Page 96 of The Compass Series

AALIYAH

H e was going to kiss me.

Maybe. Or perhaps, I imagined him leaning down to kiss me in the rain. Maybe I was just hoping and wishing, dreaming of the possibility of his lips finding mine and his tongue parting my mouth to slip inside.

My skin began to tremble as we stood in the rain, staring at one another without saying a word. We should’ve moved inside once the downpour began. We should’ve run for shelter, but we stood there, still. Dripping water from head to toe. Eyes locked, souls exposed.

Gosh, I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to tell me his truths, tell me if what I felt were his feelings, too. I wanted to fall against his mouth and have him swallow every piece of me as I gave him my all.

I wanted to kiss him.

And I wanted him to kiss me, too.

He looked down at the ground for a moment, and when he brought his gaze back up to meet mine, he looked as if he were seconds away from falling apart. “You scare me, Aaliyah.”

“What?”

“You terrify me because every single day, I wake up with you on my mind. Every single night, you stay there, too…I’m falling…

” He cleared his throat, and I knew how hard it was for him to open up to me.

I knew how relationships scared him, and I knew about his hesitations.

But still, he kept speaking his truths. “I am overwhelmingly falling for you, Red.”

My heart skipped a beat. Maybe five beats. Maybe it stopped altogether. Maybe his words healed it. All I knew was all the broken pieces of my tattered and tired heart belonged to him.

I looked at him, completely stunned by the words leaving his mouth.

Had I been imagining them? Because everything he was saying was everything I’d wanted to hear.

I didn’t know what to say because a part of me worried that I’d realize it was nothing more than a dream by morning.

by morning. I was scared that maybe by morning, he’d retreat back to his fears of love.

Then as if he knew of my worries, he kept talking. “I’m scared because I’ve never felt this way. I’m scared because you make me want to take breaks from my work. You make me want to experience things outside of my career. You make me want to live because everything about you is magic.”

“Connor…”

“You don’t have to say anything, really, Red.

I know you just got out of that relationship.

I know you are still healing, but I just…

I want you. I want you more than I’d ever wanted anything else in this world.

I don’t care how long it takes for you to be ready because I’ll be waiting… because this…I want this… I want?—”

“You,” I murmured, placing my hands into his. I looked down at our intertwined fingers and looked up at him. “I want you, too. I wanted you to say those words more than you know,” I said. “I thought I was the only one feeling this way.”

“No. I’ve felt this for a while now, but I didn’t want to bring it up. I was scared to bring it up. Shit, I’m still scared, Aaliyah…but I’m more scared of not giving us a real shot.”

“Connor?”

“Yes?”

“Kiss me.”

He did so without any hesitation.

The raindrops kept falling as his mouth fell against mine.

He tasted like my favorite fairy tales, full of wonder and love.

He kissed me as if he were trying to show me the truth behind his feelings, that they were real.

That we were real, something powerful. Something that neither one of us expected to happen.

Or perhaps we did expect it. Maybe we’d known all along, ever since that Halloween night when I decided to try to fall in love with a stranger.

And there I was, two years later, falling, falling, falling.

I kissed him back with the same intensity he gave me. His hands wrapped around me, and I moaned against his mouth as I felt one hand slowly moving across the fabric of the dress resting against my thighs. The clothes were soaked against our skin, showing our every curve and every muscle.

I liked how his hands wandered. I liked how his tongue danced with mine. I liked how he touched me. How he kissed me. How he sucked my lips between his.

I loved how he touched me in the rain.

“Tell me to stop, and I will, Red…but I want this…I want you…all of you. If you say stop, I’ll stop. But if you say go…Fuck, Red.” He pressed his forehead against mine and moaned against my lips as he closed his eyes. “Please. Tell me to go.”

My hands fell against his chest. I felt every muscle he had as his gray T-shirt clung to his skin. My lips parted against his, and I whispered, “Go.”

Within seconds, he was undressing me as I tore at his clothing.

We went after one another as if we were seconds away from discovering our full destiny.

He lay me down on the ground gently and spread my legs apart.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he placed my legs over his shoulders as he leaned down between them.

His fingers moved across my lower thighs, and his mouth trailed his fingers, leaving kisses and gentle sucks the entire way.

He licked at the raindrops that kept hitting us, sucking them from my bare skin, making the chills intensify every second he grew closer to my core.

He moved in closer, so close that his hot breaths fell against my upper thighs. His mouth stayed in one location as he sucked my sensitive skin between his full lips, shooting a rocket of desire and anticipation through my whole system.

“Please,” I begged, knowing exactly where I wanted his mouth to land, knowing what I wanted him to kiss, lick, suck, fuck…

Fuck…

My breaths were uneven as he found his way to my clit, and he worked at it as if I were his queen and his only duty in life was to bring me to a state of ecstasy.

He took my soul to a new level as his mouth made love to my core.

His tongue slid against my clit as his fingers worked their way inside me.

The motion and speed of his actions intensified as he drank the raindrops intermixed with my own wetness.

He tongued me hard, drinking up every sip of nourishment I’d given him.

He swallowed me as if I were his source of livelihood.

I moaned as my hips pushed up, begging for him to go deeper…

to have all of me…to give me all of him.

I wanted him inside me. I wanted him to push his hardness against my core. I wanted him on top of me, staring down at me as he fucked me like he meant it.

“Purse,” I breathed out, gesturing to the side of me where my purse lay in the rain. “Condom,” I muttered, unable to build up any other words. Luckily, that was enough for him to connect the dots. He rushed to my purse, dug inside, and grabbed the condom.

After he finished tasting me, he climbed on top of me, exposing his big, throbbing cock. My mouth began to water from the sight of his massive hard-on. He tilted his head as he hovered over me, almost as if he was asking permission to enter.

I nodded once, knowing words were too much to give at the moment.

He engulfed my lips against his, kissing me hard and long.

I gasped as I felt him sliding into me, giving me all of him.

As he thrust his hardness inside me, my fingers wrapped around his back, and my nails dug into his skin.

I didn’t know it could feel like that. I didn’t know making love could feel like life and death, prayers and sins, heaven and hell.

His normal playful demeanor was gone, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw his dilated stare filled with desire, with passion, with love.

“Oh, gosh, yes, Connor…please…keep…” I breathed out, exhausted yet completely in bliss and wanting more of him. Wanting all of him.

“God, you feel as good as you taste,” he muttered against my mouth before kissing me harder and thrusting into me deeper. His words mixed with his movements and the rain made it impossible for me to hold back any longer.

“I’m going to… Connor…I…”

“Do it for me, come for me,” he whispered, making me even more hot and bothered. My hips rolled up and down as he continued to fuck the life out of my body. Connor had many personalities, but I didn’t know the dirty talker was one of them. That made me crave him even more than I had before.

I came hard against him, my whole body trembling as I released. He thrust hard into me once as his hands rested against my shoulders.

“Shit, you’re going to make me come next,” he said, still pumping into me.

“Please,” I begged, opening my eyes to find his blues staring at mine. “Please come inside me. I want all of you. Connor…please…fuck me like you mean it.”

Those words sent him into overload as he pressed his arms against the hard ground and began going more and more, in and out, in and out, fucking me as if he’d find forever between my thighs and our future against my lips.

A few moments later, he lost himself inside me, giving me everything he had, breathing heavy as he unloaded himself. When he finished, he fell to the left side of me onto his back, and we both lay there for a moment, completely out of breath as the rain hammered against our skin.

“Holy,” he whispered.

“Shit,” I finished.

“That was…”

“Amazing.”

Silence fell over us as time passed for a few moments.

We both worked on catching our breath before he rolled over onto his side to face me.

He had a goofy grin on his face that I loved so much, and he trailed his lips down every inch of my body.

“You’re perfect. You’re perfect,” he whispered with every kiss landing against my lips. “You’re perfect.”

I sighed, feeling whole for the first time in a long time as his mouth rested against mine, and said, “We’re perfect.”