Page 22 of Star-Crossed
Lyra’s already rosy cheeks deepened in hue. “Okay, so Imayhave been the one to lean in, but you were definitely the one who made first contact.”
Was she right about that?
Had Cy closed the final gap separating his mouth from hers?
Cy wheeled backward in his mind, reviewing every available imprinted image of the selves they’d been that night.
The angry kid and the ice queen.
They’d been about as close as they were now.
Then, as now, her gaze had dropped to his lips before returning to meet his eyes with a mischievous glint that made Cy’s heart beat faster.
“I may have made first contact, but you were the one who licked my lip,” Cy said, his voice low and husky.
“Bit it, too.”
As soon as she said it, Cy received a jolt of the same sweet pleasure edged with pain that had so inflamed his younger self. And was having a curiously similar effect on his present one.
In the years since the accident, his libido had been like a controlling Dungeon Master at best, his body the mildly uninterested player. The few times he’d attempted anything resembling a romantic action, the DM only gave him a withering “You cantry” that had his various body parts shrugging and rolling for initiative.
Whether or not the necessary biological follow-through actually arrived had generally been just as random as a dice throw.
And never swiftly.
But now…
Now.
Something woke in him and began to move, uncoiling from the base of his spine, stretching to fill his limbs.
“I grabbed your hair,” he said, wanting to own his part as she had. Completely immersed in the memory now, he felt the warm silk slide through his fingers.
“You did.” Lyra’s chest had begun to rise and fall with faster, shallower breaths. “So I grabbed yours.”
Cy had worn it longer in those days, having to wad it into a topknot, which his teammates had given him no end of shit for, and tuck it beneath his football helmet. The sensation returned to him now, prickling at his nape before spilling goosebumps down his arms.
“Your nipples were hard.” Cy glanced downward to find that the same alchemy that had begun its work on him must be affecting her as well. “So I felt them through your shirt.”
“No,” she said, a little breathless. “Beneath it.”
“You’re right,” he said, as the sensation of her bare breast materialized against his palm.
“I know.”
Their eyes locked, and in a moment whose odds were just as astronomical as the accidents that had brought him here, Cy and Lyra lunged for each other at exactly the same second.
Their mouths crashed first, and their bodies followed the force of impact, sinking onto the couch in an urgent tangle. Her arms wound around his torso, one hand on the back of his neck, the other on the small of his back beneath the t-shirt. Her thigh hooked over his hip, causing Cy to shift his leg to keep his boots away from the couch as much as to keep the sole of her bare foot from landing on his calf.
Lyra’s tongue slid against his with an exploratory, possessive swipe that made his brain turn to static.
They made out like the fate of the goddamned world depended on it.
And maybe it did.
Maybe what he felt now was the exact same force that made birds such an occupational hazard every spring, frequently toppling off the most precarious of tree branches but continuing to furiously fuck on the wind as they flapped and fell, pulling apart milliseconds before disaster.
Sometimes not pulling apart at all.
