In This Moment(49)

Pulse throbbing, cock hardening in record time, I skate my hands down her neck and over her shoulders. When I reach her breasts, Aimee makes a little sound that’s partway between a sigh and a moan and one of her bare legs wraps around the bend of my knee, drawing me deep into the contours of her body.

“Damn.”

She giggles and rains tiny kisses along my jaw, pushing her small hands down my spine until her nails scratch the exposed skin of my lower back, where they linger, digging under the waistband of my boxers.

I am fucking destroyed.

Flayed wide open.

If I’ve ever kissed another girl in my life like this, I can’t think of it. I can’t think of anything at all.

My mouth still pressed into hers, I lift both of my hands from her body to clasp her face and graze my thumb over that freckle on her cheek. Aimee whispers incoherently against my lips and her delicious fingers grip my back so tightly that I can feel the sting of her nails.

My mouth dips down to her collarbone—to the pulse that beats steadily against the hollow at the base of her neck—and back up to her soft, welcoming lips. She sucks me inside and teases me with her tongue until it seems like there is so much to feel that I might be drowning. Fuck it. Let the tide take me under. I don’t need to breathe oxygen as long as I’ve got this girl’s mouth.

I know that I’m putting everything I am—everything that I have—out there, but I don’t think I could pull myself back now even if I wanted to. Aimee has me wrapped up inside this one moment. And if she wanted to, she could reach into my chest and rip my heart out of my body because it already belongs to her.





Aimee



Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. Other times, a kiss is a revelation.

Part of me wants to attribute this feeling—the one turning me inside out—to the fact that I haven’t been touched in more than a year, but deep down I know that’s a lie. It’s a total cop out. This isn’t a rain shower after a dry spell. This is a hurricane. It’s both beautiful and devastating.

Cole drops his hands and rests his forehead against mine, his breath drifting into my open mouth in warm puffs. I’m mesmerized by the roughness of his cheek rasping under my palm and how cool he feels against my flushed skin. My lips are sore and tingly from the pressure of his kiss and I wonder if they’re bruised or maybe even bleeding. Honestly? I don’t think I would mind at all.

“Are you okay?” He asks and I note the slightly nervous edge to his voice.

I look into his eyes, fragmented green and gold under a ledge of dark blond lashes. I slide my hand down the flat lines of his chest until I can feel his heartbeat. It storms up my arm and seems to echo inside my chest.

I force myself to swallow hard. Okay, breathe. Seriously, Aimee.

I haven’t spoken for about a full minute and Cole must get the wrong idea because he begins to shift his body away from mine.

“No,” I hiss, gripping his arm tightly and waiting for him to meet my gaze. I want him to know that I mean what I’m saying even if I’m not sure what exactly it is that I’m going to say. I’ve spent so much time struggling for control, trying to hold things together that want to fall apart and I’m sick of it. I just want to let it all go. “I’m better than okay. I’m just—I can’t…” My fingers drift over the rigid planes of his lean body to the side of his face. His cheeks are rough with the scrape of two-day old stubble and it’s just so… sexy. Giving myself a little shake, I trace the sharp ridge of his nose and move my thumb pads along his straight eyebrows. “This is…”

Wow. I’m not making any sense, am I? But maybe that’s all right because Cole is nodding his head like he understands what I’m trying to say. He smiles.

I don’t know how long we stay like this—the two of us grinning and wound up in each other on the beach. The sun falls to the earth. Stars are drawn on the chalkboard of sky. At some point he kisses me again and from down the beach, a low-pitched whistle floats over us. A little while later, a gravelly voice comments that we should get a room.

Cole drops his head and laughs, soft and low against my neck. “You’re going to kill me.”

I press my head into the cool sand so that I can see his face. “Is that going to be a problem?”

For a long moment he just looks at me. Then he bursts out laughing.

With the sand at my back and the water at my feet, I relax and let the weight of Cole’s strong body pin me to the here and now.



***



“The truth is that we barely know each other.”

Cole looks over at me from the driver’s seat. His face is hidden by shadows, but his eyeballs catch the shine of another car’s headlights. “Are you being serious? Is this the part where you let me down gently?”