“It’s easier to remember your lies if they’re close to the truth,” I whispered. “Wishful thinking.”
He kissed me. So softly, gently, slowly.
I heard my own gasp, felt myself warming, sensed the trailer going darker around him as he leaned in until his forehead touched mine. He had backed me against the counter. I had no way to escape him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore.
His voice sent shivers up my arms and his lips brushed my cheek as he spoke. “If I remember right, last night when we were interrupted at the beach, you had this hand here.” He found my hand pushing weakly against his T-shirt and placed it on his hip. “And this hand here.” He pulled my other hand to his other hip and slid my fingers into his waistband. “Then I did this.” He moved one arm around my shoulders. “And I wanted to do this.” His other hand moved down to my hip, the warmth of his palm soaking through the thin material of my shorts.
He pressed his lips to mine and paused. Maybe he was waiting to see whether I would push him away. Maybe, like me, he savored that precarious moment perched at the top of a climb. We could have fallen backward to Earth, pretending we’d been teasing each other and it was all a mean-spirited joke. Or we could have continued forward and pitched over into a weightless and euphoric free fall. In that moment of decision, his warm hands on my skin and the cold air around me confused my body. Electricity surged through my middle. The only sounds were the low hum of the refrigerator and Grayson sighing sexily.
I shifted my hand in his waistband, shoving my fingers farther down and flattening my palm against his bare skin.
That was it: we went over. He kissed me hard on the mouth, my stomach was gone, and we sped toward the ground. I stopped thinking. Nothing was left but the rush, the high, the sensations of his tongue in my mouth and his body underneath my hands.
After we had kissed like this for a long time, he scooped me up and sat me on the counter. I didn’t protest, didn’t even consider resisting when he slid his hands between my legs.
I wasn’t expecting much. I let him touch me there because he wanted to. The boy who’d taken my virginity had touched me there too. But he’d been satisfying his own curiosity. Grayson was satisfying me. He watched my eyes and kissed my neck as he explored. Long minutes later when we rested with our foreheads together, panting into each other’s mouths, he reached behind me and untied both strings of my bikini top.
We were back to the place with each other where we’d been at the beach. I wanted him desperately, but nothing would make me go through with this if I couldn’t handle the consequences later. I nudged his blond curls aside with my nose and whispered in his ear, “Do you have a condom?”
“I do,” he whispered back, his voice a sexy grind. But the mood cooled now that we needed to think. He fished his wallet from his pocket, placed it beside my thigh on the counter, and peered into the various compartments. “I thought I did.” He removed a crumpled receipt. “Oh God, please.”
I watched his long fingers search his wallet and slide inside to check for hidden condoms. Then I watched his face. He bit his lip, so concerned that he wouldn’t find this condom and we wouldn’t get this experience together after all. So eager and hot for me. I’d crushed on him for years and fallen in love with him over the past few days. But as he paused and frowned at me, then looked past me as if searching his mind for where else he might have left some of his things, I fell further.
Scowling at his wallet again, he slid out his pilot’s license and his driver’s license and the Hall Aviation credit card. “Come on now. Ha!” He grinned at me and held up two packets. “Two.”
“Impressive.”
“Oh.” He laughed nervously, and a blush darkened his cheeks in the dim kitchen light. “Yeah, this all seems overly confident of me, doesn’t it? Like I go around with condoms all the time just in case.” He looked into my eyes and said, “I had a girlfriend. Before Jake died. Then I lost her because I was an ass**le to her.”
He sounded apologetic. I didn’t know what to say to this. Of course he’d had a girlfriend. Of course he’d been hard to get along with after Jake died. I felt sorry for him and for this girl. If she had any sense, she was brokenhearted that they hadn’t been able to hold on to each other until the worst passed.
Though Mr. Hall had died then. Maybe this was the worst, right now.
I could be this girl for him. I could be exactly what he needed. He was so full of life, but unsteady, and I would be steady for him and help him through.
He was squinting at the condoms. “They might have expired. No, that one’s okay.” He put one packet down on the counter. “That one’s okay too.” He gazed at me again. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
Oh no. I’d wanted this with Grayson so badly for so long, way before I knew I wanted it.
But that was selfish of me. I swallowed and nodded, trying to understand. “Because of the condoms?”
“Hey.” He gave me a long, chaste kiss on the lips, then one on the forehead. “No. They’re really okay.”
Now I knew. “Is it that girl you were dating?”
His brows arched in surprise. “What? No!”
I huffed out a little sigh of relief that he wasn’t pining for his lost girlfriend. But now I was confused. “Why, then?”
“Because I’m your boss. And I’m taking advantage of you by coming over here when I know your mom has split.”
“Is that all? You’re realizing this a little late.” I cupped his face in my hand and stroked my fingers down the blond stubble on his cheek. “We’re both eighteen. What’s really bothering you?”
His soulful gray eyes looked deep into my eyes as he said, “My dad would kill me.”
He likely was right about that. But his dad wasn’t here. And we were.
Slowly I slid off the counter, down his body. When I reached the floor, I looked way up into his eyes. I took his hand and led him down the hall to my bedroom.
eighteen
Afterward he lay on top of me. His cheek pressed against my neck, but I didn’t want him to move. With all of him pinning me, I felt oddly comfortable. I only tried to slow my panting, quiet my breathing, to the point that I could hear he was breathing hard too.
He propped himself up on his elbows, blinking at me, his long, blond eyelashes and the edges of his blond hair lit only by the streetlight through the tiny window. “God, I’m sorry, Leah,” he whispered. “I was crushing you.”