Chapter 30
OLIVER
We’ve been lying here for what feels like hours, hands intertwined. Fireflies continue their lazy dance around the clearing, and somewhere in the distance, that owl calls out again, searching for its mate.
But I’m not thinking about owls. I’m thinking about the curve of Ryan’s mouth, the way his lower lip is slightly fuller than the upper, the way it catches the starlight when he wets it with his tongue.
“You’re staring,” Ryan says, not tearing his eyes from the sky.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t say stop.”
His words ignite something in me. I turn onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow, and Ryan mirrors the movement.
This close, I can see every detail of his face.
The sweep of his lashes, the faint constellation of freckles across his nose, the rapid flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat.
“Oliver. Are you going to kiss me again, or are you going to keep staring?”
I should be surprised at how bold he’s being. This isn’t the Ryan I know. Then again, it’s been a long time. Things have changed. I know I sure have.
I close the distance between us. The first brush of our lips is gentle, a hello after too long apart, even though it’s only been days since the Ferris wheel.
Ryan’s breath catches, a tiny sound that vibrates against my mouth, and I feel it everywhere.
In my chest, my stomach, lower still, where heat is already beginning to pool.
I deepen the kiss slowly, giving him time to adjust, to pull away if he wants. But Ryan doesn’t. He leans into me, one hand coming up to cup the back of my neck as his fingers thread through my hair. The touch sends sparks cascading down my spine.
He tastes like the sparkling water we drank and something sweeter beneath, something that’s purely him. I trace the seam of his lips with my tongue, and he opens for me immediately, eager and willing, another soft moan escaping into my mouth.
That sound undoes something in me.
Before I can think, before I can consider the implications or the consequences, I’m shifting my weight, rolling until I’m hovering over him. The blanket bunches beneath us, and Ryan’s eyes go wide. Starlight reflects in their hazel depths.
“Is this okay?” I manage to ask, though my voice comes out rough, barely recognizable.
Ryan’s answer nearly kills me.
“I want you to take my virginity, Oliver.”
My ass clenches hard as every muscle in my body locks down in a full-scale emergency response, because Ryan’s words have sent a direct signal from my brain to my cock and balls. And the three of them are having a very urgent conversation about whether we’re going to come right here, right now.
I do not come. But it’s a near thing. The closest of close calls. A photo-finish where dignity beats humiliation by a nostril hair.
“Ryan.” My voice is wrecked. Absolutely destroyed. I sound like I’ve been gargling gravel. “You can’t just—you can’t say things like that without giving a guy a little warning.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” His eyes don’t waver. Those hazel irises hold mine with a steadiness that contradicts the rapid pulse I can see hammering in his throat.
I swallow hard enough that I’m sure he can hear it. “What brought this on?”
Ryan’s hand, still threaded through my hair, slides down to rest against the side of my neck. His thumb settles over my pulse point, and I know he can feel how fast my heart is beating.
“I’ve been in love with you since I was ten years old,” he says. “I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then. I just knew that when my dad told us we were moving again, the only thing that made me cry was leaving you. Not the school. Not the house. You.”
The fireflies blink around us, indifferent to the fact that my entire world is rearranging itself.
“I spent a decade pretending it was something else,” Ryan continues.
“Nostalgia. Childhood attachment. A coping mechanism for all the instability. I told myself every story except the true one, because the true one was terrifying.” His jaw tightens, then releases.
“I’m done pretending, Oliver. I don’t want to fight it anymore. ”
“Ryan—”
“If there’s one person in this world I trust to make my first time mean something, it’s you.
” His voice cracks on the last word, and I watch him swallow, watch him gather himself.
“You’ve never rushed me. You’ve never pressured me.
You made sandwiches, found an oldies station, and held my hand while I talked about my dead mother, and you didn’t flinch.
Not once.” His eyes are bright, glistening in the starlight.
“I want it to be you. I need it to be you.”
I close my eyes. Take a breath. Then another. My body is at war with itself—every primal instinct screaming yes, fucking yes! while the part of me that loves this man, genuinely loves him, pumps the brakes hard enough to leave skid marks.
“Ryan.” I open my eyes and cup his face in both hands, thumbs brushing his cheekbones. “I am so honored. You have no idea. And I want to. God, I want to so badly that it’s physically painful right now, and I mean that literally—don’t look down.”
A startled laugh escapes him, and the sound loosens something in my chest.
“But not here,” I say. “Not in the middle of a park where anyone could walk by, on a blanket that’s already got grass stains.
Your first time deserves more than that.
You deserve a bed, and privacy, and enough time that neither of us has to worry about park rangers or mosquito bites or the fact that I’m ninety percent sure there’s a family of raccoons watching us from that tree. ”
Ryan glances involuntarily toward the tree line, then back at me. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. When we do this—and we will do this—I want it to be right. I want you to remember every second because of how perfect it will be.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I watch the initial flash of disappointment give way to understanding, then something warmer. Gratitude, maybe. Or trust deepening another layer.
“Okay,” he says softly. “I can wait.”
“Good.” I press my forehead against his. “But in the meantime…”
“In the meantime, what?”
I don’t answer with words. Instead, I lower my hips.
The first press of my erection against his draws a gasp from Ryan that echoes across the clearing.
Even through two layers of khaki, the contact is electric.
He’s hard. Rock hard. And feeling the rigid length of him against mine sends a bolt of heat through my entire body that nearly finishes what his words started.
“Oh,” Ryan breathes. “Oh, that’s—”
I roll my hips forward again, dragging the full length of my cock along his. The friction of fabric against fabric, of heat against heat, tears a groan from somewhere deep in my chest.
“Just feel it,” I murmur against his ear. “Just feel me.”
Ryan’s hands fly to my back, fingers digging into the fabric of my polo. His hips push up to meet mine, instinct overriding inexperience, and the added pressure makes my vision blur at the edges.
I pick up the pace. Not frantic—not yet—but steady. Purposeful. Each thrust grinds us together through our shorts, and the sound Ryan makes on the third one is so raw and unguarded that I have to bury my face in his neck to keep from losing it.
“You’re incredible,” I whisper into the skin below his ear. “You know that? You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever known.”
“Oliver—” His voice breaks. His nails scrape down my back through the polo, and his legs fall open wider, cradling me between his thighs.
The new angle is devastating. Every roll of my hips catches us just right.
I can feel a wet spot forming at the front of my shorts where precome has soaked through.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” I tell him, my lips brushing the shell of his ear with every word. “Wanted you for so long. You have no idea what you do to me.”
Ryan moans. Loud enough that the owl goes quiet and the crickets seem to pause. His head tips back against the blanket, baring the long line of his throat, and I press my mouth there, tasting salt and warmth.
“Don’t stop,” he gasps. “Please don’t stop.”
I couldn’t stop if I tried. My hips are moving faster now, grinding against him in a rhythm that’s building toward something inevitable.
The blanket has rucked up beneath us, grass and fabric twisted together, and I don’t care.
All I care about is the man underneath me, the sounds he’s making, the way his body arches up to meet mine on every thrust.
“You’re so beautiful,” I breathe against his throat. “So brave. Coming here, telling me what you want. That took guts, Ryan.”
“I learned from—ah—” He can’t finish the sentence. My hips snap forward harder, and whatever he was going to say dissolves into a moan that vibrates through both of us.
The pressure at the base of my spine is reaching critical mass. My balls are drawn up tight, and every nerve ending in my body is focused on the point where we’re pressed together, hard and hot and desperate.
His hands are moving. I register this distantly, too lost in sensation to fully process, until his palms are sliding beneath my shirt, skimming over the bare skin of my lower back. The contact is electric, and I shudder as his fingers trace the ridges of muscle along my spine.
Then his hands go lower.
Ryan’s palms cup my ass through my shorts, squeezing with a boldness that catches me completely off guard. His fingers dig into the thick muscle of my glutes, and he grips like he’s holding on for dear life.
“Jesus, Ryan,” I gasp, the dual sensation of his hands on my ass and our erections grinding together short-circuiting something in my brain. “Your hands—”
“I’ve wanted to touch you here,” he confesses, breathless and flushed. “Since the naked sprint. God, Oliver, your body is—”