We walked in companionable silence for the first mile or so, our hands occasionally brushing as we navigated the winding path, each accidental touch sending electricity racing up my arm.
Seven dates. Seven thoughtful, deliberate encounters where we’d learned each other’s minds, each other’s dreams, each other’s carefully guarded hearts. And in all that time, he’d been a perfect gentleman. Respectful. Subdued. Maddeningly restrained.
“Theo,” I said as we paused at a switchback, the canyon holding its breath for me. The question had lived like a flame beneath my ribs for weeks, flickering higher every time he looked at me and did… nothing. “Are you ever going to kiss me again?”
He stopped walking. Entirely. The wind stirred around us, both dry and electric, as he turned to me, his blue eyes finding mine like magnets snapping into place. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” My breath caught low in my throat, the words spilling out like a flood finally breaching the dam. “We’ve hadsevendates, Theo. Seven. We’ve shared long conversations and poetry and pieces of ourselves I didn’t even know I had. But you barely touch me. You only hold my hand long enough to help me over a boulder.” My voice faltered, but the ache behind it continued to surge. “That night, when we dismantled the memorial at the overlook—when we kissed—that kiss felt like the end of the world. And then… nothing. Nothing. Did it scare you? DoIscare you?”
Something flickered in him. Like lightning behind a curtain of restraint.
Hunger. Ache. Fire denied oxygen.
“Scared?” he repeated softly. “You think I’m scared of wanting you?”
“I-I think maybe I don’t live up to the fantasy,” I whispered shakily, hating how raw the words made me feel. “Maybe the real me is too much. Or not enough.”
He moved.
Two long strides and I was pressed to the canyon wall, the red rock scraping my back as his hands rose to frame my face. His tall, wide shoulders blocked out the sun, with eyes wild—undone.
“Don’t live up to the fantasy?” His voice was wreckage, low and sharp. “Wendy, do you have anyideawhat you do to me?”
Before I could manage an answer, his mouth crashed into mine.
Not gentle. Not hesitant. A collision. A combustion. Months of restraint ripped loose in a single burning kiss that seared through me like wildfire on dry grass.
I met him with the same aching hunger, fists curling into his shirt, my body arching toward him like I was starved for him, and I was. God, I was. The stone bit at my back as he pressed his body against mine, but I barely noticed. All I felt washim—the pressure, the heat, the weight of being wantedthis much.
He tasted like the bitter warmth of coffee we’d shared at the trailhead, and something only him… spearmint, longing, the flavor of a man who’d been biting down on his own desire for far too long.
“I’ve been losing my mind,” he breathed against my lips, kissing the edge of my jaw and finding the hollow just beneath my ear with devastating control and certainty. “Every goddamn date. Watching you laugh. Watching me with sparkling eyes when I quote poetry. Hearing you passionately argue with pretentious assholes at art galleries about what color theoryreallymeans. Wanting to slam you against the nearest wall and show you—showyou—how much I want you.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I gasped as his mouth traced fire down my neck, my frantic pulse a drumbeat against his tongue.
“Because I was terrified.” The confession landed on my thrumming skin, rough and raw. “Terrified that if I touched you the way I wanted to, I’d ruin this. That it would swallow us whole like it did last time. That I’d mistake the chaos for something real.”
He pulled back to look at me. God, his eyes. They were…dark.
“And now?” I asked, my voice a thread.
“Now I’m more afraid ofnottouching you. Of letting this slip through my fingers because I was too much of a coward to believe it could actually last.”
His thumb brushed my lower lip, still swollen from the wreckage of that kiss.
I caught it between my teeth.
His pupils dilated.
I sucked his thumb, slow, sensual. “Iwantyou to lose control,” I said, barely more than a whisper. “I want you to stop being so fucking noble and touch me like youneedme.”
A shadow crossed his face. A promise, but also a warning.
“Be careful what you ask for,” he said, his voice molten.
“I’m done being careful, Theo.”
He kissed me again,harder. His fingers tangled in my hair, angling my face for deeper access, and the kiss turned urgent, messy,devouring.I could feel him against my hip, feel the way he trembled when I scraped my teeth along his swollen lower lip.
