FRIENDZONE |lukabeth au| ✔︎

25.

chapter | 25

❝Went from one conversation to your lips on mine.❞

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LUKE'S POV

IT SWEPT ME AWAY like a grain of sand in the ocean.

Desperation, desire, fear.

Love.

Blood rushed through my veins, hot and fast. Annabeth's lips were soft and warm, and I pulled back, just an inch. Just to look at her. I grazed her bottom lip with my thumb before my hand slipped behind her neck.

"I love you," I whispered. My tears had stopped and I could still feel the dampness on my cheeks. 

And she met me, in that moment, in an instant. She kissed me without restraint, without hesitation, and wrapped her arms around my neck and I was overwhelmed, lost in a rush of emotion–

She tried to stand on tiptoe to deepen the kiss, but she tripped backwards, breaking away and gasping when her back collided with the wall. 

She had hardly enough time to blink before I reeled her in again, all warmth and heat and sweetness and I pulled her against me, drugged by the feel of her, lost in the expanse of her very being. 

She gently eased me back, even as she continued to kiss me, pushing me back until my knees gave away to the metal edge of a bench. She climbed on top of me, arms crossed tightly at the back of my neck. Sat on my lap with her legs bent backward at the knees at either side of my thighs.

It hit me with a painful force, the reminder. 

Of just how much I love her. 

God, I love all of her. Her impossibilities, her exasperations. 

I love her.

~

ANNABETH'S POV

This, I thought, this is the perfect way to die. 

Percy and Rachel are probably still back there, kissing.

Who the fuck cared?

Because I could drown in this moment and I'd never regret it. I could catch fire from this kiss and happily turn to ash. I could be born here, live here, die here, right here, against his hips, his lips. I could vanish in the emotion in his eyes as he sank into me, in his heartbeats, indistinguishable from mine.

This.

Forever.

This.

I pulled myself from my thoughts just long enough to think about Percy and Rachel. 

Maybe Mallory was right. I'd never be good enough. 

And I didn't realize that I'd pulled away until Luke kissed me again, his occasional gasps for air hot against my skin, and I tasted him, his mouth, his neck, the hard line of his jaw. His hands were constantly shifting–he could be dancing his fingertips up my ribcage one second and then trailing his hands around my hips the next. 

He fought back a groan, pulled away, pain and pleasure twining together. He wrapped us together, impossibly closer, overwhelming me with an extraordinary pleasure that felt like nothing I've ever known. It's nameless. Unknowable, impossible to plan for. 

There was something wild and beautiful in him, something I couldn't explain in the way he touched me–the way his fingers lingered along my shoulder blades, down the curve of my back–like I might evaporate at any moment. Like this was the first and last time that we'd ever touch.