He tasted like wine and lemon butter and every dangerous thing I’d promised myself I’d avoid. His hands moved up my back, warm and sure, finding the edges of my resolve and unraveling them one by one. When he pressed me closer, I could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat, the heat of his skin beneath the cotton of his shirt.
If I stopped now, I knew I’d never forget how it felt to almost let go.
If I didn’t stop, I wasn’t sure I’d recover when it ended.
Desire won anyway.
I grabbed his wrist, guiding him toward the bedroom before I could talk myself out of it. The city buzzed outside, a blur of traffic and sirens and life, but inside my apartment, everything felt quiet and heavy with heat.
The twinkle lights Lydia had bullied me into hanging months ago cast the room in soft gold that had nothing to do with Christmas.
We paused just inside the doorway. The air felt charged, humming, like it knew what came next before I did. Drew’s eyes searched mine, his chest rising and falling fast.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly. “We can stop.”
I nodded before I could think. “I don’t want to.”
That was all it took.
He kissed me again, slower this time, reverent. I could feel the question in it, the hesitation. I answered by slipping my hands beneath his shirt, my fingers brushing the warm skin over his ribs. He inhaled sharply, the sound breaking into a low groan when I tugged the fabric up and over his head. His skin was hot under my palms, and I traced the edge of the new tattoo on his forearm.
It was the most deliberate touch I’d ever made.
He caught my wrist, his thumb pressing against the pulse there.
“You sure?” he asked again, softer now.
“I’m sure,” I whispered, even though a part of me—the logical, cautious, heartbreak-wary part—was screaming that I wasn’t.
But logic had never kissed me like this.
Logic had never made me feel like the only person in a room full of light.
He kissed me again, harder, like I’d just erased every rule between us, and I didn’t care. The world tilted, narrowed, blurred until it was only us. His hands mapped my skin with a kind of care that made me ache, made me want to both cry and laugh.
Clothes slipped away, slow and certain, until the only thing left between us was the pulse of our breathing and the sound of rain against the glass. He whispered my name like he was afraid it might disappear in the noise. I answered by kissing him again, pulling him closer, letting the rest of the world dissolve.
He was careful, always careful, but the way he touched me didn’t feel cautious. It felt like remembering. Like rediscovering something we’d both lost the first time we’d walked away from each other.
And I did fall…hard and fast, the way you do when there’s no safety net and you’ve already decided it’s worth the bruises.
Somewhere between the kisses and the warmth and the way he said my name, I realized I wasn’t just giving in to desire. I was giving in to him.
And that terrified me more than anything else.
Because if this went wrong, and I was almost certain it would, I’d lose him. Not just the man, but the pieces of myself that still remembered what it felt like to hope.
But I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to.
Every time his lips found mine, every time his hands slid over my skin, every breathless sound I made against his mouth, all of it pushed me further past the point of reason. The ache between wanting him and fearing what came after blurred into one unsteady, perfect thing.
“Melanie,” he whispered.
And that was when I knew.
I was going to make the mistake I’d been avoiding since the first night he’d handed me a drink at The Rusty Stag and smiled that ridiculous smile.
Except it didn’t feel like a mistake.
