Like whatever restraint he had been holding with both hands finally understood it did not have to protect us from what we both wanted anymore.
He kissed me then.
Slow at first.
Deep.
A kiss that did not ask where the night was going because the answer was already moving through both of us. His hands tightened at my waist, and mine slid higher, around his neck, into the warmth of him. He tasted like wine and dessert and restraint finally giving way.
And when he moved us from the kitchen back toward the living room, I went with him.
No hesitation.
No part of me still trying to talk my body out of what my heart had already begun to trust.
The music lulled me deeper into my feelings.
Brent Faiyaz.Butterflies.
Maybe it's a little bit rushed, but I'm falling in love
Hope that's not too much, but this isn't a crush
I've done that enough, girl, I know that it's real
— Christopher Brent Wood, Benjamin Levin
I felt it before I recognized it, the low ache in the song, the questions under it, the sense of a man standing in the middle of real feeling and trying to decide if he trusted it to be whatit seemed. Micah drew me closer, one hand at the small of my back, the other spread between my shoulder blades, and we moved slow in the candlelight while the room softened around us.
I looked up at him, and my breath caught at the sight of what was waiting for me.
His eyes were dark brown and heavy-lidded now, the softness of dinner gone from them, replaced by something slower, hotter, and far less polite. His gaze moved over my face like he was trying to hold on to the last bit of patience he had left, and the effort of it made my whole body go quiet.
All that time we had taken. All that circling. All that restraint. Every kiss we had pulled back from, every text we had not let turn into a bad decision, every breath we had spent pretending we could keep wanting each other at a respectful distance.
It was all right there between us now.
Not as tension anymore.
As recognition.
His thumb moved once at my back, slow enough to feel deliberate.
“You all right?” he asked softly.
I smiled a little. “You really like asking me that.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
His eyes held mine, dark and steady, already telling me too much.
“Because once I stop asking,” he said, voice low, “I’m done pretending I’m not about to give you everything I got.”
That sent a hot little shiver all the way through me.
I heard the shift in the music before he did.
