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There is always a why, donor tier, threat level, exit route, I have a why for everything. There’s no why for this. The not-knowing should stop me. It doesn’t.

Not when he’s looking at me as thoughts race past his eyes. Dirty thoughts, has to be. His tongue laps at the sweat beading on his lip. I bet it tastes like salt and lemons and sex.

“I consent.”

Chapter Six

Sometimes I becomeaware of myself in ways I wasn’t before. Sure, I’m present in this locker room, my hands gripping the front of Viagra guy’s dirty shirt.

But then I’m aware.

Like the white noise in my head just stops and all my attention zeroes in on…him.

His hands find my face. Framing it, he drags me to his lips. His eyes stay open as he holds me a little tighter. His thumb drags across my cheek. So damn tender that for a moment I wonder, will he.

Will he end this incessant need building inside of me. One I can’t control and can no longer deny exists.

All my life I’ve lived in this space where desire went unmet, lost, discouraged. And yet here he is. This man. This fucking stranger, and he’s all I can think of. All I could desperately want in this moment. And my gods, I want to take.

Except I swear, as he looks at me, he sees every thought that crosses my face before his lips take mine.

Soft, pillowy lips press against mine and for a moment they short-circuit my brain. Sending me offline, into a world I have only ever dreamed about.

Dreams of a man kissing me just as he is. With his whole body, his whole soul. And when he drags his lips across mine, the moan that rushes out on my exhale sounds nothing like the woman I was before this moment.

She doesn’t exist anymore. There is only me.Him. And the way he’s kissing me like the world no longer exists.

Each swipe of his tongue, I lose more and more of that woman. The one who existed before this moment. She fades away into the nothingness of the ether. Into the space between moments where life lives and breathes.

Gone.

My hands fist in his shirt, dragging him down, down, down to me, my tongue begging him to explore every inch.

He is the flame. I am the moth. And if I allow it, I’ll remain forever ensnared in his light.

I already know it. I don’t do this. I don’t do the poetry. But gods. This kiss. This stupid, world-ending, ruin-me kiss.

It isn’t just in the way he presses his lips against mine but in the way he holds my face so tenderly, as though I’m worth cherishing. As though I’m worth kissing.

And I kiss him back with a swipe of my tongue, tasting and testing.

Lemon zest rolls over my tongue, sparking hunger pangs in my stomach. My toes dare to lose their balance. I just can’t get close enough to him and I don’t dare break the hold he has on my face.

Except he does. Break that hold. Only to squat and flip my dress up and grip my hips. Spinning me, my back hits the door and his lips are back.

His tongue breaks through. Finally. Blessedly. Tasting, teasing, stroking against my tongue. Tracing my teeth and my breath with each exhale that I pant into his mouth.

My body curls toward his, begins pleading for things it just can’t name.

Luckily he, and my gods, I don’t know his name.

I know his eyes. His smell. The way he crashed my fundraiser and told me to talk to my bosses like he had the right. I know everything about him except that one thing. And I’m not asking. I tell myself it’s thrilling, the not-knowing. It isn’t. It’s that the second I know his name, I have to know the rest, and some cold thread under all that heat already knows the rest is mine. That it’s about me. That it’s the thing I’ve spent years not looking at.

Excitement bubbles up inside me, my core aching for him to fill me. In a way only he can. A way only he’d dare to.

One hand breaks away to slide between us. Up over my chest to rest at the base of my throat.

I bite his lip before kissing away the sting. Savoring the sound he makes.