I’ve been kissed twice in my life, both times bad, both times by boys who didn’t make me feel anything.
With him, I feel everything.
He kisses me with nowhere to be and nothing to prove, taking his time. His beard scrapes against my chin, his bottom lip catching mine and dragging. He tastes clean, like water and a trace of mint. When I rise onto my toes to get closer, he makes a low sound against my lips and presses his hand at the small of my back, drawing me flush against him.
He’s so much larger than me. Wrapped up in him, nothing in the world can reach me, and I stop wanting it to.
His other hand spreads wide between my shoulder blades, and the heat of it soaks straight through the thin cotton of my dress. He’s harder than I am everywhere we touch. His hands won’t settle on one place—my spine, my hip, and the nape of my neck.
When he pulls back, his forehead drops to mine. His breathing’s gone rough. So has mine.
“Tell me you want this,” he says. “Tell me you’re staying.”
“I want this.” I brush my lips against him. “Tanner, I’m staying.”
My using his real name does it. Whatever he’s been holding back breaks free.
He kisses me again, and there’s nothing reined in now. The kiss is deeper, rougher, and more intense as his tongue brushes mine.
He walks me toward the bed, and the mattress catches behind my knees. I sit down hard and raise my head up to look at him.
“Lie back,” he tells me.
I do. He follows me down, bracing on his forearms so none of his bulk lands on me. The mattress dips toward him, and I tip a fraction into the dent he makes in it.
He kisses my throat. My collarbone. His mouth is hot and unhurried, leaving a cool track behind where the air hits the damp. The strap of my dress slides off my shoulder, and his mouth follows it down, the drag of his beard along my skin pulling a contented noise from me.
Each press of his mouth lands a beat behind where I brace for it, so I’m always reaching for the next before it comes. I’m coming apart by inches.
“Tanner.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never—” The embarrassment is real. I’ve never let anyone past a kiss. “I haven’t done this. Any of it.”
He stops and lifts his head. His dark eyes hold mine.
“Then we go slow,” he says. “You tell me to stop, I stop. At any point. Okay?”
“I won’t want you to stop.”
“I need you to understand. You say it, I’m done. That’s the deal.”
I reach for the hem of my dress with a nod. He stops my hands.
“Let me.”
He peels the sundress up and over my head and drops it off the side of the bed. The room is warm, but goosebumps rise up on my arms under his attention, every fine hair lifting.
He looks at me, naked except for my underwear, like he’s never wanted something more.
“Fuck, Eden.”
I should cover myself. Years of being told my body is a temptation to be hidden, and the reflex is right there, halfway up my arms.
I resist. I let him look. Iwanthim to look.
His fingers trace from my throat down between my breasts to my stomach, rough fingertips dragging over skin nobody’s ever touched, and my back arches up off the mattress to chase it.
