Setting Fire to the Stars (a MM Sci-Fi Romance)

Chapter 33: Six

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Lauren
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Have you ever experienced the feeling of falling from really high up? I had never been skydiving, but I'd read articles about it. Popular opinion stated that the first jump was always the most memorable—a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. The intense fear, mixed with the exhilaration of free fall, created the perfect cocktail of an adrenaline high.

That was what it felt like to kiss Peter Ducane.

It was over quickly, my heels reuniting with the ground, forcing us apart. It more of a peck than anything, lasting less than a couple seconds, but that didn't stop my heart from beating away, a sledgehammer trapped behind my ribcage.

Peter stared down at me, bewildered and unblinking. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, then closed it. The only sound audible in the room was the pounding in my ears. That wide-eyed stare scorched a hole through me, quickly swallowing my courage and replacing it with a sinking sensation.

Why wasn't he saying anything? Had I read the situation all wrong? Was what we shared that night at the Foundry a mistake?

"I . . ," I stammered, shrinking back a step. "I'm . . . okay, look, I know I shouldn't have—"

Before I could continue my frantic backpedalling, he surged, seizing my nape and crushing our lips together.

The second his mouth was on mine, every insecure thought evaporated, and I was back in the sky. Moaning into the kiss, a fire ignited in my belly, the uncertainty sliding off my shoulders like oil on water. Our mouths slotted together, messy and rough and everything that I imagined that it would be.

And it was warm. So fucking warm.

We moved against one another in a fevered frenzy, teeth clacking almost painfully in our rush to devour each other. It was wild. It was pure desperation and heartbreaking and it only got worse when his hands roughly grabbed my hips, his larger body forcibly backing me against the wall. I didn't even try to fight it as the padded cushions sunk into my back, loving how all that brute strength he'd perfected was being used to draw us closer together.

Raking my fingers through his silky hair, everything else fell by the wayside—the interrogations. The tests. The pain—all of it melted away as I pressed into him. I was freezing and he was the sun.

A low, approving groan thundered through his chest as he ground his hips into me. Lightning surged down my spine. I whined, arching my back, connecting us from chest to hip.

This . . . this was what a real kiss felt like? How the hell had I gone this long without knowing this? I'd been through a couple of wishy-washy exes, but nothing and no one held a candle to this. This, this, this. This was the kind of kiss that poets wrote about in sonnets and tragedies. The type men go to war for.

Yep. I knew it. Kissing Peter Ducane was utterly devastating.

Picking me up by the backs of my thighs, Peter hoisted me against him, pressing us together as if he wanted to meld our bodies together. A sigh left me as the kiss deepened, shifting away from desperate to filthy as my ankles locked around his lower back. Tentatively, I drew his lower lip into my mouth, earning a low moan from him. It was a hungry, possessive sound, one I wanted to memorize completely.