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“Thank you,” I say as we walk back into the kitchen. I close and lock the garage door and then lean against it as a familiar tiredness overtakes me.
For just a second, I rest my eyes, head propped against the garage door. Ian comes in close, boxing me in, his Old Spice scent filling my nose. He rests his hands on my hips.
I slide my hands up his arms and rest them where his neck meets his shoulders. It’s mere inches of skin on skin, but it satisfies the touch I’ve craved all day. I’ve spent the day thinking of what tonight might look like once we’re alone, and now we’re here, face-to-face, locking eyes for the longest stretch of time we’ve been able to steal today, with his skin warm against my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Ian says, his voice raspy like he’s talking for the first time today. He clears his throat. “About the whole job thing with my dad. I was being an asshole, and you . . . you were being you. Which is to say that you were being brave and caring and . . . God, Jade, I’m so fucking in awe of you.”
No one has ever seen me as clearly as Ian has. It stirs up such potent emotion in me—some stormy mix of gratitude and longing and vulnerability and desire.
It starts behind my eyes, and then it’s in my throat, clogging up the path for words to escape. It travels down my throat and into my chest, spreading like wildfire through me. It’s in my blood, rushing to every limb of my body, winding around my bones and anchoring me to this spot in the kitchen. The only thing it makes sense to do in this moment is slide my hands to the back of his head and bring his mouth to mine.
I don’t know what else to do with these feelings, but Ian seems to know. He kisses me like he’s been waiting all day for this. He doesn’t just move his lips with mine, unearthing the rhythm of our kiss that is entirely unique to us; he takes all the things I’m feeling, named and unnamed, and makes them his own. He mirrors them back to me with every touch, his hands sliding under my shirt, his fingers dancing along my curves. His hips pin me to the door, his hard length straining against his jeans, pressing into me, and all of it says everything I’m not saying out loud.
I want you. I want you. I need you.
I don’t know who I was trying to kid by telling myself this was just a crush. That Ian was just my friend. Ian is so much more. He is the first person I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night. When he’s not around, I want him to be. When he is around, I want him to be close to me. And now he holds my most guarded secret within him. He’s seen the darkest parts of me and he’s still here, kissing me, touching me.
Ian is everything.
Speaking it out loud would make it real, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Right now, everything I feel for Ian is safely contained in my heart.
But maybe I don’t need words to tell him how I feel.
With only the shortest break in our kiss, he lifts me. I wrap my legs around him and find his lips again. The ache to be with him—physically, intimately—it drives me. When he sets me on the kitchen counter, he tries to deepen our kiss, leaning me back, but I push him away. His confused look only lasts a second before I lift his shirt up and over his head. In the dim kitchen light, his lean body is accented by the shadows, highlighting lines of muscle and bone.
Fuck, he is so hot.
His eyes dart between my lips and my eyes, and because he’s speaking a language I’m fluent in—the language of bodies and longing—I know it means he wants more than just to kiss again.
But I kiss him again anyway.
19
IAN
“Lovers, to bed!”Act V, Scene I
She kisses me like this is the kiss that might save her, like I might save her, and I would if I could. I’d give her my own life vest, put her oxygen mask on before mine; I’d face every single one of my fears if it meant she could feel safe.
But this is the best I can do for now, pouring my entire self into this kiss. Saying all the things I haven’t had the courage to say out loud.
I want you. I need you. I think I’m falling for you.
I let my hands do the talking, roaming her body under her sweatshirt. Savoring her soft skin against my hands. It’s not enough access, though, so I remove it—one less barrier keeping me from being as close to her as I’m craving. I dip my head to her neck, her collarbone, her chest, and then slip off her sports bra, worshipping her with my mouth, kissing every inch of her skin that I have access to. And when I run out of access, when I get to the waistband of her leggings, I pause, looking up at her.
She runs her fingers through my hair, and a wave of longing rolls through me. “What are you doing?” she asks, a faint smile dancing on her lips.
“Taking care of you,” I say, but I hesitate before moving forward.
“We won’t get caught?” I ask, needing the assurance.
The idea of getting caught was sexy in the stage manager’s booth, but less sexy now, and I’m tempted to ask her to go somewhere more private, but I’m desperate for her, and I don’t want to wait. I want to take her right here on the kitchen counter.
Jade shakes her head. “Bear tranquilizer, remember? Plus, you already know I know how to be quiet.”
With that assurance, she lifts her hips for me as I remove her leggings, discarding them on the kitchen floor. Call it the male instinct or some misguided desire, but for the past twenty-four hours, nothing has been so important to me as taking care of her. This moment is no different. I want her to feel cherished; to feel how deep my desire for her goes; to feel like her pleasure matters.
“Can I ask you something?” she asks, her voice thick with longing.
