I was barefoot.
The flowers rustled around me, their blooms wide and glowing an eerie blue beneath the full moon.
Papa told me once that the moon pulled at waves here on earth, drawing the water across wide oceans and bringing them to their intended shores.
This moon hung so low, I could feel its persistence working on me, tugging me through the heady blossoms and urging me toward town.
I was in my nightdress, long and white, but it didn’t matter.
I had no lantern to see by, but that didn’t matter either.
The only thing that did was putting one foot in front of the other, following the moon’s insistence.
“Ellerie Downing.”
Whitaker had come out of the forest, out of the night, out of the sky and stars themselves, it seemed. Was he too pulled along by the glowing moon? Had she intentionally brought us together?
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “You?”
“I think I am sleeping,” I decided. It certainly felt possible.
He smiled, the tips of his teeth winking. “Are you saying you dream of me?”
“All the time,” I said in a teasing manner, light and flirtatious even though it was true.
“What do we do in these dreams of yours?”
“I think…I think we ought to walk.”
He offered his arm with a cavalier charm.
We rambled down country lanes, covered by bowers of tree limbs and fragrant ivy. We cut through lush meadows where the dew dotting the long grasses caught the moonlight from overhead, forming an entire galaxy of sparkling stars around us. We walked on and on until we made our way into town.
I don’t remember speaking as we traveled, but I memorized the pressure of his fingers on my forearm, the sweep they made across the small of my back as he helped me over a bit of rocky terrain. Words were not needed. I felt safe, secure, and—as he tucked a brilliant red poppy behind my ear—cherished.
All around us, Amity Falls slept, houses shuttered and dark.
“I feel like we’re the only people left in the world, don’t you?”
I’d never seen the town so quiet and still.
“It does seem rather abandoned,” he agreed. “We could do anything we wanted, and no one would ever know.”
We came to a stop outside the schoolhouse, its white clapboard at odds with the heavy black window frames.
“I’ve always wanted to ring that,” I said, peering up at the bell housed in a jutting gable. “All those years of school, and I never once got to.”
“You could, right now,” he suggested. “But that would wake everyone in town and we’d lose our chance.”
“Our chance for what?”
The world felt impossibly slow and dreamy as he pulled me toward him, bringing his hands to my face and gently cupping my cheeks. His thumbs traced down my jaw, ran over my mouth.
An unfamiliar sensation woke within me as he brushed my lips, his own so close, I could feel the heat of his breath warming me. There was a heaviness in my belly, a thrilling prickle of awareness racing across my skin. My fingers danced to its pulse, aching to reach out and touch him.
“This,” he murmured, lowering his lips. They moved over mine, like a whisper, a song of reverence and praise, a prayer. “This is how I should have kissed you at Christmas—this is how I’ve always wanted to kiss you.”
And then his fingers were tangled in my hair, drawing me closer until I answered back with kisses of my own, soft at first, but then so much more. When I parted my mouth, daring to flick my tongue against his lips, he let out a strangled gasp of surprise. His arms wrapped around my back, confidently pressing me flush against his body. It was so warm and unfamiliar, so wholly different from mine. Where I was soft, he was hard. Where I curved, he flexed. We were like little wooden puzzle pieces at McCleary’s store. Just little bits of colorful chaos on their own, but once they were snapped into place, you could see they were meant to be together all along.
When his long fingers traced their way from the nape of my neck down my spine, I felt a wave of delicious shivers race through me, shimmering with need and demanding more. More touching, more kisses, more him.
“Whitaker,” I tried to whisper, but his mouth was on mine, swallowing my words. I felt him groan, the vibrations ringing against my lips, my skin, down into my very bones, and my fingers curved reflexively, sinking into the soft skin at the back of his neck, desperate to draw him closer still.
He responded in kind, his fingertips running over my arms, down my side, tracing the curve of my hips. His worked his way lower, kissing the column of my neck, the hollow of my throat. He could feel my heart pulsing there, I was certain of it. It pounded, racing faster and faster. Every beat felt like a drum snap, spelling out his name, until my entire body throbbed with its cadence.
The pads of his fingers brushed my skin as he toyed with the buttons of my nightdress, and a sound rose, so completely foreign and primal that at first I didn’t recognize it as myself. It was dark and full of wanting and desire and absolute need.
“This is madness,” I murmured, blood sizzling through me, setting my nerve endings ablaze. I couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. I just wanted to feel.
“Madness,” he echoed. Then he paused, his lips only a breath away from my bared skin. Every bit of me was hung aloft in anticipation, yearning for the moment when he’d descend.
When he stepped back, stepped away, turning his attention toward the forest, I felt his absence as keenly as a cold slap. My chest heaved, wholly aware he’d been against it and was then suddenly not. I reached for him, but my hand fell short. He was too far away to touch, too attuned to whatever he sensed in the woods.
Realization stabbed at me, sharp and swift. Something was out there, watching us. I followed his gaze. There was nothing but moonlight on the dew, sparkling and shining dots of silver.
Then something shifted, stirring pine needles, a shadow darker than the other shadows, sneaking and sly.
The silver dots danced with subtle movement, as if breathing.
Panting.
They blinked.
And Whitaker took a step forward, drawn to this living, breathing entity, a moth to flame.
“Stop.”
We had nothing to protect ourselves with.
He took another step and another.
“Don’t!”
He was getting too close. Much too close. I could no longer distinguish his dark jacket from the forest.