Page 42 of Ulune's Daughter

KELLAN

We don’t catch the band. We don’t even make it inside.

We make out like high-schoolers. For hours. Hours of deep kisses, roaming hands, and strangely innocent desire. He doesn’t try to get into my pants. Even when we move into the back seat and I end up straddling him, he doesn’t encourage me to rub on him.

He gets under my shirt and plays with my breasts until my nipples are so sensitive I whimper with each brush of his fingertips. I pull off his shirt and explore the cords and ridges of his swimmer’s physique. Which is intimidating at first—he’s in serious shape—and then just mouthwatering, especially when I discover all the delicious noises I can draw out of him by stroking those ridges, nipping his corded throat, and licking his flat nipples.

The lights have gone off in the bar when he stops kneading my ass through my jeans and gives me a little slap.

I moan and sink onto him.

“That’s a yes?” he whispers, rubbing his cheek against mine.

“Yes.”

“How muchyes?”

“Yes until I say stop?”

He nips my earlobe. “Can you give me an idea of where you might say stop? The last thing I want to do is freak you out.”

If only he knew how much it takes to freak me out. “Yesto spanking,yesto harder things,yesto biting and drawing a little blood—” Am I really ready to say the rest? On the second date? “Down the road, if we get that far, if you want to ...yesto me saying yes once and you doing whatever you want until morning.”

“Uh, that’s called?—"

“Consensual non-consent. I know. I have an active imagination and good internet access.”

He chuckles. “Right. That’s a lot ofyes.”

I nod into his throat, wondering if I’ve freakedhimout. “If it’s too much, just do what you’re comfortable with.”

He chuckles. “I’m comfortable with quite a lot. I haven’t tried that, consensual non-consent, though. Let’s say you’re sleeping and my motor’s revving, you don’t want me to wake you up and make sure you’re in the mood first?”

I shiver.

“I’d really like it if you didn’t wake me up at all. Just go for it.”

He hums in his throat and squeezes my ass. I’m going to be wearing his fingerprints tomorrow. “That’s a turn on. When we get there. I’m not pushing. This isn’t a hookup for me. I don’t do those.”

I don’tanymore. I outgrew them when I stopped conflating sex with intimacy. Right around the time I moved into my house for the first time.

“Good,” I say. “There’s not enough trust in a hookup to get to the really funyes.”

He sighs into my hair and kisses my temple. “This is so much more than I expected, Kellan.”

“So muchyes?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, so much yes.”

* * *

I drive us home slowly,carefully. We’re both dopey and drugged from all the kissing. The last thing I want to do is hit a deer. Or worse, a moose. A kid hit a moose with his Honda on Route 1 when I was a senior. The moose survived; the Honda didn’t. I love my Jeep. I don’t want it pancaked by a moose.

Rhodes plays idly with my knuckles as I drive, his hand over mine as I rest it on the gear shift. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

“It is tomorrow.” I nod at the clock on the dashboard.

His grin flashes in the darkness. “Can I see you later today?”

---