With Every Heartbeat

I shook my head, only wanting his mouth back on mine. “No idea.”

“That’s okay.” He stood, picking me up by the butt, my legs still anchored around his waist, and he started to carry me down the hall. “We’ll just figure it out as we go.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening, not even as he paused at a doorway where the door was three-quarters shut and he nudged me inside a dark room. I buried my face in his neck and hugged the solid expanse of his shoulders, seeking comfort from his familiar smell. My excited, overeager senses buzzed with anticipation, even as they jerked with worry.

What the heck was I doing? This was my best friend’s boyfriend. Or at least he had been up until two hours ago. That marked him as strictly forbidden. I shouldn’t be touching him the way I was touching him, wanting him the way I craved every inch of him, or licking my way up his neck the way my tongue was licking without my permission.

But he tightened his arms around me and groaned out another one of his approving hums, telling me he wanted this just as much as I did.

He was drunk though, which probably meant I was taking advantage. It was up to me to stop this.

Oh God. How was I going to find the will to stop this?

Quinn set me on the mattress once he found the bed. There was a moment in the dark that we were separated, when I knew I had to act, had to say no. But then he flicked on the bedside lamp, and I looked up at him. I opened my mouth to say…something, but the hungry need in his eyes fried my resistance. No way could I tell him no, not after he was finally looking at me the way I’d been dreaming he would for weeks.

His crystalline blue eyes glittered with a predatory awareness as he set a knee on the bed and began to crawl toward me. I had no idea why I went on retreat, maybe because he looked as if he wanted to devour me whole. I wasn’t graceful with my crablike crawl away from him while he was more than supple in his stealthy prowl forward. By the time he climbed on top of me, I had stumbled back into a supine sprawl with the back of my head flattening into one of his pillows.

Triumph flooded his smile as he gazed at me. My lips trembled when I tried to smile back. I didn’t know what was about to happen, I didn’t know how it’d feel, or how it’d affect us afterward, I just knew I wanted it anyway. Desperately.

Quinn must’ve sensed my nerves. He studied me with his glassy, inebriated gaze before catching a piece of my hair and whispering, “Are you scared?”

I shook my head, though I’m sure I probably looked like a liar from how wide my eyes were and how badly my lips trembled.

But scared? Of him? Never.

Nervous? Yes. Definitely.

He gently smoothed his rough fingers over my face before tucking my hair behind my ears. “Have you ever done this before?”

I almost blurted out a laugh. But done this? I’d never even kissed anyone before he’d brushed his mouth against mine only minutes ago in the front room. So, no, I’d never lain on a bed underneath a guy, and I’d certainly never done what he was really asking.

I settled for shaking my head a second time.

Tenderness entered his face. I think he liked my answer. He kissed the tip of my nose. “Can I show you how?”

I nodded, and he flashed me his dimples.

“We have to communicate a lot,” he whispered, “let each other know what we do and don’t like.”

I smiled, because, “I like everything so far,” I whispered back.

When I circled his face with the tips of my fingers, hoping he liked that, his gaze met mine. “So, do I.”

Then this expression entered his face, like awe, as if he couldn’t believe it was me under him and not someone else. It reminded me of the exact way I felt. I was here with Quinn, like this. I just could not believe this was happening.

“What else should I know?” I asked, eager to learn.

“Kissing,” he said right before he lowered his mouth to mine. “Kissing it important.”

Our lips absorbed each other, exploring and moving until our tongues joined in, and it was just as powerful as our first kiss. Maybe more so.

“I like kissing,” I gasped out, cradling his face and burying my fingers in his rich, thick hair as he nibbled his way down my neck.

“It gets better.”

Oh, God. I swallowed and then sucked in a hard breath when his teeth nipped at a sensitive spot on my pulse.

Body on fire and throbbing in more places than I could count, I arched up against him. “How? Show me.”

“Touching,” he said. “Touching and kissing both.”

Thus began the pleasure assault of his fingers. Up my neck, into my hair, clutching my scalp as he kissed me deeper, then down again, over my shoulders, along my arms, catching my hip, curving around the swell of my bottom and digging his nails in as he canted my hips up and ground his erection into my core.