15. Temples For Grief #2
I press a single finger into his chest, light enough to be a tease, firm enough to be a taunt. “Do you actually hear yourself? I bet you were just jerking off in there, thinking about me and Signe and this movie you've made up in your head.”
He pushes forward like he’s done being careful, and suddenly I’m the one stepping back, once, twice, my spine meeting the wall before I can decide whether I meant to retreat or invited him to follow.
He cages me there with nothing but his body and the ruin in his eyes.
His other hand flexes at his side like it’s taking every ounce of control he has not to put it on me, until finally he places it tentatively on the wall beside my head. My breath catches.
“Is that what you were thinking about? Me?
Doing that? Who's making up movies now?” he murmurs, deep and dangerous, trying to sound in control when he looks like he's coming apart.
His chest is close enough that I can feel the heat of him through my dress.
Close enough that one careless breath would make us touch.
My back arches off the wall, pulled toward the space he refuses to close, my body betraying me so completely his eyes drop. His jaw clenches like it hurts.
“You wish,” I whisper. It should be a warning, but it's not. It's an invitation and we both know it, both want it.
Then the tension in the air finally snaps.
He grabs me, rough desperation guiding his hands.
One wraps around my waist, the other slides into my hair, and then his mouth is on mine, hard enough to steal whatever cruel thing I was going to say next.
The kiss ignites between us; there’s no other word for it.
Heat, desire, and months of denial catching fire all at once.
I make a helpless whimper into his mouth, and that's when he loses the last thread of willpower he was pretending to have.
He drags me against him. My hands reach for his shirt, gripping hard, pulling him closer even though there's nowhere left for him to go. He presses me into the wall, his body solid and overwhelming, and the impact runs through me like a spark dropped into gasoline. His mouth moves over mine like he’s angry at how much he wants this, like he wants to punish me for being right and himself for wanting me anyway.
I kiss him back just as hard. My fingers shove into his hair, pulling at the dark strands before I drag my nails down his neck, leaving my marks on his skin.
The sound he makes against my lips is rough enough to weaken my knees.
He catches it and his arm tightens around my waist, holding me up, holding me still, pinning me exactly where he wants me, not even pretending he has any intention of stopping.
There's nothing careful about him now. Gone is all his detached confidence. Nothing dressed up as just friends.
His hand skims down my side, grazing my hip through the thin fabric of my dress, and I feel his resistance ebb away.
I can feel the fight in him, the way he keeps stopping himself one inch before too much.
One breath before no return. I drag my mouth from his and find the sensitive spot on his neck, the one he told me about in one of our endless voice message exchanges.
Back when we used to trade secrets about our bodies like we didn’t intend to use them.
My lips brush over it slowly, intently. His entire body goes rigid.
“Nat,” he breathes, a plea and a warning in one.
I do it again, softer this time, with just enough bite to make him break.
He groans, graveled and helpless, trying to muffle the sound and failing.
His hand slams flat against the wall beside my head, like he needs something to hold on to that isn’t me.
Like if he touches me the way he wants to, we’re both finished.
The thought goes through me like lightning.
I pull his mouth back to mine and he surrenders so willingly.
The second kiss is hotter, messier. His tongue slides against mine, and I forget where we are. There's no restaurant. No Rafe or Kasia or every single reason this could go wrong.
All I see is Kiri. All I feel is him. His breath and hands and mouth. The hardening of him pressed into me, the tremor of need that moves through us every time I roll my body into him. He breaks the kiss and drags in air like he’s drowning.
His forehead drops to mine, eyes closed, chest rising hard against me, each breath dragging him against my body in a way that makes both of us go still. Finally, his eyes open.
For one long moment, neither of us moves. His mouth is swollen and his hair wrecked from my hands. He looks destroyed. Furious and starving, like he just discovered the one thing he absolutely cannot have and now knows exactly how fucking good it tastes.
“We have to stop,” he whispers against my mouth.
He doesn’t let go when he says it. His hand stays on my hip, his body still pins me to the wall. His lips are still close enough to undo both of us.
“Natalia,” he says, rougher this time. “We are literally in a hallway. This is exactly why we’re a problem.”
His voice is practically begging me to take control, to put him out of his misery. Because he's one second away from proving exactly how little friendship has to do with any of this, all over again.
That steadies something inside me. He's not cold or unaffected anymore. He's absolutely wrecked, for me.
Slowly, I uncurl my fingers from his hair, then I smooth my dress in an attempt to regain my lost sanity.
I try to settle my breathing like I didn’t just let him kiss me stupid in a bathroom hallway.
When I meet his eyes, he looks flushed, devastated, more undone than even I feel.
The sight of him sends one last searing flash through my entire body and lingers in the parts pleading to be touched until I'd moan his name at the contact, right here, right now.
I exhale and try to push the thoughts aside before I cup his cheek lightly. He freezes.
“Kiri,” I say softly. His eyes flick to my mouth “They’ll start to wonder where we are. You have to let me go.”
His hand tightens one last time on my hip before he releases me, reluctantly.
I smile. “You better go.” His expression darkens, knowing before I even say it. I step out from between him and the wall, brushing past him with just enough contact to make his breath hitch.
“Friend.”