Page 78

I want to touch her. I want it so badly that I have to physically stop myself from reaching out.

You can only gnaw at the bars of your enclosure for so long before you realize the cage is self-imposed.

I’ve spent years keeping my desire on a short, manageable leash, but Serena makes me feel like a rabid animal, foaming at the fucking mouth.

I look at her lips. She knows I’m looking. She lets me.

This is the moment.

This is the only moment.

She turns toward me, shifting closer until her knee presses against mine. For one suspended second, she stays there, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her breath against my jaw.

Then her hand comes up, fingers curling into the front of my shirt.

She gives the fabric the smallest tug.

I get the message.

I dip my head as she tips her face up to mine, closing the last few inches between us with the agonizing press of her mouth against mine.

I kiss her back, all logic and restraint burning away in the space between two heartbeats.

If there is a statistic for how often a person wants the same thing at the same time as another person, we are about to obliterate the standard deviation.

There is nothing hesitant or exploratory about this. She knows what she wants, and in this exact moment, what she wants is to drive every last rational thought out of my head.

I thought I knew what kissing Serena would be like.

I was so fucking wrong.

She completely takes over the narrative, edits out every distraction, and reduces the entire universe to the space between her lips and the inside of my skull.

At this point, she could gut me right here on the carpet and I’d be fine with it. In fact, that’s exactly what this feels like.

Her mouth opens against mine and whatever restraint I had left goes straight to hell. I catch her lower lip between my teeth, and she makes this tiny sound that goes directly to my dick before kissing me harder. There’s nothing neat about it. Our noses bump. My glasses get shoved crooked. Her tongue slides against mine with the same hungry urgency as the rest of the kiss, and I fucking love it.

I thread one hand into the hair at the back of her head and curl the other around her waist. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me back into the kiss like she’s spent the last week just as pissed off about not doing this as I have.

By the time I remember breathing is technically required, I have absolutely no idea which one of us is kissing the other anymore.

When she finally pulls away—one inch, no more—I am left with the high, pure ring of a tuning fork between my ears. It’s like someone struck a metal bat against my sternum and left my entire body vibrating from the impact.

She does not let go of me. Her arms are still locked around my neck, her forehead pressed to mine. I can feel her breath, warm and unsteady, and can taste the trace of coffee from the last sip she stole from my mug.

Her eyes are closed for the briefest moment, then open, wide and blown black with whatever chemical reaction she just uncorked. I'm sure she could explain the biochemical cascade in exquisite detail.

I watch the pulse at the base of her throat—thrumming, a marker of panic or arousal.

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out at first. She closes it, swallows, and then makes a second attempt. “Okay,” she says, voice unsteady. “I appear to have significantly underestimated that.”

I make a noise in the back of my throat that might be a laugh, or might be the sound a man makes when all the oxygen in his body has been forcibly replaced with oxytocin.

She loosens her grip on me, as if she’s only now realized how tight she was holding on. Her hands fall away and she sits back exactly one inch farther, staring intently at the center of my chest.

“I have never been good at this,” her words heavy and measured, “and I do not enjoy being surprised by my own actions.”

“Me neither,” I say, because it’s true.