“Date didn’t go so well,” he surmises.
To his credit he doesn’t smirk. Those dark blue eyes watch me patiently. He lets me stand there and try to think of something. How can I get myself out of this situation? Embarrassment is starting to catch up with me again, now that the joking between us is fading away.
“It went okay.” I check my watch.
“But not great, if you’re outside my building. Or are you here to report good news?”
“Oh, shut up. I wanted to . . . I don’t know. See where you live. How could I resist? I was thinking about putting a dead fish in your mailbox one day. You saw where I live. It’s unfair and uneven.”
He won’t be distracted. “Did you kiss him like we agreed?”
I look at the streetlight. “Yes.”
“And?”
While I dither he puts his hands on his hips and looks down the street, apparently at his wit’s end. I wipe the back of my hand across my lips.
“The date itself went fine,” I begin, but he steps close and cradles my jaw in his hands. The tension is crackling like static.
“Fine. Fine and great and nice. You need something more than fine. Tell me the truth.”
“Fine is exactly what I need. I need something normal, and easy.” I see disappointment in his eyes.
“That’s not what you need. Trust me.”
I try to turn my face away, but he won’t allow it. I feel his thumb trace across my cheek. I try to push him away but end up tugging him closer, his T-shirt in my fists.
“He’s not enough for you.”
“I have no idea why I’m even here.”
“You do know.” He presses a kiss to my cheekbone, and I rise to my tiptoes, shivering. “You’re here to tell me the truth. Once you stop being a little liar.”
He’s right, of course. He’s always right.
“No one can kiss me like you do.”
I have the rare privilege of seeing Josh’s eyes flash bright from something other than irritation or anger.
He steps closer and pauses to assess me. Whatever he sees in my own eyes seems to reassure him, and he wraps his arms around me and lifts me clear off my feet. His mouth touches mine.
We both let out twin sighs of relief. There’s no point in lying about why I’m here on the wet pavement outside his building.
It starts as nothing more than breathing each other’s air, until the pressure of our lips breaks into an open-mouth slide. I said earlier, What does it matter? Unfortunately for me, this kiss matters.
The muscles in my arms begin to quiver pathetically at his neck and he holds me tighter until I can feel he’s got me. My fingers curl into his hair, and I tug the silky thickness. He groans. Our lips sink luxuriously into kisses. Slip, tug, slide.
The energy that usually lashes ineffectively inside each of us now has a conduit, forming a loop of electricity between us, cycling through me, into him. My heart is glowing in my chest like a bulb, flashing brighter with each movement of his lips.
I manage to take a breath and our slow, sexy slide is cut into a series of broken-up kisses, like gentle bites. He’s testing, and there’s a shyness there too. I feel like I’m being told a secret.
There’s a fragility in this kiss I would never have expected. It’s the same as the knowledge that one day this memory will fade. He’s trying to make me remember this. It’s so bittersweet my heart begins to hurt.
Just as my mouth opens and I try to slide my tongue, he ends the kiss on a chaste note.
Was that a last kiss?
“My signature first-date kiss.” He waits for a response but he must see from my face I’m not capable of human language right now.
He continues to hold me in a comfortable hug. I cross my ankles and look at his face like I’ve never seen this person before. The impact of his beauty is almost frightening up this close, with those eyes flashing bright. Our noses brush together. The sparks are in my mouth, desperate to reconnect with his.
I picture him on a date with someone else, and a punch of jealousy gets me right in the gut.
“Yeah, yeah. You win,” I say once I regain my breath. “More.”