Time fractures.
There’s only the explosive certainty of being exactly where I’m supposed to be.
She pulls back first, abruptly, like the reality of what we’ve just done has caught up to her all at once. Her eyes move over my face quickly, urgently, searching for something she hasn’t defined.
I let her look.
I take two full seconds to feel the weight of this settle into place.
Long enough to understand thatnothingis the same now.
Long enough to know I’m choosing it anyway.
Then I cup her jaw in both hands, and I kiss her again.
Not short or hurried.
This time it isn’t a collision.
It isintent.
Slow in the way of something that has been a long time coming, complete in the way that means I’m not performing the gesture, but fully inside it. Like every almost, and every pulled-back moment of the last two years, has been leading here.
She makes a soft sound when I draw her closer, her hands finding my club cut as if she needs something solid to anchor herself to. The kiss deepens on instinct alone, our breathing falling out of rhythm, then finding a new one that belongs only to this moment.
There’s heat in it now.
Not reckless or frantic.
Just undeniable.
My hand slides to the small of her back, steadying her while she presses closer, and the world narrows to the sensation of her, the warmth of her mouth, the faint tremor in her breath, the way her body fits against mine like it’s always known how.
I push her up against the kitchen counter, and she whimpers into my mouth, my cock starting to strain against my jeans. She lifts her leg, wrapping it around me, and it almost has me coming fucking undone. Instinctively, I grind against her, my cock so hard now I can barely think straight as we frantically kiss in the kitchen, almost as if our lives depend on it.
Her hands slide beneath my shirt, her nails raking against my skin. I let out a small groan, and somehow, the sound of my own moan brings reality crashing back down over me.
Her father is here.
My patch isdaysaway.
I’m holding onto secrets from Millie and Sin.
And just like that, my head begins to take over the moment. The urgency ebbs into something slower, more deliberate, each movement easing until the kiss becomes less about proving anything and more about staying.
About feeling.
About memorizing.
Eventually, the need for air wins.
We part by degrees, foreheads nearly touching, both of us breathing harder than the moment looks like it should justify. Her hands curl in my club cut. Mine are still holding her like I forgot how not to.
For a second, neither of us speaks.
The silence is thick with everything we’ve set into motion.
Her breath ghosts against my mouth, and mine stutters in response.
