knot out of my ponytail, and he brushes his thumbs on either side of my cheeks. “I’m falling for you, Ran.”
“I’m right there with you,” he says, and when he lowers his mouth just over mine, all sensation in my body intensifies. I wait for him to lessen the gap and finally kiss me—to finally do what I’ve daydreamed about since the moment we met—but he scoots down and skims his warm lips across my jaw, trailing lightly down my neck, and over to my collar bone. My lips ache and I have to pin them between my teeth to provide some kind of relief. My body alternates between a fevered flush and deep chills and it’s an incredibly dizzying feeling, but one that I never want to go away.
“Maggie,” he mumbles across my neck.
I tug at his hair and bury his head into my hair that spills around my shoulders, and his mouth pushes harder against my jaw. Why won’t he just kiss me? After all that I know he’s done in his past, how is he able to exercise so much restraint when it comes to me?
I decide to take things into my own hands and begin pressing my lips to his cheek, starting just above his jaw by his earlobe, inching closer to his mouth each time I draw back and reposition my mouth on his skin. Ran backs off of me, raising up to look into my eyes. I can’t get over how blue they are. Even in the dark shade of the room, they’re so clear. His thick lashes drape across them and his mouth is that same mouth I remember from our first encounter. I’d wondered what it would feel like on my own back then, but then it was just a mouth—a perfectly shaped one—but it was all physical. Now I’ve heard what those lips are capable of saying, what that mouth is capable of confessing, and it’s like I need to feel it on my own to make everything complete.
I sweep my lips back across that same path again and bring my mouth close to the curvature of his ear and whisper quietly, “I want you to kiss me.” My heart is about to rip through my chest and I’m sure Ran can feel it throbbing through my shirt and hear it rattling out in my breathing. It would be so easy to just do it, to plant my mouth on his and press into him with a kiss. But the only thing that makes it easy is our close proximity to one another, because actually doing it—actually summoning the courage to kiss Ran—feels impossible, like it’s both the scariest, and most exhilarating, thing I’ve ever contemplated doing.
“Maggie.” I see him close his eyes and feel him angle his ear closer to my mouth so my lips skim across it. Ran runs a hand over my shoulder to my jaw, and takes it in his palm. “I want to kiss you more than anything right now.”
“I’m asking you to.” I pull back and implore him with hungry eyes, practically begging for it, to the point where I feel like I should be embarrassed. Like maybe there’s something wrong with me because kissing shouldn’t be this much of a battle. Especially for two people who have done much more than that in our pasts.
Ran drops his weight and his body presses onto mine, his legs pinning me, and the heart that at one time inhabited my chest is now positioned in my tight throat. Instinctually, I run my hands up and down his arms, hooking mine through his so I can wrap them up onto his shoulders. He’s strong, and every inch of him feels that way.
“Maggie,” he says again, and I realize every time he says my name, it’s like he’s breathing it. “I told you I wanted to kiss you more than anything.” I grip his shoulders and his chest gives. “But if I do, it’s not going to stop there.”
I swallow hard, constricting the knot that’s wound in my neck. “I don’t think I want it to.” I don’t know how it comes out so naturally, but it does and it scares me. But at the same time, it feels so true, so I shouldn’t be scared. I shouldn’t be scared by something that flies out of me like instinct because it must be what’s actually inside me, for it to spill out without thinking it first.
That agonized expression pulls