Page 10 of Hound Dog
His laugh shimmied down my body like silk, the sound making me shiver. “Okay, I admit, they’re not as good as the original. But they’re so fucking campy that they’re fun.”
It was pointless arguing with acrazyperson. “I don’t think I can be friends with you,” I joked.
I felt him turn, rolling onto his side to look at me. Felt the searing heat of his eyes watching me. “Good,” he said.
I snapped around to look back at him, my cheek pressing against the soft blanket. “Good?”
He blinked, that stunningly soft and flirty smile back again. “That’s right.Good. I don’t want to be yourfriend.”
His knuckles brushed my thigh again, this time a more deliberate stroke that made my heart hiccup into my throat. “You don’t?”
“No,” he whispered, his gaze falling to my lips.
Only once in my life had someone told me they didn’t want to be my friend—it was Charlie Arwin in the second grade… right after I kneed him in the face for looking up my skirt.
Somehow, though, I had the feeling this was different.
With his eyes still firmly affixed to my mouth, he inched closer. Then closer. Until his mouth was hovering just over mine. But still, he didn’t kiss me.
His sigh was barely audible. Just a light exhale as he lifted his hand to my jaw and traced a line down to my chin.
On one hand, I could practically hear my mother cheering in her grave that he stopped shy of kissing me. On the other, I could feel that Aunt Meryl would urge me to make a move first.
Well, Mom, you’re not here. And Aunt Meryl is,I thought with an irrational swell of anger toward my mother for leaving me so early.
Gulping back the lump in my throat, I said, “You’re not going to kiss me?”
Finn’s eyes grew wide. “I promised you your virtue,” he answered simply.
“And a kiss will unravel that?”
His soft, flirty grin only made me want to kiss him more. His tanned complexion was smooth and clear. I could smell a hint of some sort of soap or shaving cream on his clean-shaven jaw. Sea glass-colored eyes practically shined back at me in the dark of the night and were framed by a spray of long eyelashes.
“You tell me,” he countered.
“Well, it’s not like you’re my first kiss. So, if that negates virtue, then I’m a lost cause already.”
I didn’t tell him the fact that my first kiss had only been last year… and it didn’t even involve tongue.
And it was onstage in the spring musical,Guys and Dolls.
His chuckle was sweet, gentle. “Hmmm. Good point.” As he nodded, he was still so close that his nose brushed mine. “But,just in case, I think you should be the one to kissme. That way, I won’t feel like some perv who picked you up at my mom’s cupcake shop, took you to the roof of an abandoned mill, then kissed away your virtue. At least if you kiss me—”
I only had to lean forward an inch for our mouths to connect.
His shock lasted just a brief second and he gave a small, muffledhmphas I swallowed his next words mid-sentence.
To his credit, he recovered quickly. Though I’d expected him to cup my jaw like people do in the movies, instead, he snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me against him as his other hand twisted into my hair.
His mouth explored mine gently. I felt his tongue brush my lips and I parted them, allowing him to taste me deeper. His tongue was sweet as it brushed mine with the faint, lingering tang of strawberries.
His soft moan vibrated inside of me, and when he moved to pull back, I whimpered, clutching the collar of his shirt, and tugging him back into the kiss.
I wasn’t ready for this to be over. I wasn’t ready for this feeling to end.
Finn’s kiss was like being set free. Like flying. Like a Thanksgiving feast after a lifetime of fasting.
I needed more. I’d never felt anything so pleasurably intense as that kiss. Everything about it—about him—was so perfect, and I felt myself morphing from a sweet eighteen-year-old high school graduate into a sex-crazed She-Hulk of a human.
