Arching up at the contact, I dug my nails into his back and gasped.
His mouth returned to mine. This time, our tongues were eager and needy, dueling for more. While they attacked each other, his hand shifted, moving farther up the side of my breast. I squirmed, aching to feel his fingers cover the hard, pebbled peaks when a small muffled voice on the other side of my bedroom wall wailed, “Mama.”
“Shit!” Brandt hissed, yanking himself off me and rolling until he was lying on his back beside me and sucking in air. “Holy shit.”
In the hallway, footsteps shuffled past my bedroom door as Reese went to check on whichever kiddo had called for her.
Next to me, my best friend set the back of his wrist against his forehead as he struggled for breath. Oxygen chugged like crazy through my lungs as I tilted my head to the side to see him.
He looked...shell-shocked. His cheeks were high in color and his eyes were glazed as he dropped his hand from his face so he could turn to look back. Then he licked his lips and swallowed noisily. “So, yeah. There you go. First kiss.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling so brain-dead I wasn’t sure what else to say except wow. Like really...wow. “Is it always so—” I broke off suddenly, realizing I was actually asking that aloud.
Brandt huffed out an amused sound. “Um...no. That was...” He shook his head before murmuring, “Pretty damn spectacular,” as if that fact left him dazed.
A grin bloomed across my face as joy heated my chest. “Really?” Thank God I hadn’t been the only one feeling it.
Thank God I didn’t suck at it.
“Yeah.” He glanced at me again, but this time, when our gazes connected, his eyes flared with horror. Before I knew what was going on, he leaped upright and briskly scratched the back of his head. “I, uh, I should go.”
He started for the window. But as soon as he lifted it, I said, “Brandt.”
His entire body flinched, but he stopped what he was doing. He didn’t turn back to look at me when he said, “Hmm?”
“You came in through the front door...not the window.”
“Right. Shit.” He shut the window and wiped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry.” When he finally glanced at me, he winced. My eyes were still a little crusty from crying, so I was sure I appeared pretty bleak.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking incredibly guilty.
“Of course.” I beamed up at him, being totally honest. Because I was okay. I was better than okay. That kiss had been...wow.
Everything.
I knew his rush to leave should probably worry me, possibly even hurt, but it actually made me feel better. Kissing me had rattled him, right down to his core.
I sorta loved that.
My mouth could actually rattle Brandt Gamble.
If I could have any superpower, that might be the one I wanted above all others.
But he looked so miserable, and guilty, and frazzled, that I couldn’t help but ask. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck, no,” he blurted before pressing a fist to his forehead, wincing and trying to revise, “I mean...yeah, of course.”
My grin grew, which only seemed to make him more irritable.
“I gotta go,” he muttered, whirling around and escaping through my bedroom door. “See you.”
A small laugh flitted from my lungs. Falling backward onto the bed, I stared giddily up at the ceiling and sighed.
“See you,” I told the empty room. And that right there was the only reason I was still happy. Because I knew I would see him again. There was no scaring Brandt off for good. No matter how much our kiss might’ve freaked him out, the one thing I could always rely on was the fact that I’d see him again, no matter what.
Since the moment he’d defended me in the school hall to Chloe Hilliard the first time we’d met, he’d been the most faithful presence in my life. He could take as much time as he needed to adjust to this. I knew he’d be back.
And I was content.
*
“So, how ‘bout that first kiss, huh?”
Stunned by the question, I ripped my fingers from my lips where I’d been touching them in thoughtful consternation and whirled to gape at my sister-in-law behind the wheel of my SUV.
“What?”
How the heck did she know?
It was mid-Saturday morning, and we were on our way to a checkup because my doctor had a new antispasmodic medicine he wanted me to try.
Ahh, the joys of CP.
Mason had been planning on going with me to my appointment, but at the last minute, Reese had swept in and taken his place, leaving him home with the twins. I should’ve known then it was because she’d wanted to girl-talk, but I’d been in too much of a daze to realize.
Glancing over at me, she wiggled her eyebrows. “It was everything you thought it’d be, wasn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Wha-what makes you think I was kissed?”