Performed byNatalie Pearson & Brooks Chivell
Written by Wolfe / Bell
The feel of his gentle explorationas he kissed me almost broke me. The slow and steady pull on my sleepy nerve endings was tearing my veins apart. A kiss tasting like berries and wine and picnics in the filtered sunlight between shady tree branches. A kiss that caused a burst of lust to spread through me because of its tenderness. A simple kiss with just lips and tongues joining and no hands or bodies, as if he knew how painful the experience would be for me and was trying to soften the blow.
A simple kiss that was anything but simple.
It felt so damn good it was hard to imagine stopping. It felt perfect.
Which sent a wave of ice down my back.
Perfect.
How could it be perfect?
I stepped away, regret filling me. Regret because I was being cruel, and I didn’t like to be cruel. I’dlet him kiss me, knowing it could only be a kiss and nothing more. Knowing I couldn’t give him what he deserved to be given when he touched someone like that. When he kissed someone so wholeheartedly, so openly, so devotedly.
He deserved a beginning. He deserved someone giving all of themself.
And I didn’t have that to give anymore.
I’d already given it away.
I saw the moment it hit him. My regret. The dark night unable to keep the longing and the sting of rejection from his face.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, meaning it.
He covered his emotions in a way I was also accomplished at doing, grinning at me.
“Why the hell are you sorry?”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you.” I turned, unable to look at him as I continued down the street with a mix of emotions tagging along. Hunger. Hurt. Hatred. Hope.
“Why? It was goddamn beautiful,” he said, keeping pace with me but not touching me, as if he knew I couldn’t handle it.
It had been a beautiful kiss.
I shook my head, my thoughts warring with my emotions.
“Brady…I just…it’s not fair to you.”
“How can the best kiss I’ve ever had not be fair?”
I grunted. “Don’t even say that. You haven’t been a liar. Don’t start now.”
“I’m not lying,Cariño,” he said with so much emotion that it almost exploded inside me. The nickname. The words. I pushed it aside.
“Do you even know how many women you’ve kissed?” I asked, turning the tables on him because I couldn’t handle my own turmoil.
He chuckled. “Men and women.”
I stopped and looked at him, the wicked smile, the tantalizing pull of his full red lips. I shook myself out of the reverie and kept going, heading to Grams’ house. My home. My safe haven.
“It never mattered to me,” he said, keeping up with me. “I know there’s been lots of talk in the tabloids about it. I like to flirt, and sometimes flirting leads to kissing.” The humor in his voice was tossed about easily, like his smiles.
“Well, this kiss… This flirting… It can’t happen again,” I told him as I tried to process everything he was telling me. Trying to remember if I’d ever heard him talk about being bi or pan or any part of the LGBTQ+ community.
We’d reached the house, and relief filled me because I was almost in the clear.
