****
The stool creaked. It groaned. It creaked again. Then groaned. My biology partner, a lanky boy with braces peered over at me, question mangled with impatience behind his glasses. I stopped my shifting. Instead, my foot took up an erratic patter against the laminate. My pencil rapped against my open book. I shifted forward again. The stool creaked.
“Do you need the bathroom?” Stan, my partner, hissed.
I flashed him an apologetic wince. “Sorry.”
He went back to his note-taking. I went back to watching the clock.
It had been the longest three days in history since Halloween. The weekend oozed like thick tar from a bottle. Every second passed with agonizing slowness. But instead of the smothering lethargy ending there, it followed me into the week. Every class seemed five hours long and even my lunch period didn’t end fast enough. I wanted to leave. I wanted to get away from the white walls, the persistent chatter, and the confinement. I felt suffocated. Tears of frustration burned behind my eyes. The stool groaned. Please hurry! I silently pleaded.
I was the first one out of my seat and out the door the second the bell rang. Students were just filing out of their classes and I was already at my locker, fumbling, cursing and fighting with the lock. The tears were so close now. I punched my locker, gave it a sharp kick, and gave up. Leaving behind my jacket and flute, I ran blindly out of the school with my biology books squished into my aching chest.
The moment the crisp, autumn air struck my face, I closed my eyes and whimpered. My limbs trembled as I drew in the scent of rotting leaves and pumpkins. But it wasn’t enough. It was like trying to breathe through a paper bag. The air was hot, stale… lacking. I couldn’t pull enough of it into my lungs. Part of me wondered if this was how a fish felt out of water.
I staggered down the steps, dazed, miserable, feeling like I wanted a deep, dark hole to crawl into. The spiraling depression made no sense when only that Friday, I had been fine. Maybe I was coming down with something.
The thought was still churning in my mind when the wind shifted and I was rushed by the scent of honeysuckles, moss, freshly turned dirt, rain and sunbaked bark. My body was turning, spinning, pulsing even before my mind could catch up to the meaning behind the trickle of liquid gold that warmed the chill soaking my bones. I was running, pushing my way through the crowd. My heart drummed inside my skull. I rounded the red-bricked building, and there he was, leaning against a black Firebird, hands tucked into black cargos. He wore a t-shirt in faded black and his hair was down his back in a waterfall of ebony. My heart leapt in my chest.
“Keane!” It was no more than my lips forming his name and he was more than twenty feet away, but his head came up. His face softened into a smile, and I was running again. “Keane!”
He caught me with little effort when I launched myself into his waiting arms. My books crashed to the asphalt beneath our feet, forgotten. His arms locked around me. His fingers closed in my hair, pressing my face into the curve of his neck. I fisted the back of his shirt, grappling him close.
He smelled like sin. He felt like heaven. I had never felt more found, more complete. The hovering dark cloud vanished, and I was drowning in pure sunshine.
I was home.
“You came back!” I breathed into the front of his shirt.
“I never left.”
My head dropped back so I could peer into his face. “I never saw you.”
The corner of his mouth quirked in a lopsided grin. He smoothed a hooked finger over my cheek. “You weren’t paying attention.”
Realization flooded my neck and face with heat. I pulled reluctantly out of his embrace. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
He tucked a stray coil of hair behind my ear. His fingers grazed my cheek and my spine erupted in shivers. “I missed ya, too, luv. Severely.”
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
He tucked his hands into his pockets. “Hoping you’d give a lad a chance and let him take ya home.”
My brow quirked. “Depends, who’s the lad?” Was I really flirting?
In a single fluid motion that I never saw coming, I was backed into the side of a truck, caged by the hands Keane anchored on the truck bed on either side of my head. His nose bumped mine. His breath tangled with mine. I fell into his eyes, chips of onyx against a golden face.
“You’ve destroyed me,” he murmured. His gaze dropped to my lips, parting them. They lifted again to mine, burning me with the hunger glaring back.
I trembled. “I’m sorry.”
One hand lifted, rested on the side of my face. His thumb swept over my lips, making them tingle. “And just what are ya sorry for, mm? For completing me? For giving my bleak existence meaning?” When I could only stare in stunned silence, he smiled gently. “No, luv. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
I blinked out of my speechlessness. “That isn’t normal you know.”
He drew back. “What’s that?”
“What you’re talking about.” I moistened my lips. “We met once for like an hour. I shouldn’t feel so lost without you. I’m not one of those girls who fall…” I trailed off, realizing where that was heading.
“Maybe that’s because you hadn’t met the right man.”
“And you’re the right man?”
There was no smile. No twinkle in his eyes, just a hot inferno that left no room for doubt. “Yes!”
For a moment, my lungs forgot how to inhale and I choked on my gasp. My heart tripped.
He closed the precious distance between us. My head fell back as he loomed over me, tall, dark and powerful. My senses spiked, blazed hot. He drowned me in his eyes, distracting me from noticing until his fingers grazed the length of my arm that he’d raised a hand. Every inch of skin from shoulder to wrist blistered. My hand was swallowed in his, raised and cherished beneath his lips. I inhaled sharply. My body swayed towards his. With deliberate pecks, he slipped his lips over my knuckles.
“What—what are you doing?” I honestly didn’t mean for it to come out weak and breathy and full of begging, but he was nipping on each cap with his teeth, sending slivers of fire up my arm.
Never breaking stride, he turned my hand over, trailing his lips from my palm to the pulse inside my wrist. His gaze lifted, pinned my face. Then, carefully, but with a firmness that shot heat to my curling toes, his free hand slipped beneath the weight of my hair, cupped the back of my skull and dragged my body forward to fuse into his.
My heart tripped. “Keane…”
His eyes darkened. “I’ll show you just how much I mean it.”
Then he kissed me.
The world dissolved in a beautiful hue of shimmering gold. His lips, his arms were the only things keeping me in this world when my very soul threatened to be swept away. An excruciating burst of heat swelled up through me, a river of molten lava replacing my blood. When I gasped and broke the lock of his lips from mine, I half expected to be up in flames.
“Not yet.” He bared his teeth. “I’m not finished!”
I had barely gulped three greedy breaths when his mouth claimed mine with the hunger of a condemned man given his last meal. His kiss was harder, possessive, like an animal devouring its prey. He gave me no chance to breathe, to think, to even find a footing as he tore the very ground out from under me.
When my knees buckled, his arms were there, bands of steel crushing me to his rigid frame. His fingers curled in my hair and my face was dragged back from his. He was breathing as hard as I was and he looked fierce, untameable… dangerous.
“Tell me now you don’t want this.” He nipped sharply on my bottom lip. “That you don’t want me, and I’ll walk away. It’ll kill me, no doubt, but I’ll do it for you.”
It was the walking away that cracked my heart into my ribs. It wasn’t passion or excitement this time. It was cold, crippling terror. The image of him, his back, taking steps away from me…
“I don’t want you
.” I grabbed handfuls of his shirt when his body went rigid against mine and his jaw tensed. “Not only,” I dampened my lips, dared myself to keep his gaze, “I need you, Keane. I know it’s insane and it makes no sense, but—”
His mouth was two pieces of red hot coals burning into mine, eating my words, my soul. I was mindless with him, lost in him and just when I was trickling into a hot, gooey puddle, he tore away.
“I need ya, too.”
****
I held her, bathing in her scent of lilacs and promised myself that I would tell her. Not today, but soon. I would ease her into the new future waiting for both of us. I would care for her, love her, be with her. She will never want for anything, because she was mine now and I wasn’t going to let anything change that.
Learn more about Airicka Phoenix and The Touch Series at https://airickaphoenix.com/Author/
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