Tears pricked at my eyes because no one had ever done something like this for me. Ever. “Why?”
“Because I can. Because I want to. Because you deserve it,” he said, wiping away a tear that had escaped. “No more questions, LT. Just accept the fact that I care about you.”
“Take me to your house,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Samaj is staying with my dad tonight; they’re going to a game in the morning.”
The words came out quieter than I intended. I wasn’t used to putting my own wants first, wasn’t sure I was allowed to. For so long, I’d centered everything around my son. His schedule. His emotions. His safety. And now, here I was, on a Thursday night, heart racing, standing in front of a man who made me feel like he’d wrestle a hundred gorillas for me. Like he’d lasso the damn moon if I asked.
“I want to be with you. I’m ready to see a man about a horse.”
The second I said it, he moved. No longer holding back. He stepped in close, heat rolling off his body and on to mine. He wrapped his arms around my waist, hands resting low on my ass.
“Finally,” he mouthed before kissing me, sending a flood through my body. My panties didn’t have enough fabric to catch my juices. I clenched my thighs together, low-key afraid of this foreign flooding.
He pinned me gently against the car, reminding me exactly what I was saying yes to. My back met the door, but I barely registered it. All I felt was him, his lips, his breath, the slow curl of his fingers against my lower back.
“How do we stay in this moment forever?” I asked, breathlessly feeling every bit of vulnerable with him doing and saying everything but those three words.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t stutter. Just looked me dead in the eyes like he saw everything I was trying not to say.
“I don’t want just moments with you, MiMi. I want every damn beginning. Over and over. I want to memorize the way your body moves under mine, the exact second your eyes close when you feel safe. I want the falling, the trusting, the choosing, the waiting, and the fire that comes when we start again. That’s what I’m on. I don’t want temporary. I want you…real, vulnerable, and all the way mine.”