Losing Hope

Holy shit.

I squeeze my eyes shut and drop my head to her neck, forcing my focus away from those lips. “Stop it, you evil wench.”

She laughs. “No way. This is your stupid rule; why should I be the one to enforce it?”

Oh, Jesus. It’s a game to her. This whole not kissing thing is a game to her and she’s going to tease the hell out of me. I can’t do this. If I give in and kiss her before she’s ready I know I won’t be able to stop. And I don’t know what the hell is going on inside my chest right now but I really like the way it feels when I’m around her. If I can drag whatever this is out to make sure she feels the same way, then that’s exactly what I’ll do. Even if it takes me weeks to ensure she gets to that point, then I guess I’ll wait weeks. In the meantime, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure her next first is anything but insignificant.

“Because you know I’m right,” I say, explaining exactly why she needs to help me enforce this rule. “I can’t kiss you tonight because kissing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing, and at the rate we’re going we’ll be all out of firsts by next weekend. Don’t you want to drag our firsts out a little longer?” I pull away from her neck and look down at her, very aware that there is less space between our mouths right now than between our bodies.

“Firsts?” she says, looking up at me curiously. “How many firsts are there?”

“There aren’t that many, which is why we need to drag them out. We’ve already passed too many since we met.”

She tilts her head and her expression grows attractively serious. “What firsts have we already passed?”

“The easy ones,” I say. “First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” I bring my hand to her cheek and smile at her. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry.”

She laughs and the sound is so toxic I’m forced to swallow the huge lump in my throat so I can make room to breathe again.

“Your logic terrifies me,” she says. “I sort of don’t find you attractive anymore.”

Challenge accepted.

I slowly slide on top of her, careful to hold my weight up with my hands. If my body were to touch any part of hers right now, we’d already be moving on to seconds and thirds. “You sort of don’t find me attractive?” I say, staring straight down into her eyes. “That can also mean you sort of do find me attractive.”

Her eyes grow dark and she shakes her head. I can see the dip in the base of her throat barely move as she gulps before speaking. “I don’t find you attractive at all. You repulse me. In fact, you better not kiss me because I’m pretty sure I just threw up in my mouth.”

I laugh, then drop onto my elbow so I can move closer to her ear, still careful not to touch any other part of her.

“You’re a liar,” I whisper. “You’re a whole lot attracted to me and I’m about to prove it.”

I had every intention of pulling away, but as soon as the scent of her hits me, I can’t pull back. My lips are pressed against her neck before I even have a chance to weigh the decision. But right now it feels a hell of a lot more like a necessity to taste her rather than just a decision. She gasps when I pull back and I can’t help but hope that her gasp was genuine. The thought of her actually feeling what I felt when my lips touched her neck makes me feel ridiculously victorious. It’s too bad I like a challenge, because that gasp just made me want to up my game. I drop my mouth back to her ear and whisper, “Did you feel that?”

Her eyes are closed and she’s shaking her head no, breathing heavily. I look down at her chest, heaving dangerously close to mine.

“You want me to do it again?” I whisper.

I want her to beg me to do it again, but she shakes her head no. She’s breathing twice as fast as she was sixty seconds ago, so I know I’m getting to her. I laugh that she’s so adamantly shaking her head no, while at the same time clenching the sheet next to her with her fist. I move closer to her mouth because I suddenly have an overwhelming need to take in some of the breaths she’s wasting. It feels like I need them more than she does right now, so I inhale at the same time my lips meet her cheek. I don’t stop there, though. I can’t stop there. I continue to trail kisses from her cheek, down to her ear. I pause and catch my breath enough to speak in a steady voice. “How about that?”

Again, she stubbornly shakes her head, but tilts it back and slightly to the left, allowing me better access. I lift my hand from the bed and bring it to her waist, keeping my eyes trained on her as I slip my hand under her shirt, just far enough to graze her stomach with my thumb. I watch for any kind of reaction from her, but she’s got a stern, tight-lipped expression on her face now, like she’s trying to hold her breath. I don’t want her to hold her breath. I need to hear her breathe.

When I drop my mouth and nose to her jawline, she releases her pent-up breaths just like I was hoping she would. I trail my nose across her jaw, inhaling the scent of her, then move down, listening intently to every single gasp that escapes her lips as if they’re the last sounds I’ll ever hear. When I reach her ear, four of my senses are in overdrive and one is seriously lacking—taste. I know I can’t taste her mouth tonight, but I have got to taste at least one part of her. I press my lips to her ear and she immediately brings her hand up to my neck, pulling me in deeper. Feeling her need my mouth against her skin rips my chest wide open and I completely give in, wanting to feel that need from her even more. I immediately part my lips and glide my tongue across her skin, taking in the sweetness of her and locking it in my memory. I’ve never tasted anything that rivaled perfection like she does.

Then she moans and holy hell. Everything I thought I previously knew about my desires or wants or needs becomes lost in that sound. From this point forward, my new and only goal in life is to find a way to get her to make that exact same sound again.

I bring my hand to the side of her head and completely let loose, kissing and teasing every inch of her neck, trying to find that exact spot that got to her a few seconds ago. She drops her head against her pillow and I take the opportunity to explore more of her neck. As soon as my lips begin to trail toward the rise in her chest, I force myself north again, not wanting to push it to the point that she asks me to stop. Because I absolutely don’t want to stop whatever this is we’re doing.

Her eyes are still closed and I drop my mouth to her lips, kissing her softly near the corner of her mouth.

And there it is. The softest, most delicate sound escapes her throat again. I can’t ignore the fact that another part of me wakes up with that sound. I continue kissing a full circle around the edges of her lips, impressed that I’m somehow able to find strength to pull back.

I have to stop for a moment because if I don’t, I’ll for sure break my one and only rule tonight—which is absolutely no mouth contact. I know if I kiss her right now it’ll be great. But I don’t want her to have great. I want her to have incredible. Looking at her lips right now, I know for a fact it’ll be incredible for me.

“They’re so perfect,” I say. “Like hearts. I could literally stare at your lips for days and never get bored.”

She opens her eyes and smiles. “No. Don’t do that. If all you do is stare, then I’ll be the bored one.”

Damn that smile. It’s painful having to watch that mouth smile and frown and pout and laugh and speak when all I want to watch it do is kiss me.

But then she licks her lips and everything I thought I just knew about pain actually starts to feel good compared to the way my heart is gouged out of my chest with that small tease. Jesus Christ, this girl.