Smitten Kitten

chapter fifteen

THE SECONDS ARE MINUTES are millennia are just heartbeats. The sound of my breath, shallow and short, is a manifestation of my pulse thrumming wildly in my chest. Time has slowed down almost to a standstill. All the noise of the outside world is swallowed up by my sharp intake of breath. Quiet, silent, static. Everything but him and me ceases to exist.

And then I'm kissing him, and the entire world comes crashing back down in roaring technicolour.

Suddenly I'm too aware of the heat of his skin. The promise of his touch materializes in the way that his hand cups my jaw and his nose brushes against mine. His eyes are closed, lashes sweeping down to his cheeks, but I can feel the scorching of his pupils trickling down my spine.

My mind and body haven't quite synced up yet.

My hands move in a way that's muscle memory of every midnight fantasy I'd devised up in my head, my mind too dizzy from trying to piece together reality and Noel's mouth coexisting as one to even begin to catch up. There's no alcohol on my breath, but somehow all my senses are dazed, numb, and on fire all at once.

His lips are soft and tentative against mine, revealing hints of hesitation that I'm too quick to annihilate as I climb into his lap. His laptop has been shoved off to the side and long forgotten. I'm almost flattered, but I'm more focused on slowly lifting his glasses off, placing them to the side and stealing his undivided attention.

There's a plunge in my stomach that is always two steps behind what my hands have already claimed. His surprise is betrayed by the slight flutter of his eyes and the small tense of his hands, but slowly dissolves as I press into him, deepening the kiss, quietly asking for more.

"What was that you'd said before? I want to take my time with you?" I murmur with a smirk tugging on the corner of my mouth, pulling back to meet his gaze.

His eyes widen a fraction. "Christ, you remember that?"

"Remember?" I scoff, shifting in his lap, the friction igniting exhilarating sparks through all of my veins. "You're blushing as if I haven't been touching myself to the memory for weeks. You're not breaking your promise, are you?"

He swallows, but I can't miss the way his hands travel down to curl around my hips, barely dipping under my shirt in a way that makes my entire body hum. There's a tinge to his cheeks that I hope isn't remnants of fever, and when he opens his mouth for a rebuttal, all I can focus on is his bottom lip shining all kiss-bitten and just begging to be pulled between my teeth.

Honestly, if teasing him wasn't so fun, I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth off him.

"At this point, I don't think I could," he admits with a breathless quality to his voice that threatens to wind me. "I mean, I wanted to, you know, something more than this but Christ, stop squirming around so much or you're going to kill me."

Hands hooked around his neck, I tilt my head, capturing his gaze with a cocked brow. "More than this? Noel, I hope you know we're only getting started."

I rock into him with an indulgent grin, the thin layers of fabric between us leaving little to the imagination. A low, hoarse noise sounds in the back of his throat that I would've never expected from him but somehow feels like molasses dribbling down to my tailbone.

"I meant- Vika, I mean on Mark's couch, you haven't had breakfast yet, sweatpants, I-"

"Noel," I cut him off with a sigh. "I'm flattered, really, that you're so concerned about my breakfast, it's very cute, but it's fine. This isn't The Notebook, and I don't think your friend digging into my thigh really cares all that much."