Before I even realize it, she’s unbuttoning her shirt—my shirt—and then her breasts are exposed. I freeze. Because she’s so fucking beautiful, and she’s here for me. Of all the choices she could make, she’s chosen me, and I never want to break that trust.
I don’t move. I just stare. Like it’s the first time I’ve seen breasts. It’s not, but it’s the first time she’s stripped off her top for me, and her body calls out to me like a siren song of longing.
“Touch me,” she whispers.
I don’t move. I just stay there, poised above her, the muscles in my arms taut. This is another line in the sand. The moment when I touch her in more intimate ways. I shut my eyes, but by the time I’ve opened them seconds later I’ve found no reason not to obey her wishes.
Soon, I am kissing and touching and tasting her breasts, and she’s arching her back into me, threading her fingers through my hair. Every lift of her hips, every move in her body urges me on.
She moans and gasps, and tugs me even closer. At some point, I break apart, stopping only to kiss her, and when I do, it reminds me that above the waist is a safer zone.
For now.
“Noah?” she whispers, my name a question.
“Yes?”
“Do you want to?”
I laugh once. “Of course. But we can’t.”
“When can we?”
I run my fingertips along the column of her neck. “When I can take you away from here. When we can go away somewhere. Someplace special. Just you and me. I want everything to be amazing for you. Do you want that?”
She nods. “Yes. But I want you now too,” she says, and her voice is breathy and desperate and the closeness to her is killing me.
“You have no idea how much I want you,” I grit out, never taking my eyes off her. She rubs her thigh against me, and I groan from the touch.
“Actually, I kind of do know,” she says in a murmur that makes me smile.
“Well, what can I say? Touching you turns me on,” I tell her.
She ropes her arms around me. “Touch me more then,” she says, her voice a bare plea. The need in her green eyes, the quick lift of her hips, breaks me down.
“Are you sure?” I ask carefully, raising an eyebrow.
She nods and breathes out. “So sure.” Then she chases it with a barely audible please, Noah, and I am lost to her wishes, I am drowning in this untamed desire for the girl I love madly.
She dips her thumbs into my boxer shorts, and pushes them down her legs. I take them off the rest of the way, my hands gently caressing her legs as I return to her.
She is naked before me and I am in awe.
It is such a privilege to touch her like this. It’s like being given a Stradivarius, something precious and rare, and you must treat it with reverence.
I start slow, listening to her cues. Soon, I am touching her and tasting her and crossing all the lines, but she’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever had. She responds like a dream, moving like water, sounding like a poem. She becomes a blissful mix of noise and motion, and then complete abandon, as her hands grip my hair and my lips consume her. She arches, then cries out, and nothing, nothing, nothing has ever been better than this.
A minute later, I am next to her, waiting to feel shame or disgust. She might be legal, but she’s not eighteen yet. Even so, the only emotion I feel is utter rightness. She wedges her body into mine, grabs a fistful of my shirt, and asks me to take it off.
“We are not going there,” I warn her. Like I can suddenly lay down the law when I already proved I can keep moving the line.
“I just want to feel you,” she says, as she removes my shirt, and spreads her hands across my chest, then my waist. Her touch is extraordinary, and that tightrope is stretched as far as it can go. I want so much more of her, but I have every faith in the world that it will happen soon enough. When it’s supposed to. This certainty in her, and us, and the future is one of the greatest things I’ve ever known.
“You’re going to make love to me someday soon, aren’t you?” she asks, her eyes wide and innocent.
“Yes. I am. And that’s exactly what it’s going to be,” I say, cupping the back of her head, and pulling her close.
“I know,” she whispers quietly into my chest. “I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kennedy
At precisely six fourteen the next morning, Joe and I arrive at the steps to my mom’s house. She’s not an early riser, so I’m positive she’s still nestled in her California King–size bed, a black satiny mask covering her eyes. Amanda’s dad will be long gone; she probably sent him home sometime in the middle of the night.
I carry Joe up the steps. At the top step under the mat, I see the corner of an ivory-colored piece of paper. I bend down to retrieve it, pulling the rest of the paper from under the mat.
The paper is folded in thirds. Quickly, I open it. One of the letters I posted last night has made its way back to me. The hair on my arms stands on end.
There’s a note too, a personalized one just for me.
K, I’d really like to see you again.
Chills shimmy through me. There are only a few people in my life who have called me K. I spent the night with one of those people, so I know Noah didn’t leave this note. The other ditched me when I asked him to finish off the amends.
Is this Lane’s way of telling me something? Or maybe it’s just his way of apologizing or something for last night, for not going with me?