He untangled his hand from mine and brushed his fingers across a curl of hair that had escaped the loose braid I’d wrapped my hair into that morning. He tucked the tendril behind my ear and then slid his hand over my jaw, landing at my neck, a motion that was somehow becoming our thing. Sweet and full of affection.
“I don’t know what I hate more,” he said. “You feeling that way or this being the reason you don’t.”
“Why would you hate making me feel alive?”
“You know why. I’m too old, too screwed up, too entrenched in a dangerous life to even risk letting you into it,” he said softly, his eyes closing and then opening again to take me in as if it were painful to look at me.
“First, six years isn’t really all that much. You’re absolutely not any more screwed up than I am, and it seems like the danger is almost over, right?” I refused to let him off the hook that easily. Not now. Not when we’d kissed and talked about celebrating with our bodies.
His index finger caressed my jawline, lingering at the soft spot below my ear, almost like he was kissing it with his lips instead of a hand. My body was slowly combusting.
I reached out, twisted my hand into his sweatshirt, and pulled so our faces were inches apart. “If you leave me hanging, after days of imagining this—us, kisses, hands on skin—I’m going to give you to theKyodainamyself.”
Then, I pushed our lips together, and it was an explosion of light and smells that dimmed everything else in the world but us. My soft lips pressed against his chapped ones from days of fighting the wind and the waves. I pushed my tongue against them, begging entrance, begging for him to just give in to what our bodies had felt for so long it was as if it was the only memory I had.
He groaned, opening his mouth and letting me explore with my tongue, licking at him, absorbing his taste. The heady scent of sea and woody smoke that was his. The hand at my neck went to the back of my head, pushing us closer, and he took the kiss from slow exploration to pounding demands. Our mouths were molded together, pressure and force and the spark of magic needed to truly bring chemical reactions to life.
Cesium and water imploding into a sea of hydrogen gas. The heat of our bodies fueling the reaction more than an actual Bunsen burner. The brilliant light of the joining glimmered behind my closed eyelids. Shimmering.
A joy I’d never felt before seemed to envelop me.
He groaned and pulled back, and my body objected. I leaned back in, determined to kiss him again, and he put a finger on my lips. “Goddamn, Violet, I can’t do this here—in a van, in a parking lot—like we are two crazed teenagers.”
I smiled because he was right but also because he hadn’t said he couldn’t do it at all, just not where we were at.
I pulled away from him completely. “Then, get your old ass out of the car so we can get the food and go home.”
He smiled the smile that had claimed me the first time I’d seen it. How had I ever thought I could put him behind me? Forget the feelings that channeled between us? It was impossible. No wonder my life had felt dull, as if there was something critical missing from it.
We placed our order, and while we waited, he leaned up against the wooden railing. When I went to stand next to him, he tugged me so I was standing between his legs. He wrapped his arms around me, burying his head in my neck and inhaling deeply. “Don’t let me screw it up, Violet,” he said quietly.
I tugged at his hair, and he lifted his head so our eyes met.
“Why do you think you will?”
“Because I don’t know how to do this. Drive a boat, I can do. Tear one apart and put it back together? No sweat. Aim a gun and hit a target? Easy-peasy. But relationships? I don’t know what that’s supposed to be like,” he said.
“Is that what you want? An actual relationship?” I asked, breath coming quicker as I looked at his lips and then back to his eyes.
He looked upset, brows creasing together. “Yes. If I just wanted sex, I wouldn’t risk everything in my life going off the rails for it. You know that as well as I do. Tell me you wouldn’t risk everyone and everything we love for just one night of sweaty, amazing sex.”
“Sweaty and amazing, huh?” I said with my lips twitching. “Promise?”
His body tightened against mine, all the way down to the parts of him hiding behind the zipper of his jeans. They called our number, and he swore under his breath.
We continued to stare at each other for a minute. Then, I laughed. My body was full to the brim with joy, and it burst free. Dawson Langley wanted me. Not only wanted me but was letting his guard down enough for it to happen. For there to actually be an us.
Dawson
WILD
“Oh, we can go slow, we don't need to rush.
I'll take the wheel, make you feel every touch.”
Performed by John Legend w/ Gary Clark Jr.
Written by Stephens / Clark / Torrey / Kohn / Kelleher / Barnes / Romans
