against my ribs. I didn’t intend to be so open and honest, but I’d clearly upset him, and I was done messing around.
A flash of vulnerability crossed Gale’s face at my confession. He didn’t move away from my touch.
He seemed frozen with terror.
I leaned in, keeping hold of his chin.
Inches separated us.
I brushed my nose along his. There was no physical spark. No static charge, but I still felt it. A tug. A pull. A yearning.
“Zap,” I whispered.
Then I closed the distance and pressed my lips to his. The kiss was soft and hesitant on both sides. It pulled a quiet whimper from him, and I took it as a good sign. After my failed attempt to tease, I half expected Gale to jerk his head to the side or shoveme in the chest. If he called me an asshole and ordered me to get out of the Jeep, I would deserve it.
Instead, he barely moved at all.
I deepened the kiss one cautious step at a time, wanting desperately to pull a reaction from him. I needed confirmation that I wasn’t alone. That this sensation buzzing through my veins wasn’t one-sided.
When I traced my tongue tentatively over his lower lip, he surprised me. I earned the simplest touch of tongues, and the silky connection turned me inside out.
I didn’t get dirty and thrust my tongue down his throat. I didn’t fist his hair and grind on his lap like I wanted to. I lingered in the moment, enjoying the subtle taste of something fresh, new, and wholly unexpected.
I cradled Gale’s face and advanced ever so slightly. Was this doing to him what it was doing to me? A steady rumble moved between us. A quiet thunderstorm.Hisquiet thunderstorm. I felt it like it was mine. Tasted it on my tongue. The pain he harbored in his chest. The anguish he hid from the world.
Gale didn’t touch me back, and before long, we naturally came apart. His breath came in fits and starts, eyes wild with a mix of fear and uncertainty.
I fished for something meaningful to say but had lost all sensibility, so I simply asked, “Can I do that again?”
Gale squeezed his eyes shut. His pained expression filled me with concern. I thought he would say no, but he nodded. I wanted to ask if he was sure, but I was afraid he would change his mind.
So I kissed him again. That time, when our tongues grazed, his entire body shuddered. He rested his hands on my thighs and clung. The kiss was clumsy, sloppy, and less than perfect. It was by far the most uncoordinated kiss I’d experienced since dating Brenda Causley in high school when I was fourteen.
And that gave me pause.
Something told me this was Gale’s first kiss.
Ever.
19
Gale
Ozrik Devereaux was kissing me.
It couldn’t be real. I’d been struck by a flying branch. I’d gotten sucked up in an unexpected tornado and wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Maybe I’d been hit by lightning, or the Jeep had flipped, and I’d knocked my head. I was unconscious, dying, drifting in timeless space, in a coma, stuck in dreamland where nothing was real, and fantasies came to life. Where colors were brighter, sounds were crisper, and his rainstorm, electric scent was all I could smell.
Zap, zap, zap.
Ozrik broke from my mouth. His ragged breathing matched my own, fanning my kiss-bruised lips and sending shivers up my spine. My body thrummed and ached.
His eyes crinkled with a smile. “Hey.”
I was supposed to respond, but couldn’t.
