My heart ruptured. Those words, they crawled and wrapped their arms over my heart. Until a few hours ago, a boy named Roger was the only boy I’d ever kissed, and it was only because of a dare at a party. The senior class only had invited me for their entertainment, calling me a circus act because I was a freak.
I licked my lips and swallowed. “Okay,” I said with a nod, and my skin heated.
Julian pulled the train car door, and it rolled shut. The sound bounced off the steel walls. It was pitch dark, and I froze in place, waiting for him with shallow breaths.
“Julian?” I whispered. My eyes bounced around, seeing nothing but black.
Trapped, trapped, trapped.
“I’m right here,” he said, and I felt his fingers on my cheeks.
Julian, Julian, Julian.
I bit my lip. “Okay.”
He walked me backward against a wall, and I felt his cold breath first. It tingled over my lips like a warning. He remained there, hovering, testing the waters. My mouth drew over his, and our noses brushed.
I brought my fingers to his face, noticing his mask was gone.
Julian was without his mask! and exposed. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back the blend of intensity and emotions filling the room, filling us, wondering how someone could only be free in the dark. I fanned my finger over his long lashes, the slight curve of his nose, his high cheekbones, his bottom lip, along his jaw, picturing his face in my mind. And Julian let me, sinking his face into my hands, seeking more as if it were the first time anyone had ever touched him like this.
The tips of my fingers touched every inch of his face. And touching Julian was like touching neon, invigorating yet forbidden. He leaned his hips into me, and I moved my hand to the back of his neck, threading my fingers through his soft, thick hair, seeing nothing but darkness but feeling him all around me. They were not the same.
His nose brushed mine again, then again. Then his mouth coasted over my lips. Our breaths quickened, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Julian …” his name hummed inside me like a chorus, and he pressed his cheek to my own, his breath on my neck, in my ear, he surrounded me like the abyss of a shadow––everywhere and nowhere enough, inside every corner of my soul even I was too scared to venture. A deep moan rattled in his chest when he dropped his palms to the wall, and the vibrations, him, it all plunged into me.
He was so loud and bold and free now.
He grabbed my jaw and slid his palm down my throat, his mouth guiding mine to open.
Then he thrust his tongue into my opened mouth with sweet and slow agony.
And I sank, sank, sank, and faded into his kiss. His taste was nocturnal. His touch, an eclipse. Every sweep of Julian’s tongue, every desperate and eager touch, coursed an electric and addicting feeling, one I wanted to chain-smoke. I had no idea if I was doing this right, but I submitted, letting go and letting him have me. He pulled my top lip between his, sucking when he growled, his chest echoing against mine as we sank together. He kissed me as if he had been searching, as if he found a piece of himself again within me. A thing he’d lost somewhere along his way.
“I know…” he tried to get out, grabbing my neck and pushing his hands to the back of my head until they gripped my hair. “I know what’s”—he crushed his mouth to mine once more before letting off—“happened to me, why it’s like this with only you.” His voice was coarse and raw as the very moment.
“What?” I breathed out, and his mouth slid across my jaw and over my neck as his hands slid down the length of my arms. Our tongues collided again, and I’d forgotten what it was he was trying to tell me as he kissed me madly, unraveling me, serenading me, tasting me, dizzying me.
“Lunaticus,” he panted into my mouth. “When the moon has struck you, it’s called lunaticus … and you struck me. Hard.” He kissed me even harder, threading his fingers with mine as the taste of poisoned apple still ghosted over his tongue. When he pulled away, he dropped his forehead to mine. “Something’s come over me, and I need to have you.”
Lunaticus.
I pushed off his coat, and he helped me. He lifted my tank over my head, and then his own. One by one, the clothes came off, and I didn’t think. I couldn’t! I was utterly lost to him and this need rushing inside me down to the space between my legs. His thumbs grazed over my breasts as his tongue swept against mine. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. My back arched into his touch, and his mouth was everywhere, kissing across my collarbone and my breast before finding my mouth again. My fingers landed over the button on his slacks when I fumbled, having no idea what I was doing but knowing I needed him too. Julian’s mouth never separated from mine as he took over, working the button and zipper and sliding his pants down his thighs.
And he sank against me, his manhood pressing into my stomach, and I withered away as he pinned me against the steel wall, half-naked in the dark, my body trembling.
Julian’s hands clasped around my pajama shorts and slid them down along with my panties until they hit the floor, and he rolled them off the heels of my feet. I felt his lips on the crescent of my hip bone. He moved against me, around me, with me as if he could see all of me in the dark.
“What’s this?” he asked, feeling over the patch on my skin.
“I’m a virgin,” I blurted, then bit my lip, punishing myself for letting it slip because it made me sound so inexperienced. Not only was she a freak, but she was also a virgin. “It’s a birth control patch to help with my anemia and … mood swings.”
His fingers froze on my skin. “You’re a virgin?”
My mouth went dry, and I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” he simply said, and his mouth moved over my hip, to the center of my stomach, to the tenderness between my thighs. My eyes bulged, and heat rocketed up my flesh. I gripped his hair until he stood and loomed over me. “For now, you’ll stay a virgin,” he added, his heavy breathing hitting the top of my head. Julian grabbed the back of my neck before he dipped his mouth to mine, making me dizzy all over again.
“Have you ever been touched before?” he asked, his lips and words and breath bouncing off me as his hand slid up between my jittery thighs.
I didn’t know how I was standing as my legs were like water and my insides like fire. I bit the inside of my cheek and shook my head, the anticipation as deafening as his presence. “No.”
Then his two long fingers swiped through my center as he sucked my top lip. A gasp spilled from my mouth onto his, my eyes squeezed, my body tingled and weakened and awakened. I needed more, and I gripped his sides, pulling Julian toward me, wanting him to explore me, consume me, and pull me to the brink. He pushed his tongue inside my mouth, swallowing my whimpers as the pad of his fingers stroked the sensitive places only I’d touched. “Do you like what I’m doing, Fallon?”
“Yesss…” I shuddered as his hard-on pressed into my belly.
I lifted my hand and wrapped my fingers around his member, and he was hard in my hand … and something else. Something pulsing, like a heartbeat. My hand traveled up and down his length, moving the tips of my fingers over his thick head. A shredded sound left him, and he kissed me deeper as he slipped a finger lower, drawing heavy circles over my entrance. I stroked him, allowing instinct to take control. It felt so natural, being here with him. To be doing this at all.