Page 111 of What Remains

I press my lips together, searching for the words, and manage to keep my mouth shut for once until I happen upon the right ones. “What if we’re scared together?” I lift one shoulder, my voice wobbling with the last of my tears. “Better than going it alone.”

A faint smile tugs at his mouth. “I like the way you think.” His thumbs move in small circles on my cheeks, and my knees threaten to give out. “I want to kiss you.”

“Don’t let our joint fear hold you back,” I whisper.

His brows slant together before he drops his mouth over mine. And when our lips finally meet, everything else falls away—including my nerves, and the what-ifs they’re wrapped around.

The kiss is perfect. Closed mouth, sensual and sweet. Gentle and honest. For once in my life, my mind goes quiet.

“Bubble gum again, hmm?” He licks my lips open for another taste and kisses me even more fervently that time.

When he pulls back just a fraction, I blink twice, in a daze. “So this is what it’s supposed to feel like.”

He smiles against my mouth. “Just getting started.”

The restraint shatters after that, and the world fractures into sensations.

His tongue meets mine.

His hands find my waist, drawing me closer.

I curl my fingers into his biceps and hang on as the kiss deepens, lighting something dormant inside me, bringing me back to life.

We stumble out from the back area over to the wall, and without breaking stride, one of his hands lifts my wrist above my head while the other stays firm at my side. He rolls his hips forward, and the jolt of feeling him against me steals my breath.

And then he stills.

“I’m so sorry.” Anguish roughens the words as he lowers my arm.

It takes me a second to understand he’s remembering that room on the island.

When he starts to walk backward, I grab hold of his side to keep him in place.

“No,” I whisper. “We get to own this moment. To take back control where it belongs.” I slide my hands up the sides of his neck. “Let’s erase that memory and make a new one that’s ours.”

He searches my face. “You’re sure?”

“More than anything.”

His expression softens as the decision settles in, and something changes. Right here, right now. For both of us.

And then I’m lost in his arms again. In his touch. In everything.

His mouth drifts to my cheek, then he angles my chin and kisses along my jaw and down my neck. I thread my fingers through his thick hair as he mirrors what I did to him last night. Shivers skate over my skin as he finds a sensitive spot, every nerve in me reaching for him.

His hand is warm beneath my shirt. Fingers splayed across my abdomen, he moves slowly and unhurried, devastatingly patient.

Finally.

He traces the edge of my rib cage before he eases my sports bra aside, then brushes the underside of my breast, just enough to drive me wild before his hand closes around me. I bite down on my back teeth to keep from calling out his name as he lightly squeezes.

Here I am, pressed against him, ready to come undone, and he’s taking his sweet, old-school time.

The heat of his palm seeps into my skin, and I swear he must feel the way my stomach tightens as I long for more. More of everything he has to give me.

His mouth drags to the corner of my jaw, and the rough scrape of his facial hair sends chills crashing over my body, and my nipples harden to almost painful points.

“Trouble,” he rasps near the shell of my ear.