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There was us before this kiss, and us after.
That tugged another helpless mewling noise from my throat.
He swallowed it with a deep groan, backing me up a step until my back was pressed against the porch column. Twining my arms around his neck, I pressed my fingers into the shifting, hot muscles of his shoulders.
It was everything, this kiss. It was the kind that shrank the entire world to that one perfect moment, because his mouth on mine was a dream I didn’t know I’d never had. Every cliché I’d tried to avoid was spinning on a wheel in my head.
Fireworks, explosions, rearranged atoms, they were all present and accounted for.
But what I didn’t expect, as his lips pushed and pulled over mine, as I nipped at his bottom one and felt his hands tighten in my hair in a way that tugged goose bumps over my skin, was the sleek thread of terror at how good it all felt.
The same spike of adrenaline before someone jumped off a cliff, hooked into a measly harness with a single anchor holding them to safety. Still … they jumped. Despite the fear, despite the warnings, and in spite of all the ways it could go wrong, they made a decision to push off from safety.
But that didn’t negate the moment before when your heart stopped and your stomach flipped in on itself.
It couldn’t possibly be this incredible with him, could it? If the first kiss felt like this, then…
All signs pointed to minds being blown and neurons rewired to feature Ian Wilder as the sole carrier of all my best sexual fantasies.
That’s when I hitched a leg up against his thigh, one of his big, big hands gripped it, holding it in place, and he rolled his hips hard against mine, a harsh grunt escaping into my mouth that had my belly quivering.
As I registered the absolutely delicious, big shape of him pressing hard against my stomach—because God bless gray joggers—I saw stars. I didn’t want to simply kiss him, didn’t want this one small parcel of time on the front porch.
I wanted Ian Wilder to fuck me into next week.
Not because it had been so long for me, and the heavy weight of someone’s body pressing me into the bed sounded like the greatest present in the world, but because I wanted him. I wanted him.
My fingers dug into the shifting muscles on his back as he pressed me into that porch column, the sharp edge of it a delicious pain point splitting through all this heady pleasure. A grounding point that I held on to with both hands.
More importantly, I held on to him with both hands, no plans to let go until Ian did. And God above, I hoped he didn’t. One of his big hands, hot and hard, slid underneath my shirt, his arm banding around my waist, his palm and fingers curling possessively around my ribs, and I arched my back into his chest with a mewling sound that had his kiss taking on a hard, ferocious edge.
It was that edge—the sheer, relentless need blossoming between us—that melted away any reservations. There were no whispers in my mind of we shouldn’t or this is a bad idea or what will happen tomorrow, because the only thing left behind was a blindingly simple truth—this is what I was yearning for.
My heart beat wildly in my chest, some frantic winged creature in a cage, and I desperately wanted to set that yearning free. My hands itched to roam over his skin, but I anchored them at the back of his neck instead, tugging my fingers into the thick strands of his hair. The approving noise that escaped Ian’s mouth, a feral sort of growling, had me tilting my head to deepen the kiss, had me slipping my tongue over his in a soft, twisting motion that tugged our bodies tighter and tighter together without a sliver of space anywhere between us.
I pried my eyes open because I wanted to see this. I wanted to see if it was doing to him what it was doing to me, and from the corner of my eye, I thought maybe I caught movement inside the house. I didn’t pull away immediately, though, because Ian did this thing with his tongue against mine that made me very, very interested in what else he could do with it. Preferably between my legs. I was ready to climb him like a tree, my head spinning and spinning and spinning with how the universe expanded with this kiss.
And then through the front door, I heard, “Mom?”
He tore his body off mine in an instant, turning away and sinking into one of the porch chairs just as Sage opened the door.
“Hey, honey,” I said, and I was really proud of myself for not sounding as panicked as I felt because my insides were crackling dangerously with unspent energy. “We didn’t want to wake you, so we were having cake out here.”
She rubbed her eyes and nodded. “Can I cut myself a piece?”
My legs were made of rubber, but I took a slight step forward. “Do you want help?”
She shook her head. “No, I got it.” Then she glanced at Ian, who had his head in his hands, elbows braced on this thighs. “You okay?”
He sat up—hands laying inconspicuously over his lap—and gave her a reassuring smile. “Yeah, kid. Just a little tired.”
It was a good enough answer for her because she bounced back into the house, the door slamming behind her. I sank against the porch column again and set my hand over my racing heart.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
When I’d caught my breath, I risked a glance at him, and he was watching me with an inscrutable look on his face. Wasn’t it always like that with him? The moments I wanted to know his thoughts the most were the moments he kept them completely locked down.
Ian stood, bracing his hands on his hips, and stared at the ground before speaking. With a sinking in my gut, I knew there’d be no more kissing, and I was probably going to hate whatever came out of his mouth next.
