Chapter 7 #3
This moment, one I have dreamed of and wished for and despaired would ever happen…
Shock ripples through me when his lips brush mine, ghostly soft and hesitant.
I gasp, and my pulse ramps to an impossible pace and my hands tremble and my breath is stuck, hot, in my throat, as he presses his mouth more firmly against mine.
His lips are moist and warm and smooth on mine, and I can scarce believe this is reality.
He is kissing me.
It is over before it begins, however.
He pulls away only far enough to whisper. "I'm sorry."
Crushing disappointment shatters my brief joy. "Oh, Riley, please—please do not apologize. It would break my heart beyond repair if you were to regret my first kiss."
He rears away, shocked, almost distraught. "First…?" he breathes. "First kiss?"
"Yes, of course," I answer, hoping he cannot detect the tremor in my voice as I fight overwhelm—I'm feeling so many things. So many. Too many. "It certainly is not as if I have had suitors lined out the door, you know. I am no Penelope. Who would want to kiss a freak like me?"
"Hey," he growls, his voice gruff and angry. "Unh-uh. None'a that shit."
"None of what?" I ask. “It is true."
"That was your first kiss? Ever?"
"Yes," I whisper, feeling small and silly and childish. "I am quite certain it must have been a disappointment to one so experienced as you in the romantic arts."
"The romantic arts?" he echoes, amused.
"Do not laugh at me," I whisper. "I am confused and…and…frightened, and…"
"Not laughin' at you, sweetheart. Never that." He tucks flyaway curls behind my ears and brushes the pad of his thumb over my lips. "And sure as fuck not disappointed. Or regretting anything."
"Then why apologize?"
"Because…" he cups my face, shaking his head while dropping his gaze from mine. "My turn to not have the words."
"Then I shall return your words to you: Try. Please."
"I shouldn't have kissed you."
"Wh—why n-not?" I whisper, stammering as tears fill my eyes. "Am I not…"
"Oh god, fuck—no, no. Cadence, no." He kisses my eyes, and I must close them as his lips touch them, and I know he must taste tears.
"You're good, Cadence–you’re pure. So fucking smart.
So accomplished. Wise. More beautiful than…
than anyone I've ever met." He pauses, swallowing hard. "And I'm not. I'm not any of that."
"So you…" I put the pieces together. "You don't think you should have kissed me because you—" I pause. "I hesitate to put it into words. Because you do not feel worthy…of me?”
I am so stunned that he could think something so patently ridiculous that I could almost laugh. It is no laughing matter, however. And he does not answer, not in words, but his lack of denial is affirmation enough. The way his gaze skitters off of mine is answer enough.
How could I possibly make him understand how I am feeling? The mad spin-cycle of thoughts and feelings in my mind leaves me wobbly and uncertain, like a newborn colt.
"Yes, goddammit," he hisses. "Yes! That."
I bring my hand to his cheek, and the rough black stubble is like sandpaper, but the skin of his cheekbone is soft.
"Do you know how often I have wondered what my first kiss would be like?
Can you begin to fathom how desperately I have wished…
" my eyes shut on their own, watery and hot.
"I am twenty-four years old, Riley. I have all but lost hope that anyone could want… that…any of that, with me."
"I do," he murmurs, stroking my lips with his thumbs, my cheekbones as well, and each swipe of his thumbpad over my skin leaves scorched lines of tingling heat in its wake. "I don't regret kissing you. Direct opposite."
How do I tell him I want another kiss? My voice will not form the words, my lips will not shape them.
Where words fail, perhaps action might succeed.
I am not courageous enough nor bold enough to kiss him. Instead, I can only hope to communicate somehow that I would welcome another kiss. A longer one, even, maybe.
To that end, I draw together what little daring and resolve I possess, and shift my body closer to his.
My breasts flatten between us, and I feel my nipples harden and tighten with anticipation and arousal.
His hard belly rolls against mine as he breathes.
I tilt my face up, find his eyes. Part my lips.
"So goddamned beautiful," he whispers, his eyes searching my face and lingering, lingering, lingering on my lips. "Tell me not to kiss you again."
"I will do no such thing," I answer. "Not when that is precisely what I am hoping for."
This time, I keep my eyes open. His hands cup my face, pulling me up to him as he lowers his mouth toward mine.
A lifetime of fantasies and daydreams have not prepared me for this.
My heart is wild behind the cage of my ribs, and I feel a delirious sort of wonder that I am here, that I am experiencing this, finally, that a man like Riley Crowe—rugged, rough, charming, debonair, impossibly handsome—is kissing me.
I gasp again when his mouth meets mine—shrill, breathless, shocked. Desperate for this kiss to last beyond an instant, I give in to impulse, sliding my hands around to his nape, diving my fingers into his cool, silky hair, trying to hold him here even for just a moment longer.
His lips are warm and soft and plump against mine, and I feel his breath, taste it. I clutch his nape and whimper when, instead of pulling away again, he tilts his face the other way and his mouth opens and his tongue intrudes into my mouth—which I seem to have opened instinctively.
I've always wondered what this would feel like—having a man's tongue in my mouth. Would I recoil? Would it feel…slimy? Why, I have always wondered, do humans kiss with open mouths, with tongues?
I have my answer.
As far as data points to answer the question, I am disappointed: I cannot explain why we do it.
But it is maddeningly wonderful. When his tongue sweeps over my lips and darts in to tease my tongue, I whimper and then gasp, and I grip his neck and cling hard, desperate for this kiss to continue.
His hands leave my cheeks. One curls around the back of my head, holding me into the kiss, and I glory in the resurgence of hope—he wants to kiss me, still.
He does not want this to end any more than I do.
His other hand slips down the side of my neck, briefly encircling my throat; instead of feeling choked, however, his touch there settles me. Soothes…yet maddens. And then his hand moves again, and he roams my shoulders, shoulder blades, travels down my spine.
Our mouths part, but he only draws fresh breath and then delves in again, tilted back the other way now, and kisses me again.
This one is commanding. He steps into me, crushing his body against mine.
My breasts are pancaked between our bodies, and his belt and zipper dig into my belly, and his thighs touch mine.
I have never been so close to any man—I have never felt a body against mine like this.
I should be suffering an overload of sensory input, but the kiss consumes my entire mind, and his hands anchor my body to this plane, to this realm. Whatever thoughts and feelings blatter and blast in my mind, I cannot feel them or hear them—there is only Riley.
Only our kiss.
I hear myself emit a sound—a quiet groan, an expression of arousal and pleasure. I have never made such a sound. I marvel that it came from me.
He draws back at the sound. "Fuck." His brow is furrowed; part of me reads it as anger, but his words put the lie to that. "Don't wanna stop. Don't know how."
"Nor I, on both accounts," I admit.
His eyes search my face as his hand drifts down my spine and comes to rest on my lower back, low—mere inches above my coccyx. "You have any fuckin' clue how you make me feel, Cadence?"
I can only shake my head. "No," I admit, after a moment of effort. "Not a one."
"Taste like honey," he whispers, and kisses me—softly, quickly. "So damn soft." His hands skate down my bare arms, leaving piloerection pebbling my flesh wherever he touches. "So…" a kiss, "fucking…" another kiss. "Beautiful."
I am overcome, then. All the blood in my body, it seems, has rushed, confused, to all the wrong parts of my body—my breasts feel engorged and heavy and my nipples ache; the sexual organ at the apex of my thighs feels swollen, yet also…
slippery and…wet, in a way that is highly disconcerting and more than a little embarrassing, although I am perfectly aware of the medical symptoms of sexual arousal.
It just feels…strange.
My skin is pebbled all over—the piloerection response to his touch, and it feels too tight around my bones and muscles; were he to touch bare skin right now, I might erupt, I worry.
Erupt with what, I cannot say. This is utterly unexplored territory for me, and all of my medical knowledge has fled me, or, at very least, is of no use. Knowing what is happening to me is no preparation for the reality of experiencing it.
Overcome, flooded with sensation, shaking all over, my knees give out. I cling to him, and he catches me.
Yet, even in catching me, he manages to overload me all the more with a wild, new, maddening sensation:
His hands grip my bottom.
I sprawl against his chest, my weight mostly on him, supported only by his strong, powerful grip on my bottom. My eyes are wide with shock and fear and wonder, and my mind attempts to categorize the sensation.
It fails.
The sensation is too much to be neatly categorized and shelved.
My mouth hangs open and I stare up at him, wide-eyed, wondering, and breathless.
Riley lifts me to my feet…
But does not let go of my bottom.
I…I do not want him to.
I feel a thick, hard, bulging thing behind his zipper, pressing against my belly, and I shy away from thinking about that. It is too soon. Too much. Not yet.
A part of me, however—the part that knows exactly what that is—is gleeful. Swollen with pride: I, Cadence Creswell, have caused that reaction in him.
Watching me with hawk-like intensity, Riley gentles his grip on my backside, but instead of moving his hands up to my back or to my waist, he splays his hands wide, cupping my bottom…
then smooths them down to where my backside meets my thighs, and then up to my back and then down, and around—caressing, exploring.
My lungs, aching from a lack of oxygen, scream, hot and empty. I suck in a gasp, finally, mouth trembling, hanging open, eyes on his rugged, handsome face.
My arms sling around his neck, and I lift on my tiptoes, panting. "Riley…" I breathe.
Now it is I who initiates the kiss. I lift higher on my toes and lean into him, trust him to take my weight, and I kiss him.
He makes a low, gruff sound when my lips slide against his and I open my mouth and—only panicking a little—offer my tongue to him.
It is a small, rough sound he makes, involuntary and surprised and greedy.
I did not know, until now, that one could be aroused by a sound. Yet I am.
Not merely the sound itself, however. By what it represents.
His desire.
For me.
And then I cannot kiss him anymore because I am weeping—embarrassed, aroused, amazed, overwhelmed, overcome, and a million, million other things besides.