“So now we’re going to be camp outlaws?” I demanded.
He stopped and turned to face me on the trail. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
I grinned back. “Not even a little one.”
He grabbed my hand, hustling us up the trail, and my heart raced faster than my feet. He hadn’t told me what we were doing up here, but kids only snuck up to Moon Rock for one reason.
It had been the scene of a thousand first kisses over the years, and when the counselors were cheering for a particular couple, we always gave them a fifteen-minute head start before we went up to bust them.
“You ever come here as a camper?” Sawyer asked as we stepped out to the tiny clearing at the end of the trail. A knee-high boulder sat near the end of a small bluff, and as promised, the view of the moon over the lake was excellent.
“A time or two,” I confessed.
“Why, Tabitha Winters, I’m shocked.” He glanced down at me, and I could barely make out the glint of his eyes in the light of the half-moon. “Was it everything you dreamed it would be?” he teased.
“Is any kiss at fifteen what you dream it will be? Krish Varma cut my lip with his braces, so it was kind of a bust.”
“But you said a time ortwo,” Sawyer reminded me.
“The second time was better.”
“I think I’m jealous.”
My heart was pounding so loudly I couldn’t believe he was buying my cool act. It wasn’t over fear of being discovered. The campers weren’t due for four more days. It was nerves over making a bolder move than I’d ever made before.
But I’d been wanting to do this since I’d scared him in the woods this afternoon, and it wasn’t a big stretch to think this is what Sawyer wanted too. It was exactly why he’d brought me up here.
I turned to face him fully. “You’re the second time.”
“Is that so?” His voice had grown soft and low, and he pulled me closer with the hand he held, drawing it around his waist while he slid his other hand beneath my jaw and gently nudged my chin up.
“That’s so,” I breathed. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“I’ve learned some things since last summer.”
“About kissing?” I didn’t want to think about him practicing while he was at school.
“About timing,” he said. “Like not to wait until the end of the summer. And to pick my moment so no one else tries to pick it for me.”
“You’ve picked pretty well.”
And then he kissed me. I was almost twenty-one, and I’d had plenty of kisses since the last one with Krish at Moon Rock. There’d been a handful in high school and double that in college, because it turned out kissing was fun, and I made a point of being good at it.
But none of those kisses—not even the dare last summer—had prepared me for this one with Sawyer, who kissed me like he’d been born to do it. It started gently at first, a soft seeking of permission of his lips against mine, but when the warm slide of his mouth sent sparks shooting through my stomach, I made a soft moan. I’d be embarrassed by it except it gave Sawyer all the encouragement he needed to take it deeper.
He tasted like all the pent-up looks and touches from the previous summer, all the flirty texts and IMs through the school year, all of it pulsing between us in a honeyed heat of need and wanting like I had never felt before.
I had no idea how long we’d been completely lost in each other, and who knew how much more lost we’d have gotten if it hadn’t been for the sound of cracking branches and muffled laughter coming from the trail.
Sawyer pulled away from me, blinking to reorient himself. “Probably Ben and Nat. I’ll kick them out. They hog this place all summer.”
But I recognized the perfect opportunity for the second prank of summer.
“Wait,” I said, plucking at his sleeve. “Prisoner protocol.”
He paused and I caught the quick flash of his grin. “Prisoner protocol,” he confirmed.
We hurried behind the closest bushes and waited for Ben and Natalie so we could scare the pants off them at the worst possible time. A bubble of laughter threatened to escape me as I imagined their faces before they figured out what was going on, but I didn’t feel even a tiny bit bad. They were interrupting the most incredible moment of my life. Payback was fair.
