I said, “Yes.”
7
I expected him to lean forward immediately, but he didn’t. His lips parted and he watched me like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly.
He was a lot shyer than I’d thought. Either that, or he suspected I wasn’t serious and I would hit him. Either way, I decided I’d better take charge. I leaned toward him and to the right, aiming to start with his ear.
He crashed into my forehead. It took me a second of seeing stars to realize he’d started forward in the same direction, and we’d bashed heads.
“Oh, God,” he said, covering my forehead with his palm. “Are you okay?”
My face turned white-hot. I was blushing, and I knew it, which probably meant I didn’t have a concussion. “Yes.” I put my hand on his forehead, too. When he dipped his head, my fingers slipped back through his waves. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I have done this before.” His hand slid down to cradle my cheek. “I’m going this way.”
“I’m staying still,” I assured him.
Now his thumb traced down my chin. My heart sped up at his touch, but I told myself he was trying to get better traction so I wouldn’t unexpectedly jerk and cause us to bash heads again.
That’s honestly what I was thinking. I could take the sweetest situation and make jokes out of it. If I expected nothing, I was never disappointed. But as he moved toward me, there was a point when our eyes locked. He looked so sincere that in that moment, I believed him. I believed in him. I believed anything he wanted to tell me.
His gaze slipped down to my lips. I closed my eyes.
His lips touched mine, a tickle on one side of my mouth, then a pressure that sent tingles down my neck and across my chest. My instinct was to slip both hands around his waist and pull him closer, but he wasn’t some guy from school I was making out with at a party. He was special.
So I didn’t push him. And he didn’t push me. We kissed like that for a long time, exploring each other’s lips and nothing else, while electricity ran along my skin and set my fingertips on fire.
Finally he pulled back. I couldn’t read his expression clearly in the dusky truck, but I thought he looked almost frightened, his dark eyes hooded and his brows drawn into a worried crease.
I whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he whispered back. “Absolutely nothing.”
I gasped as his fingers slipped behind my neck and into my hair.
His hand stopped. His eyes widened with concern. “Okay?” he asked.
More than okay. I nodded.
He watched me carefully for a moment more like he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind. Then his fingers slipped farther into my hair, tangling themselves so I couldn’t have gotten away, and his palm tightened on the back of my neck. Now I understood why he’d asked permission. Things were about to get serious between us. I hadn’t known when I’d said yes that this was what I was in for.
His lips met mine again. His tongue gently parted my lips and slipped inside my mouth. This time I couldn’t help my hands creeping around his waist and grabbing handfuls of his shirt to pull him closer.
“Mmph,” he said, because we both were facing forward and twisting sideways to kiss. Now he took my hands on his waist as my agreement that he could rearrange me. He never stopped kissing me as he pulled my leg across his thigh so that I straddled him. Then he put his hands over mine on his waist, reminding me this was what I’d wanted, as he scooted forward. Through his jeans and my thin dress, I felt how hard he was.
I’d always thought kissing was sweet, whereas anything having to do with a guy’s pelvis was some kind of threat. Now, for the first time, I understood how a guy getting hard for me was sweet, too—maybe because his hands in my hair and his mouth on mine were making me lose my mind.
He broke the kiss and looked out the driver’s side window of the truck, then the passenger side, making sure nobody was watching. His labored breaths sent a new shiver down my arms every time a puff passed across my cheeks.
He faced me again. He was a lot taller than me, but because I straddled his thighs, our eyes were even. He leaned forward until our foreheads touched, still gazing at me, so close and so dark that I could hardly see him. I felt his breath in my mouth as he traced down my neck with his middle finger, callused from holding his guitar string down, and unbuttoned the top button of my dress.
As I watched his fingers, I remembered that my mother had dragged Julie and me to the fabric store to pick out the material for this dress. I had protested and said that rather than red rosebuds on a field of black, we should have the dresses made from the bolt printed with saguaro cactuses and horse heads, so appropriate that it circled back around to become ironic. I’d been tired of playing dress-up, one; and two, I was tired of matching Julie. I’d loved playing with her, but the matching outfits had seemed unhip and old-fashioned, something we would have worn on stage in my grandmother’s time.
He reached down to undo the second button of my dress. Suddenly I was the one huffing a surprised breath into his open mouth. He pushed through the opening he’d made in my dress and slipped his fingertips beneath the cup of my bra, across my bare breast. He stopped at my nipple, rolling it gently between two fingers. I squirmed on his thighs. It felt like there was a nerve stretched directly between my breast and my crotch.
I had made out with boys before. Boys had felt me up before. They had gotten my bra off me at parties. But they’d wanted to see me, or grab me, more for bragging rights than for their own pleasure. My pleasure never entered the equation. Sam was different. He teased me, tested me, touched me gently and watched my reaction with his depthless eyes. Ms. Lottie had warned me he was a heartbreaker.
“There should be a country song about this,” I whispered.
“I’m pretty sure there is,” he whispered back, sliding his whole hand into my bra to cup my breast.
There wasn’t, though. Plenty of tunes sung by men comically recounted everything they’d gotten away with in their trucks when they were teenagers. No songs sung by women rehashed how much they’d enjoyed it. But they should have. I could be the one to write that anthem.
Abruptly he withdrew his hand, lifted me off his lap, and set me back in the passenger seat. I was disappointed that he’d decided to end this. Then he put his hand behind my head, pulled me down to flatten me along the seat, and rolled on top of me. “Is this okay?” he asked.