Chapter 9 #3
“Wasn’t ready.” He pauses for a moment, visibly shaking it off. “Still not ready. Still working on figuring myself out, taking care of myself better. So, I guess it’s not a hard rule in AA but, for me, it has to be.”
“I’m glad you’re doing that. All of it. And congratulations, by the way. Ten months is huge.”
He nods, a genuine smile touching his lips as he grips the railing on either side of him. “Thanks.”
“I hope the kiss earlier didn’t break any of your rules.” I hug my arms, rubbing them again. “Sorry I kinda sprung the idea on you in the car, I—”
“What kiss?”
I balk. “What do you mean, what kiss? At the fundraiser.”
He scrunches his nose. “Dunno. We got interrupted. Wouldn’t say it was even a kiss, really.”
“No?” I ask. “I thought it… I’m pretty sure it counted.”
The corner of his mouth curls and he straightens, shoving his hands in his front pockets. “Caroline.” He meets my eyes with an intensity that traps the air in my lungs. “When I kiss you, you’ll know it.” A muscle flickers in his jaw. “There won’t be any doubt about whether it counted.”
“Oh,” is all I can manage. Those hummingbirds in my chest are back. And they’re freaking out. And on fire.
“I mean,” he shrugs, stepping closer, “we can do a hell of a lot better than that non-kiss.”
I search his expression. “What are you saying?”
“Uh, well, you mentioned something earlier. About practice?”
I try to mask the way my stomach flips at the implication. “Yeah?”
He drifts closer still. “Well, we didn’t really get to, y’know, do it right before. So maybe we need a do-over.”
“You want to practice?” I huff a nervous breath into the small space between us. “Now? Here?”
“Just this one time,” he adds with a one-sided shrug, like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me. “Without an audience. No pressure, no interruptions. If we’re gonna fake a relationship over the next few weeks, we’re gonna have to get comfortable with this stuff, right?”
“Right.” My voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “So, how would you… um…” I swallow. “How would you do it differently? Do it right, like you said.”
“Well,” he says, slipping his hands from his pockets to rub gentle strokes over my bare arms, “first, I’d wanna warm you up.” He gently fingers the strap of my dress and electricity skitters across my collarbone. “God, you must be fucking freezing in this.”
“I am,” I say, scrunching my nose. “Fashion over function, right?”
He unzips his hoodie, then shrugs it off and pulls it around my shoulders. Immediately, his clean, earthy scent engulfs me.
“Thank you,” I whisper as I work my arms through the sleeves.
He reaches up to untuck a stray curl from under the fabric, and I shiver when his fingers graze my neck.
“Then…” He steps toward me and cups my jaw, brushing his thumb over my cheek and down to my lips. There’s something hypnotic about the slow way he’s closing the space between our bodies. “If this is a do-over—like, if this is a first kiss, I mean—I’d wanna make sure I have your… explicit… consent.”
The way he’s drawing this out is unfurling some long-dormant part of me that lives low in my belly.
I lift my hands to his stomach, tentatively touching his waist. His T-shirt is buttery soft and he smells so good that I have to resist the urge to yank him against me.
It would be too take me now—too forward.
“Consent is… very important,” I say quietly, relishing the way touching his body heats more than my fingers; admittedly, it isn’t just the evening chill pulling me into his chest.
“Mm-hmm.” He nods, dragging his thumbs down my arms.
My body thrums with anticipation.
“So…” He tilts my chin up, exposing my neck. “Can I kiss you?”
I arch into him. “Like this?”
Cradling my jaw in his calloused hand, he slowly—so slowly—stoops to meet me. He grazes his open mouth over mine, heating my lips as he whispers, “Yeah. Like this.”
“Yes.” I close my fingers around handfuls of his T-shirt as a searing ache takes hold inside me, pulsing at my center and threatening to liquefy my knees.
And when our lips finally meet, I think I could get lost in the warmth of his mouth.
There’s a deep rumble from his throat, and I let out a small whimper in response.
When he pulls back, something in his expression shifts. That heat was impossible to miss—or deny—and every line of his face tells me he felt it too. Long seconds pass, both of us barely breathing as an unspoken understanding hangs heavy in the inches separating us.
And then he dives for me, crushing me against him and kissing me like he’s been starving for it.
Lips, teeth, and tongues all clash and coax and explore, drawing us somehow closer.
I twine my fingers in his hair, gripping gently, then tightening as I lose all access to reason.
His hands are on my throat, my waist, my back, hauling me closer, pressing that telltale hardness against my stomach.
This isn’t the kind of kiss we’d ever do for the cameras. Not in public, and certainly not in front of my parents. This isn’t a fundraiser kiss. A practice kiss.
This isn’t a kiss at all.
No. This is my undoing.