Page 54 of The Moment Promised

My bare feet sink into the mud, each footstep making a squashing sound.

After a few beats, the rain stops all together.

We finally meet an opening. It looks like the group of trees were struck by lightning. I start to conclude that’s what the noise was, until I hear it again. I jump from the sudden boom, and I look up and watch the fireworks explode in the distant sky. It all adds up now, and I kick myself for not realizing what today was sooner.

“It’s the Fourth of July,” Finn and I say in unison.

Excitement shoots down my body, mimicking the fireworks in the sky above us when Finn takes one large step toward me. He grabs my hands and stares into my eyes.

I don’t want this night to be the last time we’re like this. Now that I’ve had a taste, I will forever be starved of him. He leans in to kiss my lips.

“I know we can’t do this back home,” I blurt out.

His face pulls away from mine.

I don’t think I even know what is going to come out of my mouth until the moment it does. “Because when we go home, you’ll be packing up for college. But we aren’t home. We don’t have to be home for at least a month.” I smile as the gears turn in my head and I picture doing this every day we are away from Key Largo. “Let’s just let whatever this is run its course, at least until we get home.”

He raises a brow, “You mean like…” He struggles, like he doesn’t want to offend me, so I answer for him.

“A summer fling.”

“Let me get this straight.” He holds up a hand, eyes narrowed, half smirk playing on his lips. “You’re telling me you want to like, what? Be in a relationship?” He clears his throat.“And when we go home, and I go back to college…everything will be how it was before?”

I try not to think that far ahead, to whatever lies after this trip. It might be my worst mistake, but in the moment promised I’m a desperate fool. “Yes.” The word falls off my tongue before I can give another thought to the future, like it’s a faraway land we’ll never reach.

His expression shifts to something unreadable, but only for the blink of an eye. He rushes to me, sweeping me off my feet and wrapping my thighs around his hips.

He kisses me so deeply. The world spins and I feel like I’m going to fall. But Finn holds me so close to him that I couldn’t.

He owns my heart and has no clue.

I let out a guilt-free moan. For the first time, this isn’t happening by mistake. His lips are intentional, along with my reaction to them. Warmth piles up in my core.

“Adeline,” he says, gripping my rear. “We should’ve been doing this since the moment we met.” His voice comes out ragged, and it sends a heatwave down my body.

I try to laugh but I’m too overwhelmed with emotions I never knew existed. “You mean when we were nine?”

“Well, when you put it that way...” Everywhere he kisses catches fire, and right now my neck is his victim. “No.”

I finally let myself feel beneath his shirt. His damp skin raises in goosebumps. I picture the way his muscles curve and dip as he tenses from the cold. But I want to see him with my own eyes, not my imagination.

His arousal grows against me, and my hand anxiously descends to grip him over his soaked clothes. His breath hitches and he grabs my hand, stilling it and pulling it up to his lips, placing a gentle kiss on my palm.

“Oh, sorry.” I cringe at myself and my inexperience. What am I even doing?

“Believe me, I want you to grab me,” he admits. “I just—" He sighs. “I don’t think we should get carried away with this. We’ve been driving all day and have been confined in my car. Maybe we should sleep on it…besides, I’m not making love to you for the first time in the back seat of my car.”

I don’t want him to sleep on it, after a good night’s rest what if he decides this was the worst mistake of his life? Sitting up in a coat of sweat, gasping for air like he’s woken from a nightmare, only to find out it was real. He really did kiss me, and he has to run to the bushes to expel the remains of me from his mouth.

But before I can say anything, he starts walking back to the car with me in tow. He buckles in and starts driving. I don’t ask where we are going, I just close my eyes and dream of a fling with Finn that has no expiration date.

14

We’re here.” I feel a hand rub my arm.

I open my eyes and scan the length of the building beyond the window. It seems to be at least twenty stories tall. In a sleepy daze, I rub my eyes and get out of the car, immediately stopping when I realize I’m not wearing anything but panties and a moist T-shirt. I rush back into the car.

Finn tosses me a pair of shorts from my suitcase.

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