CHAPTER 72
The soft brush of his lips narrows my world to breath and skin.
A shiver rolls through me as my fingers trace the stubble of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, the fullness of his mouth.
He exhales raggedly when I touch his lips.
The heat of it ghosts across my trembling fingers.
I reach higher without thinking.
Find his hair—thick, soft, a little wavy—and drag my fingers through it, scratching lightly at his scalp.
A low, needy sound rumbles from his chest.
A vibration that sinks into my bloodstream and takes root.
My heart pounds.
I’m trapped between the cold wall and the heat of him.
Blind. Trembling. Wanting.
And for once—I don’t want to think.
I just want to feel.
He pulls me flush against him.
One hand cups my jaw, thumb brushing slow circles across my cheekbone like he’s memorizing every inch. Like Roger did in the closet today.
For one breathless second, there’s only the tension humming between us.
And then his lips find mine.
Hesitant at first, barely more than a whisper.
Testing. Tasting.
But it doesn’t stay that way.
It deepens fast—hungry, consuming, a quiet, devastating claim.
His mouth is firm, demanding, hot.
He kisses like he wants to devour me.
A helpless sound escapes my throat the second my lips part.
His tongue finds mine, slow and precise, devastating in its finesse.
My arms loop around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair—holding on because I don’t trust gravity anymore.
He tilts my chin, deepens the kiss, dragging noises from me I didn’t know I could make.
He steals every breath. Every thought. Every last shard of fear.
It’s not the way I imagined my first kiss.
It’s not clumsy or sweet.
It’s not gentle or uncertain.
It’s fire. Hunger. Surrender.
The kind of kiss that ruins you for anything else.
The kind that burns itself into your bones and stays long after the lips that gave it are gone.
Time ceases to matter.
Seconds or hours—what difference does it make?
Everything stopped the moment he touched me.
Just when I think he’ll pull away, he doesn’t.
He only slows us down.
His hands roam, dragging fire in their wake.
He pulls back to shift the angle—then takes my mouth again.
My arousal spirals.
The ache between my thighs sharpens, pulsing, demanding.
I’m the one who grows hungrier.
My kisses turn urgent, desperate.
I rock against him, feel the rigid proof of how badly he wants this too.
He groans—a raw, guttural sound—and then abruptly pulls away.
The absence hits like a freight train.
Air rips into my lungs as if I’d forgotten how to breathe.
I reach blindly in front of me with one hand, the other pressed to my tingling, swollen lips—still hot from everything he took.
My legs shake.
The world is silent.
Too silent.
There are no footsteps, no breath.
No whisper of a heartbeat thumping close to me.
Just the weight of him missing.
And then?—
The soft creak of the front door closing.
I rip the bandana from my eyes, heart hammering in my chest.
He’s gone.
Panic crashes through me as I stumble forward, flinging the front door open hard enough to make the hinges scream.
Cold night air rushes in, sharp against my overheated skin.
I blink into the darkness, eyes scanning frantically—desperate, breathless.
At first, nothing.
Then I see him.
A shadow slipping between the pools of streetlight, moving with the silent certainty of someone who’s always known how to disappear.
He lifts a helmet, slides it over his head.
The black visor snaps down with a final, brutal click.
He swings one leg over the motorcycle like it’s second nature.
Sits like he was born there—solid, sure, untouchable.
"Wait," I choke, stumbling forward.
"Please—wait!"
The engine roars to life, low and angry, vibrating through the street and rattling my bones.
And then he’s gone.
A blur of black and chrome swallowed by the night.
I stand there, barefoot on the concrete, arms wrapped around myself as the silence rushes back in.
Heavy and suffocating.
A single tear slides off my chin and lands on my bare arm.
Only then do I realize I’m crying.
Soft tapping draws my gaze down.
Dexter stands beside me, his little paws clicking restlessly against the driveway.
He looks up at me, head tilted, his eyes solemn and confused.
He huffs—an almost scolding sound—and turns back toward the house, tail swishing as he disappears through the open door.
I stay where I am, rooted.
Staring at the place where he vanished.
The first kiss I ever gave away?—
My first taste of something I never even dared to dream about had been everything.
Fierce.
Wild.
Consuming.
Until it wasn’t.
Until it became the space he left behind.
The hollow ache where he used to be.
Now, alone in the bruised silence of night, arms wrapped tight around my chest, I feel it settle in deep.
The ache of absence.
The kind that doesn’t just hurt but lingers.
The kind that stays.
And somehow, impossibly, I know: