Page 5
Heat blooms low in my stomach and spreads everywhere at once, up my chest, down my arms, between my thighs. My heart starts beating so fast it almost feels painful. Nobody has ever looked at me like this before. Nobody has ever said my name like wanting me is something heavy. Something unavoidable.
The wind coming off the water lifts my hair, the blue tips of my curls catching in the moonlight, and his eyes follow the movement automatically like he cannot help himself.
My brain short-circuits. “You want me?”
“And you want me too.” His voice drops, and he pulls me close enough that I can feel his breath on my mouth.
“I never said that.”
He pulls back but keeps both of his hands on my waist. “You don’t want this?”
My heart stutters, because I never expected it to go this far. I never thought about wanting… more. I know I want him to kiss me again. I want him to keep touching me. I want to stop thinking about consequences and Iris and the fact that this is Grayson.
Grayson who taught me how to drive a stick shift, who carried me home when I twisted my ankle on a hike, who has been a background character in my life for years and is suddenly, violently, in the foreground.
“I want…” I stop because the words feel too big for my mouth.
“Tell me.”
“I want you to touch me,” I whisper.
He makes a sound low in his chest, almost pained. His grip tightens on my waist, as one hand slides up my back, pulling me flush against him. Then he kisses me again, slower this time. His mouth moves against mine like he’s learning the shape of it, his tongue slides across my bottom lip, and I open for him and taste salt and beer and something stronger.
His fingers trace a line down to the hem of my dress, just at the back of my thigh, and he stops there, waiting.
“Yes,” I breathe against his mouth.
His palm slides under the cotton, and his touch against my bare thigh makes my hips jerk forward without permission. He groans into my mouth and his fingers dig in, and then his other hand is on my knee, sliding up, up, and the hem of my dress is bunching around his wrists, and there is nothing under this dress except me and he is about to find that out.
“Sienna.” He pulls back just enough to look at me properly. “You’re not wearing—”
“No,” I gasp against his mouth.
I rarely do. Grandma Mary has been a gynecologist in this town for thirty years and has spent most of my life aggressively preaching the importance of letting everything breathe. I’m not sure she ever considered the possibility of a boy discovering that information firsthand.
“Jesus.” He says it like a prayer. Like a curse. His forehead drops briefly against mine before his eyes drag down my body again. “You’re going to kill me.”
He keeps moving, dragging up the inside of my thigh, and when his fingers reach the juncture of my hip he stops, and I can feel him trembling. Grayson, who I’ve seen carry a couch up three flights of stairs without breaking a sweat, is trembling.
“I need you to tell me if you want me to stop,” he says. His voice is strained. Held together by sheer force of will. “I need you to tell me right now.”
“Don’t stop.”
His forehead drops to my shoulder. I feel his breath against the damp skin there a second before his teeth drag lightly over my collarbone, just enough to make my entire body jerk beneath him.
His fingers slide higher, and then he touches me, right there, right where I am already embarrassingly wet, and the sound that comes out of my mouth is a high-pitched whine I’ve never heard before.
“Fuck,” he whispers against my collarbone. “You’re so—”
“Don’t say wet.”
He laughs, a low surprised sound that vibrates against my skin. “Why not?”
“It’s cliché.”
“It’s accurate.” To prove his point, his fingers slide through me, and I can hear it, and my face flushes hot. “You were saying something about cliché?”
“Shut up,” I grumble, pulling him back to my lips.
