They walked, without discussion, toward the enormous park in the middle of town, with huge oak trees. She loved the idea of curling with him beneath one and reminding him that, in places like these, they were completely alone. And when she stopped in front of a tree and looked up at him, his lip snared between sharp teeth, her entire world reduced to the very simple desire to kiss him, for hours.
The groove formed by the enormous roots felt, to Delilah, a bit like sitting in the hull of a boat. She felt mildly subterranean when she lay down and tugged Gavin over her. He resisted, all long arms and forever-long torso trying to figure out how to position his body above hers.
“I’m worried I’ll crush you,” he said.
Delilah spread her arms and shifted until she was comfortable on her back. “I’m not.” In fact, she half hoped he would.
“I don’t feel like we’re alone here.” This time he whispered the words so she could barely hear him and looked back over his shoulder as if expecting to see a table, chair, or strip of spying wallpaper slithering through the grass.
“Gavin, no one is here except us. We never get to be alone; will you just come here and kiss me?”
Finally he gave in, shifting so he was over her, propped up on sharp elbows, the broad length of him making the space even darker and warmer. Gavin’s kisses were never particularly gentle—all edge and growl—but Delilah could tell he liked this angle, face to face, where he didn’t have to bend so far down or lift her from the ground. It was so new like this, and it felt wildly dangerous to be lying prone together in the middle of a public park on a school day.
The rustle of the branches overhead grew louder even though the sound of the wind seemed to disappear, and Gavin jerked above her, looking up and around them at ground level. When his lips returned to hers, it was with a new kind of determination that she didn’t quite understand, but he turned slightly desperate and she found herself grateful for whatever seemed to have flipped a switch in him.
The kisses grew deeper, touches firmer and braver, and soon he was rocking above her and she was moving up from below—chasing the same thing he was—wanting more and more and needing to stretch this moment into days. The sky seemed to have disappeared now, too, and from behind her closed lids it felt like midnight in this tiny cocoon. When she opened her eyes just to look at him, his were squeezed tightly shut and the branches just behind him somehow seemed closer than before, making their spot perfectly secluded.
Delilah closed her eyes again and smiled against Gavin’s mouth, sliding her legs up along his sides. She felt his fingers tease down her arms to wrap around her wrists and trap them beside her hips. When he did this, her need for him became heavy and tangible; the bind by his fingers caused her to dissolve into something dizzy, and incoherent, and shapeless. How did he know she would want him to be like this—demanding and capable and hungry?
But somehow the hands that pinned her were also moving up her shirt and over the soft fabric of her bra. His mouth grew hungrier, wetter on hers, with teeth and sounds. He had grown wild, but a tickling awareness pricked across Delilah’s skin, as if she had touched a bare wire.
“Gavin,” she murmured against his lips, trying to pull back and understand how he could pin her wrists while simultaneously touching her chest.
“Touch me back?” He pushed his words and breath against her lips, and when their meaning took shape in Delilah’s head—he didn’t realize she was bound at her wrists and couldn’t touch him—daylight disappeared completely, and at once she had the sense of being surrounded. Delilah opened her eyes.
The darkness wasn’t from the sun disappearing behind clouds or the simple cover of her eyelids over her eyes. It was the tree itself, bending to make a web around them of black, spindly branches that cut out the last beams of sunlight.