This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 28

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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"But if you loved me, then why'd you leave me? Take my body...take my body..."

Kodaline | All I Want

His kiss was angry, accusatory. It said, Where the f—k have you been?! Where were you when I needed you?! And though he had left me, I accepted full responsibility for our separation and rebuked myself. I would quite literally do anything to win him back at this point. Die for him, kill for him—anything to keep him kissing me. Anything to keep him falling back into the way we were.

His lips were softer than I remembered, and much fuller. I ghosted mine against his, enjoying the sensation generated when they brushed together unhurriedly. But he pressed past that and brought our mouths together more firmly, demanding my tongue. I presented it without question. The feelings that baffled me the first time we kissed in 2011 were present all over again. The initial taste of him was alarming—life-giving. It unlocked an avalanche of memory that threatened to pummel me into the ground if I weren't careful. I nearly put my hands up over my head to protect it from the onslaught, losing touch with reality as soundbites from the last five years filled the silence around us.

My stomach was in knots, and the blood in my legs became syrupy and slow. Zayn oozed his way back into me at a measured trickle, as though it were dispensed from an IV. It wasn't an onrush that would fill my veins rapidly and then dissipate, only to leave me crashing moments later. This instead was a hefty dosage of him, imparted in such a way as to sustain me for the next few weeks and months on end; even in his absence.

I smelled dirt and leaves and hints of Gigi's perfume on his person, but I never registered for a second that he had kissed her only moments before. In my mind, his lips had never touched another. It wasn't for me to taste her, it was for her to taste me. I'd been there first and would be there long after, or so his touch assured me. Now he kissed me like I had never not belonged to him. Like he'd only gone off to the grocery store a year ago, and had returned for me; business as usual.

I wasn't a complete idiot though. I knew his touch conveyed lies. It told me no one had usurped me, despite her being mere yards away, nestled in his home. It told me he never left me, yet, I had spent so many nights alone and grieving the loss of him, that I was in no position to pretend 2015 hadn't happened; no matter how much he wanted me to. Let's just move forward, I hoped. Stop looking back.

I struggled to stand upright, and my legs had begun to tremble. All I could hear was the rustling of our clothes in the evening wind, and the meeting and parting of our lips and tongues. Suddenly he slammed me to him because he couldn't get close enough. His tongue roved my mouth, delving as deep as it could go without choking me—devouring me like I was the first hit of a drug he had been rehabilitated from and was eager to relapse in. When I broke the kiss with a breathy rasp, tossing my head back for air, he kissed my throat like a madman. I felt his teeth pinch my flesh, biting it, sucking it until I brought my mouth to his again. It was the only way to find relief.

His groans filled my ear and made my stomach swirl with anticipation of being undressed. He rubbed the back of his knuckles up and down my hardening bulge, before relinquishing all pretense and grabbing it head-on. My breath hitched, and I sank further down into the palm of his hand, grinding into his clutch.