Page 66 of Like First Love, Again

Body tense, Mia tossed her head back. Sweat stung her eyes when she managed a “Thank you” seconds before an orgasm ripped through her. An orgasm so intense that she didn’t reach its end before Tori was sucking her clit and bobbing her head in a way that made Mia feel like she was fucking her mouth. Something she’d never imagined wanting, but the idea alone was sending her into an even harder climax. She barely eked out anotherthank youbefore her hips were shooting off the bed again.

Mia was on the verge of painful overstimulation when Tori released her. Kissing a rough line up Mia’s body, Tori claimed her mouth with a kiss so deep it was debilitating just before she plunged two fingers so deep inside her, it triggered another orgasm before Mia could make a sound.

Clawing at Tori’s back, Mia could barely sustain their kiss but she wouldn’t give up Tori’s mouth. Rocking hard against Tori’s fingers, pushing her in as far as she could go and wishing for just a little more, Mia’s orgasm tore through her. She clung to Tori’s sweat-soaked body like she might fall off the planet if she loosened her grasp.

Tori slid out of her gently, but Mia didn’t let her move. She needed Tori’s full weight on top of her. Needed every inch of her body on hers or she’d stop existing. Or she’d float away and she’dbe back in Philly. In the gray life she didn’t know was colorless until Tori filled it with something vivid and bright and blinding. Until she made it make sense again.

“Are you okay?” Tori pressed the lightest kisses to her cheek, her jaw, her ear. The tenderness in her voice made Mia want to cry, but she closed her eyes hard and refused to let the tears fall. “Was it too much?”

When she could feel her extremities again, Mia ran her fingers through Tori’s damp hair. She made soothing circles on her back while holding her close. “Was what too much?” She kissed Tori’s shoulder, her neck. “Using reverse psychology to trick me into an orgasm?”

“Just one?” Tori joked, voice soft.

“Don’t get used to it,” Mia replied, gathering her nerve to try and match the unparalleled. “That’s not how it usually goes.”

“We’ll see,” Tori said with intoxicating self-assurance.

It was the confidence Mia didn’t have and couldn’t hope to fake. She wanted to kiss Tori the way she deserved to be kissed. To show her with her mouth and hands and body and words that she wanted her. That she longed for her. But she couldn’t make herself move. Didn’t know how to make Tori feel all the things she had felt.

And then too much time passed. She waited a second too long. Another beat, and then another.

Tori’s steady breaths and soft sounds of contentment filled the silence. She didn’t move. Didn’t initiate more. Didn’t tell Mia what she was supposed to do next. She just rested her head against Mia’s collarbone like she could hear her heart pounding and didn’t want to chase it away.

Unsure what to do, and trying not to cry, Mia held her. Kissed her shoulder. Ran her hand up and down the curve of her back until Tori’s body softened against hers completely.

Tori fell asleep like that—wrapped around Mia, face pressed to her throat.

And Mia didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t dare breathe too loudly in case it woke her up.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling and tried to keep her heart from splitting open. Because the only thing more terrifying than how much she wanted Tori but didn’t know how to show her, was how much she already loved her.

Thirty-Four

The scent of coffee nudged Tori awake. Struggling to stay in a dream, she pulled the pillow closer and buried her face in it. The pillow wasn’t hers, she realized in some fuzzy part of her brain. It was too soft and she had to scrunch it up to make it firmer. Perfume, familiar and soothing, was strong enough to drown out the coffee smell. But as soon as Tori recognized it, her eyes flew open.

Through a window that wasn’t hers, sunlight poured in so bright, it was probably midday. Drowsy, Tori rubbed her eyes and accepted the truth. She’d woken up in Mia’s bed. Naked. Long after morning was over.

Her limbs were heavy, sore in places she didn’t know could ache. Her heart was too big for her ribcage. Too full.

Tori rolled onto her back, looked up at a ceiling she’d seen a thousand times, and laughed. It wasn’t a quiet chuckle, it was an eruption like she’d swam too deep and burst through the ocean’s surface gasping for air. It was too much energy and nowhere to put it. It was the dizzying relief of not having drowned.

She was still buzzing when Mia returned, two mugs in hand. In Tori’s shirt from the night before—unbuttoned, too tight, andclearly the only thing she had on—Mia smiled. Smiled with her eyes and skin and heart like she hadn’t expected to find Tori awake. Or maybe at all.

At the sight of her, Tori’s laugh returned, but this time it wasn’t so unruly. “Wearing my clothes?” She sat up, resisting the unnecessary urge to cover her bare chest. “When we’re in your house with literally everything you own?”

Mia tried to tamp down her grin, but it was ungovernable. “Since when are you so anti-sharing?” She handed Tori a mug.

“Since, apparently, you’re some kind of squirrel who’s been stockpiling my clothes for fourteen years like winter’s coming,” she said, sipping the most deliciouscafé con lecheshe’d ever tasted.

“That’s not true.” Mia’s tone was defiant, but her perfect mouth couldn’t shake the smile. “I didn’t take a single thing all those years we were on hiatus.”

Laughing, Tori set both of their mugs on the side table and pulled Mia onto the bed. “Hiatus, huh?”

She took Mia by the waist, rolled her onto her back, and kissed her. Her lips were warm and sweet with coffee. She tasted like sunrise and light and morning. Like miracle and revelation and hope.

Opening for her, Mia pulled her between her parted thighs. Not with the intensity of the night before, but something much softer and significantly more devastating.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Mia said when she broke their kiss. She looked up at Tori with her red hair splayed over white sheets and eyes so full of the same emotion hammering in Tori’s chest.

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