Page 57 of On One Condition

This is ridiculous.

I shouldn’t be nervous.

I shouldn’t look like a fumbling idiot.

I shouldn’t—

“Asher. Stop,” Ledger says as he takes my hands in his. My heart is racing, my pulse pounding in my ears. He stoops down so that we’re at the same eye level. “I don’t know the answer to what this is here. I don’t know what happens in two months or even tomorrow, but I know seeing you again brought me right back to those summer nights I spent with you. Right back to wanting to see you again the minute I walk away from you.”

“It’s scary, isn’t it?” I whisper.

His lips meet mine. Where earlier it was fire and heat, this time our first kiss starts with a slow build. Soft kisses. Quiet sighs. Murmured words.

His hand on my chin. My fingers threaded through the hair at the nape of his neck. The length of his body pressed against mine. His thigh positioned between the V of my legs.

Kissing him is a mixture of familiarity and newness, comfort and excitement, and longing and satisfaction.

Chills chase the featherlight touch of his fingertips down my arms. His stubble is coarse beneath my palm.

“Ledger.” His name is a breathless whisper he kisses over.

“Hmm?”

A soft tug on my bottom lip from him.

“What are we doing?”

“Kissing.” His tongue delves between my lips.

“But what are we—” I shudder as his hands find their way beneath my tank top and slide up the bare skin of my back.

Our mouths part and he stares at me with a cocky grin, desire darkening his eyes. “I’m proving to you I’ll be better at it next time.”

I laugh. It feels so good to hear it. “In that case,” I say before stepping in and tasting him again.

Our pace this go-round is slow. Leisurely. It’s a masterclass in taking one’s time. In enjoying each second for what it’s worth rather than rushing to the next one.

He laces open-mouthed kisses down the line of my neck, only lifting from my skin when he pulls my tank top over my head.

His shirt ends up on the floor by the kitchen table. My skirt is shimmied out of somewhere near the foyer. His shoes get kicked off in the hallway, a few feet apart. Our strip show continues until we’re standing in my darkened bedroom with only a stream of moonlight coming in through the window.

I take a step back, wanting to see him, needing to take in the whole of him, and knowing he needs the same thing from me.

To know this is real.

To grasp how far we’ve come in a few short hours.

We pull off our last layers of clothing with our eyes locked on each other’s. It’s an oddly intimate feeling to be stripped down physically and feel exposed emotionally too.

But hasn’t that been par for the course tonight?

I am the first to break our stare. My eyes roam over every sculpted edge of his physique. Shoulders and biceps and abs right down to that sexy V of his hips. And then there’s his hard and engorged dick set atop a pair of muscular thighs. Good thing I already know how it feels or I’d be afraid it looks too good to be true.

When I crawl my gaze back up him again, I’m met with an arrogant smirk asking me if I like what I see.

Oh, I definitely do.

“You’re stunning,” he murmurs after he makes his own languorous appraisal of me. And then he steps into me, his palms running down my flank and then cupping my ass as our lips meet once again. “Simply fucking stunning.”