Page 67 of What He Doesn't Know

My heart stopped, kicking back to life with enough force to hitch my breath. “What?”

“Do you ever think about me when we’re not together?”

I blinked, trying to think straight through the buzz of the wine. I wanted to lie. I wanted to laugh. But I couldn’t do anything but tell the truth with his eyes on me like that.

“Sometimes.”

Reese’s fingers walked their way over to me slowly, his eyes still locked on mine as they traveled up and over my knee, my thigh, hooking into the belt loop of my jeans. A chill broke through my body from the point of contact.

“Do you ever think about me?” I asked, voice barely a breath.

“Only every minute I’m not with you.”

“Reese…”

“That night before I left for New York,” he said, cutting me off. “I wanted to kiss you, Charlie. But I couldn’t.”

“Because I was too young?”

“Because I loved you.”

He said the words so effortlessly, like they wouldn’t knock the breath from my chest once they were said, like they wouldn’t change everything I thought I knew about my life — about us.

“Sometimes,” he continued, fingers pulling at where they were still hooked on my jeans. My body leaned into him automatically, my eyes searching his before they fell to the hollow point of his throat as he swallowed. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”

Time warped then, fourteen years surrounding us like a living, breathing energy in that fort. It sparked to life with his words, and when he tugged hard on my jeans, I traveled through that energy like a ship on the blackest of nights being guided only by instinct.

My eyes closed, my lips parted, and in the next instant, time stopped altogether with one simple, passionate, all-consuming kiss.

I felt his hand in my hair, the other still on my hip as he pressed me down into the sleeping bag with a roll of his body against mine. I gasped for air, capturing only one breath before Reese’s mouth was on mine again. His warm, wet lips savored mine, years and years of want pouring through every cell of his body straight into mine.

I whimpered at the feel of him, at the overwhelming need to be closer, to have more. I couldn’t breathe as he settled between my legs, his lips traveling down over my jaw, my neck, sucking the skin there before they made their way back up again.

When I finally opened my eyes, I only saw his emerald ones in return, glowing almost golden in hue by the light of the fireplace. He brushed my hair away from my face, fingers curling in the strands and tugging until my neck was exposed for him. He bit the tender flesh softly, sucking it sweetly in the next instant, and we both moaned when his hips rolled into mine.

Reese was so hard already, every single inch of him — his arms that encompassed me, his bare shoulders and back that I raked my nails down, his cock beneath the thin fabric of his sweat pants as he caught friction between us again. Every roll of his hips sent a jolt from where my jeans brushed my clit, and my breaths grew more erratic, my heart racing right out of my chest.

So long I’d waited for that kiss.

So many years, I’d wondered what it would be like to have his lips, to taste his tongue, to feel his hands on the most sensitive parts of me. And it wasn’t anything like I expected. It was more. It was everything I never knew existed. I couldn’t have imagined what it would feel like because I didn’t know feelings like that could even be.

I didn’t know a kiss could wake up every sleeping cell, that a bite could send me into space, that a moan of want from a man could make me see galaxies.

Before I could stop myself, I slid one hand between us, traveling over the ridges and valleys of his abdomen and slipping easily under the band of his sweatpants. He inhaled a stiff breath, cursing out loud when I grabbed him over the fabric of his briefs and squeezed, rolling my hips with the touch.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, pressing his forehead into mine with his eyes closed tight.

I rolled my hand over the tip of him and down to his base, need scorching a hot, blazing fire through every inch of me at the feel of him hardening at my touch.

Reese wanted me so badly it hurt him, and I loved watching him take the pain.

His hand ripped at the button of my jeans, tearing the zipper down in one full thrust, but just as his fingers gently swept over my lace panties, a loud buzzing came from the table outside the fort.

That energy around us popped like a bubble, evaporating all at once, and I opened my eyes to the cold reality of where I was, of what I was doing.

“Fuck.”

I shoved my hands hard into Reese’s chest, crawling quickly out of the fort as he caught his balance behind me. My hands scrambled for my phone on the table next to his couch, and when I found it, I swiped over the screen to answer the call before I’d even seen the name.