Page 99 of A Collision of Stars

‘I could live right here forever,’ I say, mouth moving across her skin. Lips, jaw, cheeks, neck, nose, there’ll never be enough seconds in the day for the amount of her I want to get to know. ‘I’m serious. This is all I need.’ She tilts her head so I can run my mouth up the length of her throat. My voice drops to a whisper. ‘You’re a fucking constellation.’

‘So dramatic,’ she murmurs.

A low chuckle spills out of me. ‘I’m trying to be romantic.’

‘You’re being corny,’ she says, voice hoarse as her nails dig into my shoulders through my shirt to pull me closer.

I spin us to pin her against the bookcase, and when I push my hips forward and her eyes close briefly, I know she feels all of me, the way I feel all of her. I’ve never thought about the convenience of us being a similar height before, but it suddenly makes complete sense; the way every part of us perfectly aligns, the way all I need to do is shift my weight slightly and there’s friction right where shelikes it, right where I need it.

‘If you didn’t want corny,’ I say, hands moving under her t-shirt, gliding over her stomach, her waist, resting just below her bra, ‘you shouldn’t have started kissing someone who thinks the sun shines out of your ass.’

She pulls away and takes off her shirt before I have a chance to blink, and she’s so beautiful I almost don’t want to look, but I do, of course, because finally she’s given me permission, and it elicits a noise I don’t fully recognise from my mouth, sending blood roaring through my body.

‘In that case, maybe I should’ve stuck with Jacob,’ she muses. I freeze and she laughs at my expression. ‘It’s not good etiquette to mention another man right now, is it?’

My lips move back to her neck, and I listen for every hitch of her breath to guide me.

‘It wasn’t good etiquette when that man said you lookednice.Niceis for chain restaurants.’ She sighs as I work my way down to the flushed skin of her chest. ‘And supermarket flowers.’ I move her chin so I can look at her, ocean eyes churning; hungry and desperate, hunting for a victim to drag into the waves. But my whole life, I’ve never been able to resist the water. ‘It’s not for this.’

32

is this what it feels like to believe in a higher power?

A V A

‘God,’ he says, voicea rasp as he presses me against the bookshelf, urgently kissing along my jaw, down my throat, across my chest, all while his hand finds its way between my thighs.

‘I didn’t know you believed in that kind of thing.’ My breath catches when his fingers drag across the lace in a slow, precise rhythm.

His darkened eyes bore into mine as he increases the pressure, and then he leans closer, warm breath fanning across my face. ‘I’ll get on my knees, Ava.’ His lips brush the shell of my ear. ‘But it won’t be for God.’

A shiver runs through me and all I can say is a breathy, ‘Prove it.’

I don’t let him decide what to do next, instead threading my fingers through his hair and pushing his head downward, and his quiet laugh fizzes across my skin. My entire body pulls taut as he presses his lips against my chest, down my stomach, until he’s on his knees, dragging his mouth from one bare hip to the other.

And then he loops two of his fingers into my underwear and pulls it to the side, and I guess now he has proof of how much I want him, because he releases a throaty sound before making contact with his tongue, immediately working some kind of magic with careful, practised strokes that send me into a squirming, heavy-bellied stupor.

‘You’re still wearing all your clothes,’ I accuse, somehow getting the words out despite the havoc he’s wreaking between my legs.

‘One of us has to have some decorum around here.’ He pulls me closer and one of my hands digs into his hair to keep his head in place, to keep that heat bubbling beneath the surface. ‘Is this okay?’

‘Very okay,’ I manage, and his eyes wrinkle at the sides when he glances up, never breaking the steady contact of his mouth against me. He must have the codes to every pleasure centre in my brain; each swipe of his fingers and glide of his tongue a password that unlocks the parts of me that feel like chaos and bliss and delirium all in one.

He lifts my right leg to hook it over his shoulder, angling me towards him, and a whimper escapes me as he buries his head further between my thighs, the damp heat of his tongue making me writhe.

When he slides a finger inside me, I clench around him and whisper, ‘One more.’

Immediately, he adds a second finger, and my whole body shakes with every movement he makes. When I roll my hips into him he makes a low noise that consequently makesmemake a noise, and I laugh to myself, because this feels like some weird, unholy echo chamber.

Somehow, people are still yelling in the other room, and I thank whatever higher power exists that everyone is drunk and apparently extremely competitive about Articulate, because the sounds that spill out of me are absolutely not for public consumption. They weren’t meant to be for Finn’s consumption either, but it’s hard to remember that when my brain is getting more nebulous with every passing second.

Yet, despite all he’s doing right, I don’t want to be patient. Not after how long I’ve needed this.

I detach myself to stretch an arm to my bedside table, fumble with something in the drawer, and practically launch the purple object at his head in my eagerness for him to have it. I manage to get out a ragged, ‘This’ll be faster.’

‘You know best,’ hemurmurs. Before I know it he’s pressed the button and lit the fuse, and where each sensation was warm and fuzzy before, now everything is pure electricity, and I can’t focus on anything but letting the pressure expand within me.

Still on his knees, he peppers me with delicate kisses while his hands are occupied, pressing his lips against my stomach, my hips, my thighs, and it’s so intimate for such a frenetic moment that it takes my breath away.

---