I’ve kissed women before and it was fine. Nice, sometimes. But it didn’t turn me on like this. Each time Rafe’s mouth moves over mine, bolts of sensation shoot straight to my groin. I’m hard in seconds—embarrassingly hard—high school hard—and my whole body is buzzing with energy. Then something inside me lets go, and it feels like I’m drunk. Everything’s melted into a soup of darkness and fog and I’m suspended there, where the only thing I’m supposed to do is to kiss Rafe. Nothing could have prepared me for this: feeling like I’m in the right place, with the right person. Like a weight I didn’t even realize had always been pressing down on my chest has suddenly vaporized, leaving me ungrounded but free.
Rafe makes a sound in the back of his throat and I realize I have my arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that I’m probably choking him.
“Sorry,” I mutter. He doesn’t let me pull away, though, and just shakes his head. We’re both staring at each other, breathing heavily. Rafe’s eyelids are heavy, his lips slightly parted. He pulls me closer, pulls me down so I’m basically straddling him.
“Oh fuck,” I mutter as he settles me on his lap. I’m aware of my body in a way I only ever am when I’m running. Connected. I could come with just a touch, which makes me start to panic. I feel helpless like this. Ashamed and nervous and so fucking turned on that I can’t pull away.
Rafe runs his hands down my arms, his touch electric. I can smell the warm spice of his hair, and I lean closer, chasing the scent. My nose is next to his neck and I breathe him in. Fuck. Rafe smells like a warm, velvet darkness that I want to dive in to and never come out of.
He leans back slowly, pulling me down on top of him. He spreads his legs and cradles me with his hips as my legs slide between his.
I make a humiliating broken sound, and Rafe kisses me until I’m light-headed and out of control. He pulls my groin tight against his muscled stomach and I know I’m gonna lose it. It’s like I’m coming out of my skin. Every nerve ending is electrified, all the pleasure routed to my dick.
I try to push myself away from him, terrified that I’ll come all over myself.
“You are so fucking hot like this.” Rafe’s words send a wave of equal parts shame and joy through me. I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut. “Keep your eyes on me.” He angles his hips up, intensifying the pressure between us.
“Don’t—” I beg. “I can’t—I have to—I’m gonna—”
Rafe catches my scrabbling hands and winds them around his neck, kissing me silent. I shiver when his hands run up my back.
“Look at me.” His voice is thick and terrifying, and my body responds to it. Rafe’s eyes are almost black in the dim light. Too intense. I concentrate on the light sprinkle of freckles across his nose instead.
His hand moves to my lower back, right above my ass, and I tense, eyes flying to his. He pushes down slowly and grinds our hips together. The pressure is incredible, his arm like a vise. I can feel it begin, little uncontrollable trembles of pleasure skittering from my balls and my spine and my stomach and my thighs like the electric arms of those plasma balls at the museum where I went to on a class trip before Mom died. I put my hand to the glass and the tentacles of electricity jumped to my fingers like magic.
Rafe presses me down harder and harder, his strength inexorable and his eyes ravenous. He runs his other hand up my side under my shirt, the light touch to my ribs a shocking whisper compared to the engulfing pleasure between my legs. Then he cants his hips up and pushes me down as if he could press us into one body.
One second I’m staring at Rafe, his mouth set in concentration, his eyes heated, and the next, my whole body tenses, seized with pleasure. Rafe’s hand is immovable, holding me to him even as every muscle clenches. He’s looking at me as I come, and his face is pure satisfaction. His eyelids go heavy, and he bites his lower lip between sharp, crooked teeth and shudders against me.
Then he pulses his hips up once, tightening his stomach muscles until his neck cords, and comes, his head thumping back against the platform, his mouth open, breath caught. He looks so vulnerable suddenly. Like I could do anything to him.
My thighs tense over and over and my stomach flutters, seeking the last shadows of shivery pleasure.
I want to kiss Rafe’s throat. My mouth is right there and I can smell him, warm and earthy. But then he moans softly, and his hand slides from my lower back down to my ass. He barely touches me, but I tense up automatically, bad memories tumbling it all down, the delicate, dreamlike fog turning tarry and black.