Sweet Ache

The grip I have on logic weakens in the confined space, my fingers restless to reach out and draw him into me.

“You don’t.” I murmur the words, captivated by the proximity of his lips and the hunger in his eyes. I close mine to break the connection for a moment before opening them, resolve firmly back in place.

“Mm-hm, and yet earlier I asked you why you didn’t like me and you ignored it. Your lack of an answer leads me to believe just the opposite. Why fight it? You do like me don’t you?”

“Like I said, I’ve been surrounded by guys like you my whole life. No thank you.”

“I bet none of them have done this.”

His moves into me at such a slow pace that he grants me every chance to reject his advance. But I don’t. My quick inhale fills my lungs but nothing else fazes me because I’m completely focused on the descent of his mouth.

He brushes his lips against mine. Once. Twice. I’m so lost in the feeling that I don’t even realize his hands are gently cradling my face. Fingertips calloused by guitar strings angle my head to the side the same time my lips part, and the need to taste him is my only focus.

Our tongues meet in a gentle caress of heat and desire. A mixture of curiosity and lust, need and hesitancy. My hands are on his biceps, fingernails digging into muscular flesh as he deepens the kiss.

My body reacts instantly to his subtle claiming of my mouth. It might be light brushes of lips and licks of tongues but the ache deep within me burns so strong I emit a pained moan. There is just something about Hawkin that has me wanting so much more than a stolen kiss.

His thumb brushes over the line of my jaw as his other hand runs down the length of my back, pulling me into him. Our bodies battle the desire, wanting more but not taking it.

“Stop!” I cry out when something in me sparks to life. I can’t explain the feeling but it scares the hell out of me and has me pushing him away with a half-assed protest that sounds less than convincing. But how can it sound otherwise when my thoughts, my senses, my lips are consumed by the taste of him.

He leans back, lips parted and eyes wide with confusion. All I can do is shake my head back and forth to express my rejection. “I just … We can’t.” I fumble for the right words to say and then just say screw it. I turn on my heel and run up the stairs of the auditorium as he shouts my name behind me.

I push open the doors, needing the fresh air to clear my head and help with what I can only describe as a mini panic attack. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but I wave away Axe as he starts to approach me and walk a few more feet to a bench near the shade of a tree.

I sit down, lean my elbows on my knees, and hang my head down to try to calm myself. I close my eyes, welcoming the cool breeze on my face, when it hits me why I’m so freaked out.

I’ve kissed a lot of men. But never have I been so lost in a kiss that when I closed my eyes I saw tomorrows and ever-afters. Certainly not with Rick, and not with any man I’ve been with. Shit, I’m the last one on the planet to believe in the fairy-tale crap and yet there they were, vivid and in my face.

Frustrated and confused, I blow out an exhale and lift my eyes. Everything around me—students, buildings, bikes—blends together as I try to wrap my head around the irony of it all. I don’t usually think this way, don’t want these type of things—marriage, monogamy, kids, the death of spontaneity—at this point in my life, if ever. It’s just not my driving force. I’ve been in school forever, am about to graduate and dive headfirst into my dream career in film production, so they aren’t even a blip on my radar.

So why was I thinking them? And more important, why was I envisioning Hawkin Play as being the center of my universe when we butt heads like siblings and verbally spar like enemies?

It has to be because of his goddamn kiss.

Hell yes I wanted it—won’t deny it even to myself—because damn, the man can kiss. I shove the thought away that he’s probably had many women to practice on to get that kind of skill; it was so mind-blowing, I don’t care so long as I got the benefit of it.

His lips were the perfect combination of firm and soft, he used enough tongue but not too much, and then added to it the gentle coaxing of his fingertips to get me to open up to him, and ugh, I want more.

But therein lies the problem. I’m sure wanting more means different things to him than it does for me. For him it’s probably a quick fling that would run the duration of his seminar. And while I’m all for quick, fun, and meaningless, the way I just reacted to his kiss alone scares me into thinking that I might not be able to keep it on that level, promises made to myself be damned. That I’d be falling headfirst into something serious without a moment to enjoy it before heartbreak crashes down around me.

I roll my shoulders, stand up, and do something uncharacteristic of me. I’m usually a go-for-it, damn-the-consequences-later type of girl … and yet as I head back toward the auditorium with thoughts of how to play this with Hawkin, I tell myself not this time, not with this guy.

He may embody all of the things that call to me on so many levels—and I’ll probably curse myself later for it—but with the start of my career on the horizon, I need to be smart.

And walking headfirst into heartbreak is not smart.

“You okay?” Axe asks, his expression stoic, and his eyes hidden behind dark lenses scanning the students beginning to line up for the lecture.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I tell him as he opens the door for me. I walk through it, head down as I try to figure out how to handle this. Do I take the blame, apologize, and then hide behind the facade of hostility that helps me to resist him?