Love At First Night

29.

I DIDN'T REALIZE Lisa was being gentle with me downstairs.

Not until right now.

Because there's nothing gentle about the scrape of her teeth against my bottom lip or the press of her thumb against my jaw, urging me to open wider for her. Downstairs, our kiss was all relief and elation and tender longing. I thought it might take the edge off. It hasn't. All we've done is broken the seal, and now when Lisa's tongue strokes into my mouth, it's like a gallon of gasoline tossed right into my bonfire.

Boom.

My hands fly up to grip Lisa's broad shoulders, white-knuckled as my nails dig into the slick fabric of her Clement athletics jacket.

Her hands slip inside the front of my cardigan and bracket my hips, briefly, in a way that feels like we're at a middle school dance. I giggle. And then she's smoothing her palms down over the curve of my ass and gripping me through my jeans so tight that my giggle breaks off into a gasp.

I have the strangest sense that Lisa is thinking about lifting me up against this bookshelf the way she did the night we first met. I'd let her. Happily. I'd love nothing more than to let my thighs fall open, hook my heels around the back of her legs, and have her press into me where I ache the worst. But it appears Lisa has other plans-plans that include sliding her hands up under the hem of my shirt and tracing a path from the hollow of my back to my stomach and then up over my ticklish rib cage.

The warm, rough drag of her touch against my bare skin makes me a fluttery, squirming mess of goosebumps and hitched breaths.

And then her fingertips brush the underwire of my bra, and I've never hated a piece of clothing so badly in my life. I want it gone. Burned. Buried. Out of the fucking way, so there's not a single thing blocking Lisa from doing whatever she so chooses to.

All week, I've been haunted by the fact that she didn't touch my tits on her birthday. I saw the hunger in her eyes when she traced the neckline of my borrowed bodysuit. I heard the wobble in her voice when she complimented my tits, half-teasing and half-serious. But she was too worried about getting everything else right-figuring out the snaps on my bodysuit, making sure I was comfortable and slack-limbed, asking if she should stretch me out with one finger or two-and my poor breasts got the short end of the stick.

I arch against her, blindly hoping that she gets the message and won't step back to make some kind of smart-mouthed comment about being greedy, because we're well past that. I'm fucking desperate.

But she does step back.

Except, instead of tormenting me, she looks me up and down like she's trying to commit the sight of me to memory. It's too much. Like direct sunlight in my eyes or the blast of music through my headphones when I forgot I had the volume all the way up.

"What?" I demand self-consciously.

Lisa squeezes hard against my ribs.

"I'm still so mad at you," she whispers, bending to catch my lips with her. "Can't fucking believe you thought I didn't want you."

I rake my fingers through her hair and pull her closer, trying to kiss her hard enough that she'll know how sorry I am. That she'll know I'll never doubt her again. I loop my arms tight around her neck and push off the bookshelf behind me, plastering myself against her so our knees knock and my tits are pancaked against her hard chest.

Lisa briefly tenses up at the contact, and then with a low, primal rumble somewhere in the pit of her chest she drops her hands back to my ass and grinds her hips into me.

Oh my God, she's hard.

I actually whimper against her mouth.

It must startle Lisa as much as it startles me, because she tears herself away.