Does he think I would reject him? Because I know I should but my body disagrees.
He’s broken my freaking heart. My panties shouldn’t be growing damp by his nearness. By his smell.
But his smell... He still smells clean and male, and it fucking turns me on like there’s no tomorrow.
I hate my body. It betrays me non-stop.
“I want,” he starts, his eyes dancing between mine and my lips. “I want—”
The music pulses louder for a moment, cutting him off. His mouth moves, but I miss the sound of his words.
Squinting, I lean, offering him my ear. “What?”
He presses his lips to the shell of my ear, his breath breaking shivers along my flesh. “I want one kiss.”
I snap back, facing him. My brows rake up my forehead. “A kiss?”
He nods, licking his lips again. “I’ve been parched for one kiss of yours. I can’t stop thinking about it. About this plump mouth. The sounds you used to make when I sucked your lower lip between my teeth.”
A blush blooms across my cheeks and I swallow, trying to dislodge my heart beating in my throat.
It would be a ludicrous lie to say I don’t want to kiss him.
Parting my lips, I turn until my nose brushes his. “Just one.”
Just one kiss. Just tonight. Just to get him out of my system.
And then I’ll move on and forget this entire thing ever happened. Exes are exes for a reason, and I shouldn’t be playing with fire.
The burn hurts too much.
VINCENT
Hazel nods, and my heart almost explodes.
I have been trying to act nonchalant. As if I haven’t been sporting this outrageous erection ever since I put my eyes on her. As if my entire life and existence haven’t been about waiting for the day I’d see her again.
From the first moment, I wanted to blurt everything out. How I missed her. How I wanted to understand why she ignored my letters. How I still loved her with every ounce of strength in my body and soul. But she tried to run, she tried to avoid me, and the painful truth of her dismissal slashed through me.
If I insisted, if I poured my heart out, she would leave and wouldn’t look back. I’d scare her away. I’d be the manic ex who stalked her, the psycho who left her behind just to show up years later wanting another chance.
It’s my fault. Young, hurt and in doubt, I should have driven back here to ask her personally why she wasn’t answering my letters. I wanted to respect her space, but in the end, I drove her off.
So I have to take her back with what I have, with the things she always loved the most about our life together. The laughter and the intense love we shared.
The perfect way we fit.
And it will start with a kiss.
Pressing my body against the side of her creamy thigh, I shift so she won’t notice the raging hard-on inside my pants. Not until she’s willing, at least. Touching our foreheads together, I breathe her in. Her sweet and fresh scent, her mouthwatering aroma, until my lungs are full of her.
My breath leaves in a shuddering groan as I end the inches between us. As I try to pretend no hurts lie in the space between our bodies. No memories. No pain.
My hands gripping the back of her stool, I brush our lips together. I can’t touch her yet. Once I do, I know there’ll be no coming back, and she’ll learn in no time how much my body missed hers.
I have waited for five years. Five aching years for this kiss.
So I take it.
As soon as Hazel slams her eyelids shut, I clash our mouths together. Brushing her lips with mine, I feel the texture, I commit the shape of her mouth to memory. Licking the seam of her lips, I taste her breath, the vodka in our salivas mixing as I consume her. My tongue dips inside, and a moment later I’m towering over her, forcing her head back so I can explore every inch of her mouth.
I suck her lower lip between mine hard. I want to hear her. I want to know if she still feels the same.
Hazel’s hands find my hips and she digs her nails into my flesh as the most amazing sound in the world reaches my ears. It’s an all-out moan, heady and sexy as fuck.
I almost blow in my pants.
My hands find her hair on their own. I can’t control them anymore, or my body for that matter. Fisting her strands between my fingers, I tilt her head even further back, and she lets me. She fucking gives me full control. Every sound that leaves her is coated in want, in need.
Her small fingers trail up to my waist and she circles them there, keeps them there. She doesn’t move them an inch as I tilt my head and change the rhythm of the kiss. Our tongues clash and collide, and I swallow her saliva as the sweet nectar it is. The kiss grows frantic, parched, and she follows sweep by sweep with me, her tits brushing against my torso.
“Fuck, Hazel,” I grunt. “I wondered how you looked after all these years... But not even in my wildest dreams I thought you’d look this hot.”
She scoffs. “You don’t need to lie, Vincent. You’re already having what you wanted,” she retorts against my mouth, her eyes half-opening to meet my gaze.
What happened in her life that she thinks this way? I can’t believe she doesn’t look at her reflection every day and damn congratulates herself. She’s a freaking goddess. All round angles and soft curves, the perfect shape for a voluptuous woman.
And she’s damn gorgeous. Her bright eyes and her sassy smiles, the hair framing her face. This damn smooth skin I want to brush my fingers over, up and down, from her ear to her ankle.
I wonder if her cunt still tastes as sweet as it used to. My cock twitches, anxious to find out.
The only things that have changed about her have changed for the better. And I want to know every little one of those changes, those improvements. I want to see this new Hazel that I missed.
“I’m not lying, Hazel,” I say, staring at her. The light hits her face and illuminates her flushed features, the dark red lipstick smudged across her face. I run a thumb over her chin, wiping it clean. “I am no liar.”
Something flares in her pupils, something that makes me bite my tongue. It pierces my heart with pain, with foreboding.
“No more words,” she breathes out against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about the past.”
Throat bobbing, I feel how intense her gaze is upon me. An alert. She’s giving off a warning, and if I insist... She’ll walk off and I’ll never see her again.
I can’t let this chance escape me. So I swallow my feelings for now and I kiss the air out of her. Every swipe of my tongue elicits a new moan, a new brush of her breasts, and a stronger grip of her hands around my waist. Gripping her hair in a hand, I bring the other down her neck, my fingertips rubbing the soft skin of her neck and the place it connects to her shoulder.
Hazel’s mouth falls open in a cascade of sweet mewls, and I drop my face to her ear. She wants me to pretend the past never happened, but I remember how she trembled when I kissed a spot behind her ear. So I drag my lips there and nibble on her neck, kissing the place. She quivers, shudders, her back arching until her chest presses flush against mine.
I leave not an inch unexplored in her neck, earlobe, collarbones. Hazel finally uncrosses her legs, bringing one to each side of my body, giving me better access. Her hands slip beneath my shirt, and the feel of her skin against mine is bliss.