Page 32

He lowers his head, and then his mouth and his perfect hands are all over me.

Slow and careful just for a minute, testing what I like, and quickly turning hungry when I pull him closer and ask for more.

He squeezes my breasts together, tasting each nipple in turn, dragging his tongue along my cleavage to move from one to the other.

Nipple play has never been my favorite, but this —this hunger in his lips—flows straight from his body into mine.

It’s too much, lying here, a passive object.

I sit up and wrap my arms around him, kissing him deeply.

His big hands slide up my bare back, making this feel like the safest place on earth.

My tongue explores his, and I know I’m tasting the salt of my own desire-flushed skin.

I want to straddle his lap and roll my hips against him, but I know that’s dangerous.

Not here, not tonight. So I settle for kneeling in front of him and letting his lips find their way back to my chest.

I look down at his dark hair, the wet flash of his tongue and the greedy way he cups my breast. He pauses and pulls back a few inches. His fingers brush the side of my breast, and I realize what he’s staring at. He looks up at me, curiosity in his eyes.

“What’s this?” His fingers are still on my skin.

“A tattoo. Clearly.”

“It’s real?”

I chuckle. “Well, it’s not fake.”

“I thought you only had the one. You never told me.”

“Oops.”

His eyes dart between my face and the tattoo on the side of my breast like he’s just discovered gold. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me.”

“I did it a long time ago.”

“Move into the light.”

I angle my body so he can see the ink clearly. “Three seventeen,” he reads, running his thumb over the tattoo. And even though he’s had his hands and tongue all over my breasts all evening, this touch, him discovering my secret, makes me break out in goose bumps. “What’s it mean?”

“You don’t know?”

“March seventeenth?”

I shake my head. “Here’s your hint: Look around you.”

His brows pull together, then relax. “The house number.” He gestures with his head toward the empty house behind us. “Our spot.”

I nod, pleased and a little embarrassed. His body’s half covered in tattoos, and only one of them has anything to do with me; two if you count the fox, but I think he just liked my artwork.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Probably not.”

“Uncool, Ruby.” A flicker lights his eyes. “You owe me a secret I don’t have to discover myself.”

“Okay. There are three others.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Other tattoos? You’re fucking with me.”

“And if you want to see them, you will have to discover them yourself.”

His lips part, a look of pure lust taking hold of his expression. To have this effect on him feels like magic in my hands. “Tonight?” he asks, voice husky.

“Depends how many surprises you can handle in one night.”

I put my arms around him and kiss him, craving his warmth on my bare skin again. I lift my chest to direct him back where I want him, and he drops his head, sprinkling a few sparse kisses across my breasts, but then pulls back. I recognize the uncertainty in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I whisper.

He rakes a hand through his hair, hesitating. “I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“Maybe we should slow it down. I need to get this right.”

I smile. “Trust me, Lorenzo, you’re getting it right.” I press my breasts to his chest. “You’re getting it perfect,” I say against his lips.

“No, I mean—” He turns his head, huffs out a little breath. “You’re making this really hard,” he says with a fleeting smile, glancing at my breasts and yanking his eyes away just as quickly. “I mean it should be special between us.”

“This is special,” I assure him. “It’s just you and me; we’re here in our special spot.

” I don’t even know what I’m trying to convince him of.

I certainly didn’t plan on sleeping with him here and now, but the idea that it’s off the table—that we have to stop when we were just getting started—is making me a little desperate.

“I know.” Lorenzo strokes his finger along my jaw, and the sweetness of it melts me. “But there’s a lot riding on this, Ruby. I don’t want to ruin us.”

The idea of anything ruining us is new and terrifying. That was never a possibility when we were just friends. “Okay,” I say softly. Because even though my body is already turning cold without his touch, I’ll give him anything he wants right now. Even abstinence.

We’re back on the end of the dock, fully clothed, lantern once again illuminating us as though we haven’t spent the last thirty minutes with my tits in his mouth. I watch the lights from the party boats in the middle of the lake and move my feet slowly back and forth through the cool water.

“Did you ever imagine us ending up like this?” I ask.

“Uh, yeah, like a hundred times.”

“You did not. When?”

“Like when you’d lay out on the dock in your little bikinis. Or when you’d come out of the water and you were ... cold.” His eyes flare meaningfully. “Or when my friends would insist we had to be fucking. You can’t help where your mind goes for a second.”

The idea is delicious, him thinking about me all those years when I had no idea.

I wait for him to ask me if I ever imagined it, but he doesn’t.

He already knows I did, what with that first kiss of ours.

How strange that I’ve spent these years lusting over his lips without knowing I’d already tasted them.

“Why only for a second?” I tease. “That’s not long enough to get to the good stuff.”

“That’s the point.” He doesn’t smile. “Imagining your body in my hands? Too dangerous.”

I get that. Indulging my fantasies about touching Lorenzo made every moment that I wasn’t lost in imagination hurt.

“I already drove myself wild comparing every girl I dated to you. If I started running through fantasies about touching you, no way they wouldn’t have surfaced when I was with someone else. And those girls would always come up short against you, Ruby.”

My insides melt right there. I slide close so our linked hands are pressed tight and warm between his thigh and mine, thinking about the irony of Lorenzo saying we need to take it slow and then spilling those sweet words all over my heart.

We can move our lips as slowly as we want, but my heart has already run away without me.

Lorenzo presses a soft kiss to my forehead, bringing a thousand high school fantasies to life.