Page 61 of The Reunion

It feels like we’re about to ruin and raze the other.

And the exhilaration of that, combined with this unfiltered attraction, is too intoxicating to ignore.

Ryan bows his head and my eyelids flutter closed as his forehead grazes mine. His breath is hot against the side of my face, the scruff of his beard tickling my skin. It makes me tilt my head, and my nose bumps against his. His mouth is just out of reach.

Ryan murmurs, ‘Never have I ever kissed a girl in the chemistry lab.’

It’s pathetic, cheesy and almost childish in its absolute line-ness, but, God, if it doesn’t work. If the lean and the looks and the line don’t all work on me exactly like he probably knew they would, and I can’t stand it any longer.

My bag falls and I think it lands directly on one of Ryan’s feet.

My free hands fist in the front of his shirt and yank him the rest of the way into me, our mouths colliding as the rest of our bodies follow suit.

Ryan, it turns out, kisses with all the arrogance with which he does anything else. His lips move languidly against mine, firm and unhurried and gentle, which makes me feel like he’s won because here I am, wanting to throw myself at him – but for once, I don’t mind. I am more than happy to let him win if it means this carries on. His tongue teases at my lower lip, and I feel his mouth curve into a smile when I don’t give in straight away.

I angle my head to fit better against his and slide my tongue into his open mouth. He moans and it sends a rush of heat to the pit of my stomach. There’s a faraway clang; he’s dropped the flask. I nip his lip between my teeth, eager to hear him make that noise again. Wanting to know it’s because of – for – me.

But the sound I pull out of Ryan is something rough and coarse, deep within the back of his throat, and this time I do melt. I actually understand what people mean when they say a man makes them weak at the knees.

I learn that Ryan is not the perfect gentleman he likes to pretend he is; his hands go straight for my arse, not just cupping but grabbing, and hoisting me off my feet. I’m pushed back into the door, not quite sure which of us wraps my legs around his hips, but very sure that it’s me who grinds down against his erection, half because I want to tease him and half because of the delirium it sends spiralling through me.

In our usual, rational world, where everything makes complete sense and I am not stuck in a science classroom during a power cut with my arch-nemesis from my school days and perpetual bane of my life, I don’t doubt that Ryan would never let me live it down if he made me orgasm without even having to do anything.

But I’m this close, and I really don’t care.

One of his hands pinches playfully at my arse. ‘Still bony,’ he informs me, hardly taking his mouth away from mine long enough to say it.

I wriggle against him. ‘Speak for yourself.’

He clutches me tighter, presses in closer – then stills, absolutely, and some of the lust-fuelled fog in my brain clears as he breathes hard, his fingers pressing into my skin like I’ll slip away any second. My legs clench tighter around his hips before I can stop myself.

‘Fuck, Ashleigh, what are you doing to me?’

‘Putting my money where my mouth is, I guess.’

A ragged chuckle slips out of him. ‘Don’t talk to me about where your mouth is.’

‘Why not? Wishing it was somewhere else?’

I kind of do, too. I really do, actually, now he mentions it.

His grip on me squeezes, trembles, releases again. ‘Don’t tempt me. Seriously, don’t, or I might actually shag you in our old chemistry classroom, which is not … Not how I imagined doing that.’

‘You’ve imagined shagging me?’

I mean for it to come out snide, teasing. To gloat in the fact that Ryan Lawal, who once called me unfuckable, thinks about having sex with me. But it doesn’t; it comes out needy, and breathy, and the hand I push through his hair is tender enough that his eyes close when he nods, and I cradle his face in my hands, eyes wide and heart skittering as I wait for his response.

‘I imagine a lot of things about you, Ashleigh. How you’d moan my name, the sound you’d make if I just …’ He sighs, slides a hand up into my hair beneath my updo and tugs lightly, making me arch against him. ‘Just a little.’ Then he lets go, drags that same hand so feather-light down the back of my neck to follow a pattern in the freckles along my shoulder. His lips graze a kiss against my temple, another against my cheek, one more at the corner of my mouth, where that lipstick smudge was. I imagine it’s smudged a whole lot worse now.

‘How you take your coffee in the mornings,’ he continues, then. ‘What you put on TV when you get home after a long day of work. If you poke your tongue out when you paint your nails, like you used to do in art lessons, and if you still like eighties rock music.’

The simplicity of it all has me speechless. I’ve always seen through Ryan’s bullshit act when he’s hamming it up, and … this isn’t it. This is so very, very far from anything I know Ryan to be capable of.

I don’t know what to do with it, so I deflect. Defer to old habits. Joke, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

He draws back just enough to look me in the eyes. ‘Yeah. I would.’

And, goddammit. Goddammit.

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