Chapter Thirty-Three
Ember
Past
After a single strawberry daiquiri, Max takes me home. It’s late, around midnight, but the lights in my house are still off, and it’s still deserted. Which means Dad’s still out doing god knows what.
There was a time when his absence scared me.
After a few years, that turned into fury, but eventually, it trickled off into vague echoes of sadness.
I feel bad for my father—for his mental state and his functional alcoholism.
It depresses me when he’s here. The glassy-eyed look he always has after work, on the rare night when he stumbles home before I go to bed, always makes a deep, resounding pang of pain overtake my chest.
These days, I prefer it when he’s gone. The pain is softer then, less poignant.
Max delivers me to my front porch. He only had a few sips of whiskey and seems completely sober, while I’m mildly tipsy from my drink. Just tipsy enough to be a little bit reckless.
Which is why, when he turns to leave, I catch his hand.
My crush on him hasn’t gone away over the years.
It hasn’t lessened. I still await his presence in the summers like an eager puppy, desperate to spend time with its favorite human.
And more, each time I see him, he grows a little more.
His muscles get bigger, his jawline gets sharper, his hair gets mussier in the sexiest way.
My inhibitions aren’t so low that I can blame the alcohol.
No, the blame for my following actions lies squarely on the shoulders of the crush I’ve been harboring in silence for years.
I’ve loved Max since I was a child, but that love has changed now.
I hate the thought of him with other girls.
I hate the distance that separates us when he’s in college.
I hate the idea that he might one day sever our friendship…
So I tell myself, screw it, and allow myself a single, reckless moment in the chilly evening air.
Max turns when I catch his hand, eyebrows raising. “What’s up—”
I don’t let him finish his sentence. I rise up on my tiptoes, wind my hands around the back of his neck, and press my lips to his.
He freezes. He goes utterly, completely still, as do I.
The moment our lips touch, electricity courses through every inch, every molecule of who I am.
Energy swirls between us, through us, and I realize with stark clarity that even though he’s about to push me away, even though he hasn’t moved or reciprocated, this is going to be the single best kiss of my life.
And it’s probably going to destroy my friendship with Max, but in this moment, I don’t care. I just want one kiss.
As expected, he pulls back, clasping my shoulders in his hands. He wears a frown that’s mixed with a hefty dose of confusion. His lips part to say something, then shut. He stumbles back a step, and the cold slams into me like a truck.
This is the part where he tells me we’re just friends.
After all, he’s four years older than me, and I’m not even eighteen yet.
Everything about this moment dictates that he should walk away from me, the chief reasons being our age difference, and the fact that he’s never shown the barest hint of attraction to me.
But he doesn’t walk away. Instead, he gives his head a shake and mutters, “Fuck it.”
I don’t get a second to ask what he means before he wraps his arms around my waist, hauls me into his chest, and lowers his mouth to mine. This time, he moves; we both do.
His lips are so soft, they’re like twin clouds that lift me high into the heavens. Heat courses through my body as they move over my own, and it feels like I’m dancing with the constellations, a sense of weightlessness lifting me high.
His tongue traces the seam of my lips, and I willingly open for him. He groans into my mouth, low and masculine, and walks me backwards until my back hits the outer wall of my home. The cold seeps through my clothes, but the heat from this kiss chases it away.
The kiss deepens even more. His tongue strokes along mine, sensual and slow at first, but it quickly becomes more.
It turns ravenous. He devours my lips, and a heartbeat later, his thigh lodges between my legs, pressing right against my center.
He rocks it forward, creating a delicious friction that makes me gasp into his mouth.
He rubs me, slowly and insistently as if he already knows and owns my body. As if we’ve been kissing and touching each other like this for years.
My hands clutch his shoulders, scrape down the biceps I’m a little bit obsessed with, and my nails sink into his coat. He grunts and rubs me faster; molten, liquid heat gathers at my core, and I start rocking my hips forward, riding his thigh.
He’s so hard. So hot. So fucking irresistible.
I become aware of a pressure against my hip—the stiff, thick, long outline of his cock.
The fact that I’m turning him on—me, a girl he’s only ever regarded as a friend—gets me high.
Our kiss deepens even more, turning sloppy, until we’re devouring each other.
Blinding pleasure sweeps over me, starting at my core and spreading through my body until I can barely withstand it. My channel pulses around air, longing to be filled, and I release a choked cry that Max swallows and drinks down.
We become one organism, interconnected despite the clothes separating us… and then, it ends.
He tears his mouth away from mine, leaving me gasping and panting. Stumbles back several steps, eyes glassy, hair extra mussed, chest heaving. I’m panting, gasping for breath, scarcely believing what just happened.
I just kissed my best friend. He kissed me back. I rode his thigh until I came, the most satisfying orgasm in my life.
Now, he’s staring at me with wide eyes, and I’d kill to know what he’s thinking.
He throws his head back to the sky and mutters, “Fuck.” Swiftly closes the distance between us, and kisses me again.
“The next time I see you, you’ll be eighteen,” he murmurs. “Then, I won’t feel like a pervert for all the thoughts running through my head. Until then, Flame, I need you to keep your thoughts and your hands to yourself.” He kisses me again. “Can you do that for me? Be a good girl?”
He wants to… do this again?
No, it sounds like he wants to do a hell of a lot more than this again. Elation fills me to the brim as I wind my fingers in his hair. “Okay.”
“You’ll be my good girl?”
“I’ll be your best girl.”
“Flame.” He kisses my nose. “You already are.”
With that, he’s gone, slinking back into the night from whence he came. I watch him go, touching my fingers to my lips, feeling dazed and turned on, already aching for the next time I see Max.
But I don’t see him again. He leaves the break early after a fight with his father, only sending me a text when he’s already at the airport.
He doesn’t come home for spring break. We call and we text, but I don’t get to see him—though he promises to be home for the summer.
And by the time summer arrives, it’s already too late.