“What’s your idea?” I asked, my heart racing.
“A gap year.”
“What?”
“In Europe, lots of people take a year after they graduate from high school to travel and figure out what they want to do before they go to college. I’ll defer Columbia, and you and I can travel the world.”
My heart soared and took a nosedive. “I don’t have the money for that.”
“Don’t say no, Audrey. Figuring out how to do this is half the fun. I’ll sell my truck, and we’re both working. You’ve saved your money, right?”
I nodded.
“I think we can do this.”
Hope began to blossom in my chest. “Are you serious? You’d do that for me? Hold off on school?”
“I’d do that for us, yeah. And we can stay in town and help your mom as much as you want, then go travel and return as she needs. We can schedule around your dad. Although if he’s retiring—”
“Then we can do our list.”
And with that, he bent down and kissed me. And even though there was no view, no sunset, no setting. It was wonderful. Game changing, again.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, once we broke apart, breathless. “I’m completely and totally in love with you. I don’t know when it started, but it’s been a very long time. I was just too scared to act on it or to say anything. I was stupid.”
“Don’t you dare call yourself stupid,” he said. “We just took our own time. We were on our own schedule.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe we were. Maybe we have been.”
“Maybe we’ll continue to do that.” He grinned. “And I love you, too.”
I grinned at him. “Hungry for some dinner?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Seventeen
Finally
Tate
I leaned in to kiss Audrey.
I had to. I had to touch those strawberry lips with mine. To feel their softness and to taste her sweetness.
It’d been weeks since I met her on the train. I knew she’d never been to Disneyland. Well, we couldn’t have that. So after a full day of rides and a lovely dinner, we entered our suite at the Grand Californian Hotel.
Her lips parted, and she inhaled sharply. “I want you.”
Hell.
I trembled.
Our lips crashed together like it was inevitable.
Because it was. We belonged together.
Tate Lemieux and Audrey Staunton were supposed to be together. It had been written in the stars. No, more like we wrote it in our high school yearbooks, in all those photos of us with each other, smiling. Even when we were just friends.
Although I don’t think we were “just” friends. Too small a term for how big I felt about her.
We’d spent weeks exploring that big feeling. Instead of rushing into sex, we’d held back. Learning each other’s bodies as well as we knew our own.
But now it was time. We were both ready.
My tongue touched hers, and we got tangled together. Her breasts smashed against my chest, and she grabbed my ass, squeezing it with some serious fondling, and it made me hard.
Harder.
God, I wanted this girl.
“Please,” she whispered against my lips. “Please make love to me.”
I nodded into her neck. “My pleasure.” My heart beat a fast tattoo.
Slowly, I reached down to the hem of her shirt and tugged it up over her body.
She stood before me in a lavender lace bra, not hiding from me anymore.
“Match me,” she said.
I did. I shucked off my T-shirt, pulling it from the back of my neck over my head, and stood before her barefoot in my jeans. I slid my belt out, and my jeans dropped low on my waist so you could see the tendons wrapping around my hips.
“Ungh,” she said, sliding her hands up my torso. “I like this. So, so much.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and scrolled for a David Bowie song. When I pressed play on “Lazarus,” I put it back and gestured toward her. “C’mere.”
Gathering her in my arms, I began to dance with her, kissing her deeply while our bodies moved.
And as we danced, I slid my hand down the back of her ass, feeling the roundness of her ass. Feeling how small and curvy she was. How lovely and sleek and mine.
Then she reached in front and unbuttoned her tweed pants. She unzipped them and danced them off.
She wore matching lavender lace cheeky panties that framed her pale hips, and I murmured my appreciation when my hands gripped her velvet skin.
I unzipped, shoving my jeans down, and we were dancing in our underwear—her in lace, me in new Tom Ford boxer briefs.
My hard dick pressed against her smooth belly, and I hoisted her up. She wrapped her legs around me, and I continued to move. I walked over to the bed, laying her down. Wiggling and giggling and singing along, she clung to me while I danced in a horizontal position, which incidentally made my dick dig into her.
She gasped, and I loved it.
She loved it, too.
The song stopped, and a new one started—“Heart of a Dog” by the Kills—and she sighed into my neck. “I love this song.”
We rolled over and she straddled me. “I love this view.”
I reached up and moved her panties to the side. I could rip them off, but I thought it was sexy to keep them on.
My fingers found her center, and she was aroused and wet. I dove in, keeping up the rhythm. She ground on my fingers, losing herself.
Exactly what I wanted her to do.
Then she moved to my cock, rubbing against it.
God, yes.
She tugged my hair and pulled me up to kiss her, which I did very deeply. Then I flipped her to her back.
Her bra unhooked in the front—love this kind—and I flicked it open. I let her boobs loose, and I was mesmerized.
“Oh, god,” I groaned as I kissed her bare skin. “You’re so sexy.”
She grinned. I hung my thumbs on the panties, and she let me slide them off. Then she was bare. Naked. On the bed. Waiting for me.
I wanted to keep my underwear on, because I’d be tempted to just shove inside her if I didn’t have anything on. But I wanted to make sure she came before I made love to her.
And it would be making love, because I was so in love with her I couldn’t bear it.
With my fingers between her legs, I kissed her neck, then looked up and watched her eyes flutter shut and her body sink into the sensation.
I massaged her with more intent, kissing her collarbone, sucking on her tits. Wanting to make sure she came.
My movements weren’t necessarily what the books and articles said to do.
They were what I’d learned drove my Audrey wild.
I could feel how her clit changed. How she was soaked with arousal.
And I kept it up. I could tell she was getting close. If I just hung in here, I knew she’d let go. I wasn’t letting up until she came. I wanted her happy and boneless before I entered her for the first time.
In a delicious minute, she exhaled a moan, then her body clenched all around my fingers, and she began to quake.
She was exceedingly lovely when she orgasmed. Her brown eyes fluttered open, and her hair flew all over the place. Her slim pale legs splayed across the bed.