Chapter 3 #3
She arches into me. "I know. You too." Her mouth moves from mine to my throat, to my shoulder, to my chest. Back to my mouth. "Kissing you is even better than I thought it'd be."
“You thought about kissing me?" I can't help but ask.
"Only every moment we're around each other," she admits.
"Every summer," I whisper, "is fucking…the most beautiful torture. Waiting for you to show up at the compound is worse than waiting for presents on Christmas." I pause. "Wait, your mom is Jewish. Do you celebrate Christmas?"
She laughs softly. "Yes, we do. We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas—Christmas for Dad more than anything.
He didn't grow up with much by way of celebrations, you might say, so Mom and I love going all out for him because he just…
he loves it." Her leg slides down to brace both feet on the floor as we rock and pitch with the waves of this new storm. "Why do you call it beautiful torture?"
"Because when it's the five of us, we're together all day every day for an entire month or two, and most of that time we're all in bathing suits and nothing else except maybe a shirt or a coverup for meals," I answer. "Which means you in a bikini. And I'm so fucking attracted to you, Story. Being around you in a fucking two-piece, but I can’t touch you, and I can’t stare at you because I’m not a fucking creeper.
It's fucking torture. But…you're so goddamn gorgeous and I feel lucky to just be able to be around you for those few short weeks, and I'd…
I'd rather be tortured." I shrug. "I dunno, I guess that’s why it's beautiful torture—you're beautiful, and it's torture. "
She lifts up and rakes her mouth over mine again, fingers driving up into my hair behind my ears and pulling me down, and her chest flattens against mine, and I find that sliver of skin and slip my hands up her back, scratch my fingernails down her shoulder blades until they catch at her bra strap.
She whimpers into the kiss, arches her back to push harder into me, lifts onto her tiptoes to smash the kiss deeper, opening her mouth to mine and driving her tongue against mine.
I'm afire with an inferno of base urges—my blood boils in my veins and my heart pumps frantically behind the prison of my ribcage.
I want to rip her clothes off and explore her curves.
I want to find all the ways I can drag those little whimpers and mewls out of her. I just fucking want her, need her.
But this is all so much so fast. I'm still reeling from the revelation that she actually shares my feelings—all this time, all these years we’ve been harboring secret feelings for each other, hiding them so successfully neither of us realized what the other was feeling.
I want more.
I want everything.
I want to kiss her and never stop.
Here in the rocking dark, imprisoned and frightened, all I can think of is the taste of her mouth, the softness of her small, powerful body against mine.
I cup her sides, just beneath her bra strap, and then I roam the shallow hollow of the small of her back, exploring from bra strap to the waistband of her scrub bottoms, and as I kiss her I'm consumed with thoughts of how soft and taut her ass was, earlier, when I accidentally got a double handful of it.
Story pulls away from the kiss, but only an inch or two, and she traces my lower lip with delicate fingertips, and then all of her fingertips tickle over my lips and ghost along my cheekbones and I close my eyes as those cool soft gentle fingertips drift over my eyelids and she traces a long line from temple to jaw on both sides, and then she kisses me again with her fingertips steepled on my cheeks near my mouth—it's a strange, tender, intimate touch that steals my breath from my lungs and makes the iron rod behind my zipper pulse with a painfully hot ache.
"Fucking hell, Story," I breathe.
"What?"
"You. The way you kiss me." I cradle her hands in mine at my face. "This. Can't fucking breathe when you touch me like that. Can’t—can't fucking think. I've…I've never—" I trail off, shaking my head.
She does it again, kisses me softly and tenderly with those fingers on my cheeks just above where our mouths touch. "This?" she asks.
"Yeah," I manage, my voice a ragged gasp. "That."
"You've never what, Killy?"
"When you kiss me like that, Story, I…I feel…I mean I've never felt so—"
"So what? Say it. Please."
"Wanted," I murmur.
"You are." She runs her palms up my back, clutches my shoulders from behind, and then her hands roam down again, to my waist, my sides.
She hooks an index finger in each belt loop to either side of my fly.
"You are wanted, Killian. More than you know.
More than I think I've ever let myself examine. "
She touches her forehead to my lips, and I clutch her waist just above her hips, on the verge of diving my hands under the waistband but still hesitant to push things just yet.
"Say what you're thinking," Story says. "No filter. Right now. Crazy honesty."
"How soft your ass is," I blurt, "how bad I want my hands on it again. How bad I want…you. Just you."
“Oh." It's faint, the tone beneath it unreadable.
"Your turn."
She shakes her head, forehead rolling against my breastbone.
“You started this," I point out.
"If I say it, I'll do it."
"Your words, Story—crazy honesty. Right now. No filter."
"I'm thinking about how big you felt." Her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear her over the hammering of rain on the roof of the container. "And how weird it is to be this turned on in a situation like this."
My mouth opens to reply, but at that moment, the container door wrenches open with a jarring clank-grind-thunk-squeal. A blinding flare of light blazes in the opening, and we both shy away and turn around from the assault on our dark-adjusted pupils.
"It's too soon for more food," I murmur. "I don't know what's happening. This is new."
Story's hand flaps at my knee, my thigh, and then finds mine, and we tangle fingers and grip each other hard with shaking hands.
A footstep rings loud on the container floor, and then two more blinding circles of light join the first, followed by the unmistakable sound of an assault rifle being charged.
"Approach. Slow. Hands on head." The voice is deep, male, and thickly accented—Slavic? Eastern European? Russian? I don't know.
Slowly, hands laced together on our heads, Story and I shuffle toward the lights and the voice.
A cold metal O touches my forehead at the center of my T-Box. "We have problem. And problem for me is problem for you."
Something tells me the problem has something to do with my sister. If shit goes sideways and people are pissed off, Brynnie is usually involved somehow.