Page 45

I kissed her and moved slowly. She felt like nothing I'd been able to imagine. Every time I pulled back and pressed in again, she made a sound that went straight through me. I wanted to memorize every one of them. I wanted to hear them for the rest of my life.

Her legs wrapped around me. Her hands slid down my back. She was saying my name between breaths, broken up, half-finished, and every time it came out of her mouth it pulled me closer to the edge.

"Don't stop." Her nails dug into my back. "I'm almost⁠—"

I was holding on. Barely. I wanted this to last but she was making it impossible, her voice and her body and the way she kept whispering my name like it was the only word she had left.

"You feel better than anything I imagined," I said against her neck. "And I imagined this every night."

I could feel her getting close. Her whole body was tensing under me, her breathing climbing. I slowed down. Long, deliberate strokes that made her grip the sheets and press her head back into the pillow.

She groaned, low and desperate, her hips trying to pull me faster.

"Alex, please⁠—"

I kissed her and gave her what she wanted.

The heat climbed. Her breathing shattered into pieces. She said my name one more time, barely a sound, and her whole body tightened around me. I watched her face as she came apart, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open, her fingers digging into my back hard enough to leave marks.

I couldn't hold on after that. The sound of her, the feel of her still pulsing around me, the way my name sounded in her mouth when she had nothing left. I buried my face against her neck and let go.

For a long moment, neither of us moved. Her fingers were in my hair, tracing slow circles at the base of my skull.

I kissed her before I pulled out and rolled onto the bed beside her. We lay there staring at the ceiling, our breathing filling the dark room, both of us waiting for our lungs to remember how to work. She rolled toward me and rested her head on my chest.

"Alex." Her voice was quiet against my chest. "You traveled a lot when you were younger."

"I did. After college. I spent a summer and fall going through Europe."

"Why'd you stop?"

I didn't answer for a second because the answer had edges I wasn't ready to hand over. Not tonight. "Life happened."

She didn't push. She traced a line across my chest with her finger.

"I went on a gap year after high school," she said. "It was my father's graduation present to me. He gave me a year to see the world before college." Her finger stopped. She looked up at me. "Did you ever spend New Year's Eve in Edinburgh?"

I touched her face and smiled. "Yeah." I already knew where this was going. "Did you?"

"I did."

"I know. Your hair was shorter back then."

Janine propped herself up on her elbow. "So that was you."

"Yeah."

"You remember?"

"I walked back through those streets looking for you. The crowd pushed between us and you were gone." I traced her cheekbone with my thumb.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because telling a woman I've been thinking about a kiss from twelve years ago didn't seem like the best way to introduce myself."

She laughed. I pulled her in and kissed her.

"You still taste the same," I said against her mouth.