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“Not straight grease,” he laughs. “Just the greasy foods…bacon…eggs cooked in bacon grease.”

“That sounds gross.”

He shakes his head with another silent laugh. “Don’t knock it until you try it after getting a hangover. It’s the perfect cure.”

“I’m sure there are better cures.”

He shrugs. “Probably. So—” he says after a minute, “do you want to get this over with?”

Get this over with? Like I’m a task he needs to mark off his schedule, probably before he goes out and⁠—

Nope. We are not going in that direction.

I nod. And then stand there awkwardly when he doesn’t move. We normally sit on my bed.

“Well—” he says, lifting his eyebrows. He watches me hover between my mattress and his. “If you changed your mind, it’s not technically our day for this. You look like you’re about to bolt.”

“I’m not bolting. I just don’t know the starting position.”

His mouth ticks up, and my stomach does a little flip. He pats his thigh, then his lap, like he’s offering a chair.

“You can straddle my hips again,” he says. “That angle will work for kissing.”

My heart slams into my ribcage, and my mouth dries up. “That was so I could reach you better.”

“I know. Still an option. Or you can sit next to me.”

Sitting next to him after he’s offered his lap feels like it will be as awkward as standing here in the middle of the floor. Get this over with is still ringing in my ears. I climb up onto his bed anyway. It smells even stronger like him up here. I crawl across his rumpled blanket and sit back on my heels once I’m next to him. He watches me but doesn’t say anything else, so I hesitantly straddle him. I settle carefully into his lap, not giving him all of my weight.

His hands hover at my waist as if he wants to grab onto me. I bite my lip and lift my eyes to his. Something settles inside of me.

“You can touch me,” I say and then swallow as his hands immediately grip my sides and he urges me to put my full weight down on him.

“And you can sit fully in my lap.”

I can feel him breathe. His pecks brush my chest with each inhale and exhale. It makes me feel somewhere between the sun and the fiery depths of hell. And I like it.

“Better?” he asks.

Uh, yes, a million times yes. My dick twitches in my pants, and I nod. I lick my lips, and his eyes track the movement, which somehow makes me even warmer. Did he turn up the heat while I was out?

I sink my teeth into my lower lip again. Daniel lifts a hand from my waist and brushes his fingers along my cheek. Rough. Warm. He finds my lip with his thumb and pulls it free of my teeth.

Air leaves me in a rush.

“Don’t bite it,” he says softly. “I’m going to need that.”

I can feel the pad of his thumb on the wet inside of my lip, and I resist the urge to taste his skin. I don’t think that’s part of kissing.

“Okay,” I whisper instead.

He doesn’t take the thumb away right away. He just sorta holds my mouth open a little, looking at it, and my whole face catches fire.

“Ready?” he whispers back, his eyes never leaving my lips.

I go to lick my lips again and catch the pad of his thumb, and an electric pulse shoots straight down my spine, and he sucks in a breath. My breathing comes out in short little pants. And I nod again.

His fingers ghost over my cheek, to my jawline, and he tilts my face up by cupping it. Then he leans forward, stopping when I can feel his breath on my mouth.