Page 93 of Can't Help Falling

She rose up from the couch and his energy did the same thing it had done in the kitchen last night. It went from a mad, swirling storm cloud to a slow-motion tumble, everything just a touch away from being frozen in time.

“No,” she said. “On second thought, don’t answer that. Let me make this really clear. Ty, it was special. I want to do it again.”

“Special,” he murmured, his eyes locked on hers, his expression completely bemused.

“Would you like some proof?”

“I—” His mouth clapped closed again. “Yes.”

She took a few steps closer to him and by the time she was at the foot of the armchair, she could see the pulse dancing the tango in his throat. His hands were on either of the arms of the chair and his face was tipped up to hers. She could feel his nerves, his reticence, his ever-present confusion. And if she hadn’t felt that zapping lick of hope radiating off of him, she might have stepped back. If she hadn’t felt the words hell yes materialize out of thin air and just known that they were from him, she might have given him his space back.

Mindful of her long legs and the tight squeeze of the two of them in that chair, Fin folded herself sideways onto Tyler’s lap, her eyes bouncing back and forth between his. He wasn’t leaning in, but his arms instantly came around her, one hand sliding up her back, the other making itself at home over top of her knees, hooking her to him.

Their eyes were connected in that time-bending, steel-rope sort of way, and when she leaned forward, so did he. Their eyes stayed linked even when their lips brushed.

“Ouch.”

They leaned back as one, her hand going over her mouth to rub away the zap of static shock that had just sparked between them.

“Why does that keep happening?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Shit. You’re, like, actually a witch, aren’t you?”

She rolled her eyes at him, laced her fingers in his hair and tugged him forward. This kiss was not tentative. Not exploratory. This kiss had a purpose. Fin wanted Tyler to leave this kiss and know exactly how much she’d meant to kiss him.

She used her mouth to open his mouth and joyfully swallowed the groan of appreciation that reverberated from his chest. Fin flattened a hand over his heart, reveling in the race of his heartbeat, in the rumble of the sounds he was making as she kissed him. He gripped her even tighter against him, and she had a flash of intuition. Ty, she realized, was tactile. She was sure he was just as turned on by visuals as the next guy, but he was also a true toucher. Which was something that was rarer than it seemed. In this day and age of internet porn, it seemed to Fin that most guys were more into the visuals of sex than how it actually felt. All the popular sex positions these days had minimal body contact, people just kind of forking each other, their only contact being between their tines.

But not Ty. She knew without even having slept with him, just from this kiss. He momentarily stopped to shift her higher on his lap, to nuzzle his nose under her chin, to smooth her ponytail down over her back.

When they kissed again, it was just as needy, but somehow even softer. She felt every swipe of his palm over her thigh, every rough adjustment of his forearm over her back, the tight set of their bodies against one another. All of it was heating her up. But in a languid way. Like the difference between heating butter in the microwave and setting it out to warm in the sun.

Her neck was cricking, kissing him sideways like that, so she reared back and swung a leg over his hip, straddling him and facing him head-on. He automatically widened the set of his knees and had her fitting even more snugly against him. She smiled at him smugly, but he leaned forward and kissed the smile right off of her mouth.

This kiss had been meant to knock his socks off, to clear up some of his confusion, but she hadn’t quite calculated for just how good of a kisser Tyler was. She’d never, in her life, been kissed like this. Him bending her slightly backward, cradling her head in one hand, taking her weight so that all she had to do was open wide and receive him.

And receive him she did. He was a tongue kisser for sure. But not in that tone-deaf, domineering way that so many guys were. He wasn’t invading her mouth, planting a flag, taking. No. He was tasting her. Warming her. And, she had to admit as she lunged up and didn’t let him retreat, he was opening her right up.

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