by A. J. Pine
His lips brush against my forehead, tender and tentative, and the entirety of my resolve crumbles.
“That’s all there is. For right now, for tonight, let that be all there is.”
His words are a mantra. All I want is you. Let that be all there is.
He drops his head to my cheek, and his lips go to work again.
“Then I need to tell you,” I say through ragged breaths. “I need to make sure.”
“Jess.” And there it is, my name once again turned against me, the longing in it as unmistakable as my need for him to say it again. “Nothing you could say would make me not want you.”
I try to argue, but when his lips find mine again, the weeks of longing, of denying what I’ve always known was there, wash over me in a tidal wave, and I surrender to the undertow.
The first time we kissed, it began as something careful, hesitant. But Adam holds nothing back, and I feed off his hunger. His body presses against mine as his hands tangle in my hair, and his full, perfect lips devour mine. He eases up, enough for his tongue to tease mine, and I have to grip his shirt to keep from melting to the floor. I tease him back, my tongue grazing his teeth, and my name leaks from his lips in a soft moan.
“Jess.”
Just for tonight, let that be all there is. His words echo in my head, the pleading desire when he speaks my name, and I freeze.
This isn’t Bryan, the boy I thought I’d spend my life with. And this isn’t Jake or anyone else I let kiss me but never truly kissed back, not like this. Everyone in between Bryan and now has been a placeholder, a stand-in, someone with whom I could pretend. There was never pleasure, but neither was there pain. I let other guys kiss me, touch me. I touched them too, made sure they enjoyed themselves. But I sleepwalked through it all.
“Jess.” Adam says my name again, and I wake from my daze, wake up to see him standing in front of me. And I feel. God I feel so much, and I want it to stop but at the same time to never, ever end. Because I can’t take not feeling. Not with him.
I look down at my hands, both gripping his shirt, and my fingers ache from the tension, from holding on so tight. But I don’t let go.
“Look at me, Jess.”
His hands cup my cheeks, pulling my gaze to his, and I have to bite my lip, a dam to hold back the flood.
“I want it all,” he says. “This . . .” He kisses my forehead. “And this.” His lips brush the skin above my heart. “But only if you are with me, if you want it too.”
I nod. “I’m with you,” I whisper, my fingers releasing his shirt and finding his face. “I’m with you.”
His mouth finds mine again, and when his tongue enters my parted lips, I awaken fully and completely, and my senses ignite.
My palms lie flat against his chest, and I have to steady myself, dizzy with need. When I’m sure I won’t lose my balance, I let my fingers dance to where his T-shirt meets his jeans, slipping my hands underneath. My palms meet the warm, smooth skin of his toned stomach, and he breathes in hard. Adam, I remind myself. This is Adam. I push the shirt up to his neck, and he takes the hint, bending down so I can pull it over his shoulders.
I’ve always known he was beautiful. But seeing him like this, letting my gaze linger on the corded muscle defining his flawless skin, I’m overwhelmed.
I reach for the hem of my tank, removing the last barrier between my skin and his.
“God,” he whispers. “You’re beautiful, Jess. So beautiful.”
I take his hands in mine and bring them to my breasts, gasping at his touch.
His hands find their way around me, and he dips his head, lips trailing down my neck until he reaches the skin above my right breast. He doesn’t need to go any further. Just the thought of him doing so sends sparks of pleasure all the way down to my toes.
With Adam there is a trust I never expected. It’s not only his beauty and my desire. In this moment, I believe what he said, that maybe there isn’t anything I could say to make him not want me.
When he straightens to kiss me again, I hook my fingers in his jeans and pull him toward the bedroom.
I pause in the doorway, holding him with my gaze. I don’t need to run to the kitchen for one more shot or anything else to mask the truth. I don’t need to talk myself into crossing the threshold of my own room with the promise of someone to hold me while I sleep. I want to be here. I want him to be here.
Without realizing we’ve moved, I’m standing against my bed, and he drops to his knees, his hands cupping the backs of my thighs. One finger sneaks inside the seam of my shorts, and we are a chorus of sharp breaths—I at his touch, at him finding me so ready for him. He, most likely, at the revelation that nothing stands between the thin cotton and my skin. No panties.
Soft lips tickle from the hem of my shorts down to my knee as that same rogue finger teases but never slips inside. My hands fist in his hair, and I say his name through ragged breaths.
“Adam.”
He releases a raspy exhale at the sound of his name, and I pull on his hair, urging him back up, needing his lips to find their way back to mine.
He tastes warm and sweet, our combined heat firing off synapses of sensation over my entire body. His thumbs hook in the waistband of my shorts, and he slides them slowly off, a soft, delicious growl escaping his lips as his hands graze my behind.
I want him. In every possible way, I want him.
Slowly, he kisses his way back up my body until he stands against me.
Even with my bare chest against his, our bodies beginning to perspire, I shiver. Not from cold but from how much I want this, for how terrifying it is to wonder if he’d still say those things in the morning when I’ll have to tell him everything.
His tongue sweeps across my shoulder and down over my breast. I gasp as he takes me into his mouth, my whole body reacting to his touch.
He lowers me down to the bed and climbs over me, kissing and tasting from my mouth down to my hips. I watch his body move as my hands grip the sheet, the muscles in his shoulders and arms taut as they support his weight.
My eyes squeeze shut, and I try to regulate my breaths. It’s too much. He is too much. Adam isn’t some guy, and for the first time in months I don’t pretend the hands on me belong to someone else. I don’t want the old fantasy. I want the new one, where we have tonight and tomorrow morning and countless nights after that.
My eyes flick open to meet his, and I pull his face to mine. I kiss him with the ferocity of everything I want to say but can’t, and he answers me back with the same intensity. With my free hand, I find his, and our fingers tangle and untangle. As his hand slides up my thigh and between my legs, I guide it down into me. Our lips never part, and my hand rests on top of his as his fingers slip further inside. With each pulse, he plunges deeper, and I keep my hand on his the whole time, feeling him feeling me. These are Adam’s hands, and I don’t want to miss any of it.
“You’re beautiful,” he says again between kisses. “So beautiful.” And as I writhe against his touch, I want to tell him the same, that his beautiful heart has given something back to me. But I can’t say it, not without dissolving. So I listen to his words and try to believe.
“You,” I manage, my mouth still against his. “I want to feel you.”
My hand leaves his, and I unbutton his jeans, smiling against him when I feel the basketball shorts underneath. I pull on both, and his hands leave me to assist. Once he’s done helping me undress him, I pull him back next to me. For a quiet moment we lie face-to-face, fully exposed. Then his lips skim my jaw, and I hum a quiet moan.
“My turn,” I say, and smile when his brows rise. I realize it’s the first we’ve both smiled since he got here, and I want to hold onto the power to make him do it again, to bring him happiness instead of the pain.
I grip him, stroke him slowly up to the tip, and he bites his lip, hissing in a breath.
“Jess . . .”
My grin broadens, my name no longer my enemy.
I
kick my leg over his, and I straddle him, let his tip tease my opening.
“Jesus, Jess . . . what are you doing to me?”
But when I dip my head toward his, he kisses me, deep and relentless. It would be so easy to just let him inside, enter at will. Nothing between us. But the last thing I want now is to ruin the moment by taking advantage of what only I know. So I make him feel safe and save myself the agony of knowing what it would be like to just be Adam and Jess, nothing else.
I collapse to my back, done torturing us both. “The drawer,” I say, barely audible as I point to the nightstand.
Adam kisses me and smiles as he reaches to grab the condom. He lets me roll it down his length, his eyes rolling back as I do.
When he’s ready I pull him down to me, into me, our bodies colliding.
Slow and rhythmic, he slides deep inside, my legs hooking around his—a connection I don’t want to break. For several moments I hold him there, buried in my warmth, and he kisses me, achingly, deliciously slow.
I thought I would dissolve. I was wrong. Instead I shatter into a million pieces, broken bits of the Jess I never let him know, and as our bodies fit together and move together, the pieces rearrange into something else, something I never expected to be again—capable of love and trust and possibility. Adam didn’t make me this way. He only saw it when I couldn’t.
“Thank you,” I say between kisses careful and tender.
His thumb brushes away the stray tear falling into my hair, the first in over a year.
“For what?”
For letting me love you¸ I think. For letting me know I still can.
“For waking me up.” This is the last thing I say other than his name, my voice tinged with pleasure and a hopeless ache.
“Adam.”
“Jess.”
Legs tangled, two bodies fitting as one, lips crushed together—we stay this way for minutes or maybe hours. As we move together, joined seamlessly, time doesn’t matter, not until it brings us to the cold dawn of morning. For now our slow rhythm keeps the time, and I memorize every nuance of his touch, every angle of his body. And when sleep finally comes, Adam lies nowhere near that far edge of the bed. He’s here, wrapped around me, breathing sweetly in my ear.
I love you, I think, not able to close what’s been opened. The tears fall free now.
I hope you’ll forgive me.
19
When morning comes, it’s as if we haven’t moved. My skin against his, I’d stay here all day waiting for it to be night again.
Soft lips touch my shoulder, and a shiver of pleasure courses through me.
“Good morning,” I say, my voice coarse with sleep and renewed longing.
“Morning, beautiful,” he breathes against my skin. “How’d you sleep?” Concern tinges his groggy voice.
I thought the morning would bring the realization that he’d know last night shouldn’t have happened. But it did happen. And I slept, no dreams to take away the hope. And he’s still here, calling me beautiful.
My palm finds his cheek, his morning stubble tickling my fingers. “It was the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.”
The jarring grind of coffee beans jolts us from our slumber, and for the first time since yesterday afternoon, I take note of my hunger. For food, that is.
I turn to face him, and he wastes no time pressing his mouth to mine.
“What about morning breath?” I ask, mid-kiss.
“You taste amazing no matter what time of day it is.”
How does a girl argue with that?
“You taste pretty good yourself.”
I let him part my hesitant lips with his tongue, and I decide I’m never going to leave this bed.
“Can we live here?” I ask when we both pause for breath.
“Fine by me.”
“We’d get hungry.”
He nips at my neck. “I am hungry.”
“I mean for food.” A thought occurs to me, and I give him a wicked grin. “Wait here a second.”
I slide out from under him, and his hand glides over both of my still-bare breasts. I groan, not wanting to leave the warmth of his heat, the feel of his hands all over me.
I make it back from the kitchen in record time, a banana cupcake in each hand.
“Breakfast!” I declare. “Though I’m getting closer and closer to having to bake or buy something new for Regan’s party.”
I sit on the side of the bed, place one cupcake on the nightstand, and hold out the other for Adam. When he reaches for it, I pull back and dip my finger in the frosting instead, rubbing it across his kiss-swollen lips.
“Mmmm . . .” I hum, licking the frosting clean.
“God, you are sexy,” he says, and I blush. I’ve been virtually naked since he walked in the door last night, but I’m not used to this—full exposure.
“And look at those arms. You’re only taking Tracy’s class once a week?”
My free hand flies to cover my upper arm, but Adam pulls it free.
“Stop hiding. You’re beautiful and strong. How many times do I have to tell you that? And now, apparently, you can also kick my ass.”
He throws me back in bed, onto my back, and I have to hold my hand in the air so I don’t crush the cupcake. He grabs it, sitting up and looming over me. He dips his index finger into the white frosting.
As he contemplates his next move, I ask him a question.
“Tell me what you love about it? Playing basketball?”
“That’s an odd question to ask right now. Don’t you think?”
He smiles, and his finger paints a sweet white line from my sternum to my belly button.
My stomach contracts with my intake of breath, but I hold my ground. “I want to know you.” The more he talks, the less I have to. Eventually the silence will come, and I will have to fill it with what he needs to know.
Until then I watch as his finger circles my belly button, a slow, rhythmic tease.
“Pick and roll,” he says, his grin broadening to his dark eyes.
“Explain,” I demand, squirming as I become his finger-painting canvas.
“The point guard, me, starts here at the end of the court. We’re on offense at this point.”
He dabs the frosting where I assume he’d be standing under the opposing team’s basket.
“Let’s say I drive the play down the court, and a defender guards me.”
He drags his finger from up from my belly, stopping under my breasts. I try hard to control my ragged breathing and nod for him to continue.
“One of my teammates blocks the defender, and the defender has to choose to guard me or my teammate. If he chooses me, my teammate pivots, the roll, to shooting position, open for me to pass. If the defender chooses my teammate, I’m open for the shot.”
His fingers dance and swirl across my frosted skin, and I ache for more, for his skin on mine, as my chest rises and falls with my rapid breaths.
But Adam is the picture of control, his voice even—his hand steady.
“If the team executes the play well, it’s almost guaranteed net. It’s a relatively simple play, but it means all of us working together to coordinate it.”
I brush my hand through his hair.
“Your team. You love it because of your team.”
His smile falters, only slightly, and I know he’s thinking of the end of his career. He brings his finger to my mouth, and I wrap my lips around it, sucking the frosting clean. Adam sighs and retaliates, tasting me from my belly button all the way to my neck, pausing to swirl his tongue around each peaked and tightened nipple.
The only response I manage is a gasp, and then we put on an encore performance of last night. Though I need him inside me, my urgency gives way to a relaxed rhythm, both of us in the moment instead of trapped in the past—or paralyzed by the future. Adam’s body covers mine, and I keep my eyes on his as we move in slow motion. The deeper he goes, the deeper I fall. But we’ve both been falling for weeks.
He kisses me hard, rocking against me, and I know he’s getting close. My legs anchor around his, and my hands press against his back, bringing him as far inside as I can.
I’m letting you in, I think. Inside all the parts of me. I’m trying to believe . . .
“Jess . . . I . . .”
But I cut off his strangled words with my mouth, afraid to hear what would have come next and needing every part of us connected and entwined. My back arches, and Adam moans against my mouth. He pumps hard inside me, and I begin to pulse around him.
“Harder,” I almost sob. “God, Adam, harder.”
“Fuck,” he hisses, obliging, and I laugh.
“That’s the idea.” The words are strange coming off my lips, Adam releasing in me something carnal and free.
My lips part in a smile against him as we burst at the seams and then slowly come down from the physical, and at least for me, emotional climax.
I wipe the trace of wetness from my eyes before Adam takes notice. A year I’ve kept everything in check, maintained control. But this boy, this broken boy who thinks we can fix each other, has broken me wide open.
I clear my throat. “I need to put in a few hours at the hospital today before Regan’s party,” I say as we lie face-to-face, tangled in the aftermath. “And you must have something to do. Practice? Therapy? Homework?”
“Maybe.” He threads his fingers through mine and kisses my hand. “Or I could stay here and taste all the parts of you I may have missed.”
Yes, I think. Let’s never leave this room. Let us pretend everything outside my bedroom door doesn’t exist. In here, like this—I am free.
But the silence is coming, the one I have to fill.
I kiss him once more before rolling out of bed.
“I have to shower from all the tasting you’ve already done.”
He laughs and grabs my hand. “Need some help?”
I shake my head, though I want to say yes. A few minutes under the hot water is what I need to give me clarity, to plan my words carefully.
“Next time,” I say, and wonder if next time exists for us.
He lets my hand go, not before pressing my palm to his lips.