Page 47 of Lost in the Current of You

I stood in the middle of my room, chewing on the skin around my thumbnail as I turned to look at him. He stood just inside the door frame, eyes taking in every inch of the room. From the photo frames on top of my wardrobe on the left side of the doorway, to the bookshelf standing tall next to my bed right in front of him. His eyes skimmed my unmade bed, the pale pink sheets crumpled, and the white curtains billowing above it. His eyes then flicked to the desk to the right of the room, where my laptop sat with the album I had started to make open on it.

His eyes flicked to mine as he raised an eyebrow. “Well? Show me what you’ve got so far.”

My hands had suddenly become clammy, and I tried to discreetly wipe them down my pants as I took a seat on my desk chair. Reece sat at the foot of my bed, close to the desk.

The first photo I clicked on was of him playing volleyball on the beach poised to serve the ball. It was the photo I was just editing and my cheeks flushed.

“I didn’t know you took this photo,” he chimed behind me, and when I turned to face him, a smirk twisted his lips, and his eyes sparkled with smugness. It almost made me want to delete it just to remove that look from his face. But he had already seen it and knew I had taken a photo of him. There wasn’t any way to get rid of the ideas rolling around his head.

“Whatever, Fischer. It was a good photo. I can delete it if you’d like?” I turned back to the laptop, my mouse hovering over the delete button.

He made a noise at the back of his throat like a mix between a hum and a laugh. “I don’t think you could, Kody. I mean, look at me. I wouldn’t blame you if you saved it as your wallpaper to look at it every day.”

I scoffed. “Get real, Fischer. It’s bad enough that I have to look at your face in real life, never mind in a photo.”

I felt him lean closer and my shoulder muscles stiffened before I felt the brush of his lips against the shell of my ear, amusement peeking through the gravel in his voice. “Now, I don’t think even you believe that, Kody.”

I turned my head just a fraction to meet his eyes. They were a shade of molten green, dark and intense. The overwhelming feeling that had been hanging over my head since he stepped through the front door blared in my mind. I wanted to kiss him. To pull him closer by the collar of his shirt and be just as lost in the moment as I was the night of my birthday party and drown in the feeling he brought to me.

His lip twitched into a smirk as he leaned closer. “I think you’re pretty fond of my face. Especially when I’m kissing you.” Then his eyes dipped to my lips. “Mostly when it’s between your thighs.”

I tried to pretend like his words didn’t have their intended reaction on me. Like it didn’t spread the flickering fire through every fibre of my being.

But the breathy way I said his name betrayed my strength.

“Reece.”

His eyes flickered with the roll of his name off my lips, and his lips stretched wide.

“Yes, Dakota?”

I needed to backtrack fast because there was no way my name should sound that good in his innocent voice as he blinked at me with mischief in his eyes.

My heart beat a little faster with every second he looked at me like that, but this time, instead of pulling me in, my fears had worked a little harder, and I swallowed down every instinct I had to lean closer.

“You shouldn’t be saying things like that.”

He twisted his lips before nodding and pulling away slightly.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he whispered and I watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as he worked a swallow.

He wasn’t wrong, though. I’m definitely very fond of his face. And after the night of my birthday party, locked in the confines of that bathroom, when his heated eyes flicked up to mine while his face was between my thighs, it may haunt my dreams forever.

The night flickered through my mind as a flush rose to my cheeks, and Reece’s attention flew straight to it.

When his eyes met mine again, his inquisitive gaze burned into me and those early fears fizzled to ash by the fire in his eyes.

I wanted to know how much it had plagued him like it had me. If it seared into his memory like a fever dream he never wished to wake from.

My mouth took on a mind of its own.

“Do you think about it a lot?” I said softly.

He chuckled. “Define a lot.” His fingers skimmed the top of my knee as he leaned against his thighs, his eyes latched onto mine. “It consumes my every thought and my every dream. I haven’t escaped it since the moment I tasted you.” His fingers rose higher along my thigh as my breath hitched. “I’m sure I can still taste you now, weeks later.”

I swallowed and looked away from the fire he was burning and consuming me with.

“This thing is way too messy for either of us to know how to handle. We’re friends, and that was already too complicated.” I sighed when I felt his hand press into my skin, resting on the side of my thigh.

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