Her brow twitches. “You mean because you’re used to having half-naked friends dancing on your lap?”
“I think you are at least one article of clothing past ‘half-naked,’ ” I tease. “And perhaps more than a little past friend.”
She stares down at me, worrying her lip with her teeth.
“It’s not awkward because it’s you, Lola Love. And you look amazing half-naked.”
A long stretch of silence passes where she’s still just looking at me. Staring, eyes fixed on mine. But it isn’t static. It’s an enormous transition in her expression from playful to sincere, and watching each step seems to pluck at a vibrating, urgent thread between my ribs.
“Are you hard?” She lowers her hips and slides over me, just once.
Oh, fuck.
I lose my breath when my heart climbs into my throat. She knows I am; my cock is rigid and pressed right against her.
“Are you wet?” I volley back.
I know she is. When she rocks forward again, I can feel it in the easy slide of her over me.
She laughs and her attention shifts from my eyes back to my lips. She’s so close, it isn’t just a flicker of her gaze; it’s an intentional drop, a mile-long stretch that seems to take forever as she looks at my nose, my cheeks, my lips, then snags there. If she looked any lower she would no doubt see my pulse frozen in my throat.
“Are you thinking of kissing me?” she asks.
I stare right back at her mouth. Lick my lips. “Are you thinking of being kissed?”
“Will you answer any question I ask?”
“Yes, but only that one.”
She gives me my favorite laugh: the quiet thrust of breath from her mouth. The sound she probably doesn’t even know she makes. And then she bends, time stops, and after a tiny beat of hesitation where she holds her breath, Lola presses her full lips to mine.
Warm, soft, and just the tiniest bit wet: it’s the sweetest first kiss I’ve ever had. Lola gives me a blissful few introductory kisses before the eventual parting of her lips, and the careful capture of my bottom lip between hers.
When she sucks, gently bites, and makes a tiny rough growl, I am wrecked.
When the tip of her tongue grazes mine, my heart seems intent on punching its way out of my chest.
I am totally fucking ruined.
I can barely keep my hands beneath my thighs on the chair when she pulls away, licking her lips.
“I kissed you,” she whispers.
My voice shakes: “I thought we weren’t allowed to do that.”
With a tiny one-shouldered shrug, she whispers, “I think I’m going to do it again.”
My pulse is hammering so hard, I can barely manage an “Okay.”
When she comes back, I groan, pulling my hands free and so desperate for the taste of her that I stretch forward, meeting her halfway with my palms cupping her face. It’s explosive: the feel of our skin touching just here. I perceive the kiss in every tiny hollow part of me, filling me up with her sweetness, and lust, and abandon. I want to devour Lola, but this first series of kisses is remarkably gentle. Aimless. Everything wild and tense is held in our muscles: in the tight clench of my quads under her ass, and my hands barely holding her face. In her hands in fists in the shirt at my shoulders, her legs trembling over me. It feels like sex, the way she’s kissing me, the way her tongue slides across mine, but slower, and infinitely more innocent.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I murmur into her mouth. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
The words cause her to tense and she sits back, blinking slowly. “Will this mess everything up?”
I move my hands from her face and rest them, carefully, on the outside of her thighs. “It can make everything better. We can do whatever you want.” I stretch to kiss her again, repeating, “Whatever you want. We can put on a movie and relax. We can stay here and kiss. We can play some more cards.”
The clock in the hall must tick at least a hundred times before Lola speaks.
“I don’t want to stay out here and play cards.”
My lungs have evaporated. “Okay,” I agree.
“Or watch a movie.”
I nod, choking on my own breath. “Whatever you want, pet.”
“And I don’t want to just kiss.” She stands, pulling me up with her. We’re so close my exhales puff against her hair as she stares, wide-eyed, up at me.
Her hand comes down the inside of my arm, fingers curling with mine, and she turns, tugging me down the hall.
Chapter NINE
Lola
I’VE ONLY BEEN in Oliver’s room one other time—when he was fixing something in the garage and needed me to grab his phone from his dresser—but I didn’t take the time to look around and take in how he’d put his secret space together. That time, it felt too personal to be in his sanctuary; I located the phone and dashed out. Back then, too, I hadn’t really let the enormity of my feelings sink in. We were still Just Friends. Being in his room wasn’t intense because he would be naked here, or sleep here. It just felt like a level of personal that Lola + Oliver didn’t do.