Chapter 61 Vignette 57
The bass throbbed low through the walls of the private club, dimmed lights casting golden glows on glass and skin. The air was scented with aged whiskey, expensive perfume, and nostalgia.
We weren’t kids anymore. But tonight, we’d agreed to act like it.
It was a reunion for our high school year, five years later. Someone had booked the club. Someone had suggested the game. Someone had written my name on a dare card.
And of all the people to pull my name from the bowl it had to be Jayden.
He looked even better than I remembered. Taller. Broader. Sharper jaw. Same cocky smirk. But behind that smirk tonight was something heavier, something watching me a little too long.
Everyone cheered when we were paired.
The game? “Touch & Tell.” One person blindfolded. The other? Free to roam.
He stepped toward me slowly, a black silk blindfold in hand. "You sure you want to play?"
I swallowed. “Why not?”
“You trust me to touch you?” he asked, voice teasing, but low. Almost too low.
I didn’t answer. Just turned, letting him tie the silk behind my head.
Then it began.
At first, it was playful. His fingers brushed my bare arm, my shoulder. A swirl along my spine.
But then he lingered. His palm slid across my waist. His hand cupped my neck.
I shivered but not from the club’s AC.
His breath was behind my ear now. “Still the same perfume,” he murmured.
“You remember?”
He didn’t reply. He just let his fingers skim the hem of my dress. A breath. A pause. My chest rose and fell, deeper now. The blindfold cloaked my vision, but not the storm building inside me.
I heard nothing but the thud of bass, muffled conversations, and my own heart pounding against my ribcage. The club had fallen into a hush around us, our classmates watching, probably smirking behind their cocktails and buzzed laughter.
Jayden’s fingers touched my elbow first. Light, almost unsure.
Then a slow drag down my forearm. A feathered trace that ended at my wrist. He paused there, letting his thumb stroke gently against my pulse.
He could feel how fast it beat. I knew he could.
Then he moved in front of me. I felt the air shift with his body heat. The scent of him drifted through me like a dare. My breath caught.
His hand rose to my neck. Just the pads of his fingers, brushing softly against the base of my throat, then up along my jawline. Not rushed. Not shy either. Just confident, focused, almost reverent.
He was memorizing me with his hands.
Then, lower. His palm grazed down the center of my chest, not quite touching where I was most aware of him, but close enough to make my knees weaken. His knuckles barely skimmed the swell of my breasts before moving down my ribs, making my stomach clench.
God.
My breath faltered, shaky now.
He leaned in. I could feel his lips hover near my ear. “You’re trembling.”
I was.
Because every place he touched sparked heat. Blooming, slow and thick. The kind that built quietly until it took over everything. And I was burning inside and out.
When his hands settled at my hips, I instinctively tilted toward him.
A beat passed. Then another.
Then he kissed me right there.
Gasps echoed and cheers erupted. Laughter, whistles, and someone in background squealed, “Finally!”
I heard the clinks of glasses, felt the floor shift slightly beneath my heels as everyone clapped and shouted around us but I was still blindfolded. Still in the dark.
But Jayden’s mouth was all I could feel. His lips warm, parted, moving slow and certain against mine. Like he wasn’t kissing me for the crowd—but for something deeper. It feels like Like he meant it. Like he needed it.
His hands slid up my back, pulling me closer, angling my face to deepen the kiss. I let him. My body melted forward into his, into the weight and warmth and familiarity of him.
The crowd's voices faded into a dull buzz.
He pulled back just a little, lips still grazing mine. “I’m stealing her,” he said loudly to the room, his voice playful but darkly serious. “Don’t wait up.”
Our classmates roared with laughter, more cheers as he guided me carefully by the waist, still blindfolded, past the bodies, through the music, down a hallway.
I heard a door open. Then close. Then quiet.
I felt him again. Closer now. Just us.
His hands cupped my face this time. I couldn’t see anything but my body leaned into the sound of his breath.
Then his mouth was on mine again—harder. No crowd. No game. Just us.
The kiss deepened like a pull under water. Like he waited five whole years for this.
His tongue traced mine in slow circles before he bit gently at my lower lip. I gasped into his mouth, my hands gripping his shirt—fisting it, needing something to hold because my legs were no longer steady.
I felt him smirk against my lips.
His hands roamed lower again—this time trailing down the backs of my thighs, sliding under the hem of my dress as his palms curved around the soft flesh.
I whimpered.
God, I whimpered.
Because it was too much. Too good. Too intense.
His touch was fire, familiar and new all at once. Like something I’d dreamt of for years but never dared ask for. It woke everything. Everything I’d buried in silence. Everything I never said.
And then I broke.
“You never saw me back then, did you?” I blurted, the words ripping out of me like a confession squeezed through years of silence. My voice cracked like glass. “I sat right behind you in Chemistry for two years, and you never turned around unless you were asking for a pen.”
His hand froze.
I stood there trembling, still blindfolded, lips swollen, heart racing, everything raw.
“I used to watch you every day,” I said, quieter now. “Hoping you'd look my way. But you always looked at my best friend.”
I hated how my voice wavered. How naked I felt but I couldn't hold it back
“I hated how it made me feel,” I whispered. “Like I wasn’t even in the room. But I was there. Watching. Burning. Dying to matter.”
Silence stretched long.
Then—his fingers caught my chin. He lifted it gently. His voice low, gravelly. "You mattered," he said. “You mattered so much it scared me.”
My breath hitched. I reached for the blindfold, needing to see him.
But he caught my hands. “Not yet,” he murmured. “Feel me first.”
He kissed my cheek then trailed his lips down to the corner of my mouth. His lips brushing against my skin made me gasp.
Then he kissed my neck.
I couldn't hold myself to the ground any longer. I grabbed the lapels of his shirt so tight that my grip could have ripped it.
Our chests had no inches apart now. He held my waist so close as his kisses continued to stretch sensations through my veins.
I was trembling and he knew it. He was too.
I could tell from how hungry his kisses felt and how his hands slided down slowly to my as.
His hands found its way under my dress and soon it was caressing my as. My bare as. Only covered with a thin, silk panties.
My heart pounded faster in great anticipation.
But not until a devil dressed in pretty outfit pushed the door open and interrupted us.
I cursed. I fking cursed Megan when she stepped in
She liked Jayden back then in school. Maybe she still did. That was probably why she decided to ruin the moment for us.