That Thing You Do (Crystal Lake 2)

“This thing between us, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I won’t know if it’s real or just in my head unless I do something about it.”

Somewhere in the house, the dog barked, but neither one of them paid any attention to it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, so softly, he barely heard her.

Nate didn’t bother with a reply. He slid his hands into all that hair around her face. He waited for her to resist. For her to knock him in the shoulder and tell him he was acting crazy. Kick him in the groin if she was feeling particularly feisty.

But she did none of that, so Nate leaned in and kissed her.

Chapter Nine

When Molly was twelve, her brother Zach caught her practice kissing a pillow, which sounds ridiculous, but she’d gotten the idea after watching an old movie about a teenage girl at the beach. In the movie, the girl had never kissed a boy and decided to use a pillow in order to get the kissing part right. Molly figured it was a brilliant idea. How were you supposed to be good at something like kissing when you’d never done it before? She’d been curled up on her bed, the overly large pillow cushioned between her arms, her head buried deep into its softness, when Zach burst into her room because he wanted to borrow her ball glove.

Molly had been mortified. Zach had been gleeful.

He’d threatened to tell the guys what he’d seen if she didn’t do his math homework for an entire month. Which she did. And when he threatened to tell them anyway, she popped him on the nose with a wicked right hook and told him she’d spill the beans on how long he took in the shower and what it was he was doing in there. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but figured it was pretty bad when she heard her parents whispering about it. When she found out exactly what it was they’d been whispering about, she’d been mortified.

He’d stared her down, hand clutched to his now-bleeding nose, and shrugged. “Every guy I know does that.” He paused. “But you’re not a guy so you just kiss pillows which is stupid.”

She couldn’t argue with him there, and she did feel stupid for kissing a pillow, but that didn’t stop her from practicing again, only this time, she made sure her bedroom door was locked. By the time she had her first kiss at fifteen, she was pretty good at it. At least that was what Jerry Davidson told her when he’d pressed up against her behind the dugout at the ballpark one hot summer night. He was just as tall and gangly as Molly, and a science nerd to boot, which made him a good first kiss because he didn’t even try to feel up her boobs. Not that she had much in that department, but still…

Between watching Pretty Woman and every other romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts, plus all that practice with her pillow, Molly got good at it, though she didn’t think it was as amazing as everyone made it out to be. Seemed like a lot of spit swapping, tongue twisting, and wet lips to her. That all changed when Connor Brislow came into the picture. He was a sophom

ore at college, and she’d met him her first year. They began dating one night after labs when he insisted on taking her for coffee, and it didn’t take long to graduate from kissing and touching to getting naked and then, finally, sex.

By this time, she just wanted the virgin thing to be done and over with. No one else her age was as pure as Molly. Plus, she liked kissing Connor, and after the first few times, the sex felt nice too—although the earth didn’t move, so she wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. She wasn’t even sure she’d had an orgasm. Truthfully, she preferred making out and cuddling to the actual act itself.

By the following Christmas, she and Conner were done. He didn’t like competing with her studies, and by the time she graduated and came home to take over the clinic with her brother, she told herself she was too busy to date, though, in fact, she found it boring. Maybe there was something wrong with her? But what? She knew she wasn’t frigid, which one boy had accused her of when she refused to sleep with him, but she didn’t have anyone to confide in. All her friends were men, and the last thing she wanted to do was have a talk about sex and what it should feel like. From what she could tell, men liked sex any way they could get it and would never find it boring and would never, ever consider living without it.

But there was always this thought at the back of her mind, a little voice that said it would be different with Nate. That maybe her disconnect with men was more to do with who she wasn’t kissing than anything else.

And, boy, that thought was right.

Nate’s hands slid along her jawline and sank into her hair at about the same time her insides melted. Like butter over hot toast. Or lava sliding down a volcano. Like a nun’s panties if she happened to cross paths in the dark with Brad Pitt or George Clooney, or Jon Bon Jovi if he happened to be said nun’s cuppa tea.

His mouth was soft at first, sliding across hers like a whisper, and she froze as a multitude of emotions ran through her. She felt like that girl back at the ball diamond with Jerry Davidson: anxious and scared and completely out of her depth. In many ways, she was still that girl. But this time, instead of disappointment, the kiss was pure bliss. It was rockets launched into space. Skydiving off a cliff. Zip-lining two hundred feet above ground. It was all those things and so much more.

And that had everything to do with the man who held her.

He deepened the kiss and ran his hands down her body to settle at the base of her spine, his fingers splayed there lightly, as if he was afraid to go further. She felt the weight and wanted him to go further. Molly pressed closer yet, kissing him back with everything inside her. There was so much. Heat. Electricity. Their tongues tangled, their bodies fused together; so much feeling from just a kiss. When he slowly broke away and took a step back, her breaths were ragged, and she was glad to see she wasn’t the only one affected. Nate looked like he’d just run a marathon.

For a moment, neither one of them said a word, and then Nate cleared his throat. “Moll, I…I think that…” His voice trailed off, and he stood there in silence. When had Nate ever been tongue-tied?

“What are you thinking?” she asked, dropping her eyes because she was afraid to see what was in his.

She felt his fingers slide under her chin and force her head up so that she had no choice but to look at him.

“I think my mother was right. I’m think I should have kissed you a long time ago.” He bent toward her. “I think I’m going to kiss you again.” His voice lowered. “Do you want that, Moll? Do you want me to kiss you again?”

Yes.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, answering as honestly as she could. How did she put into words the fear she felt? The mortification that waited when he rejected her? Because he would. Eventually. She was nothing like the women he’d been with.

Wouldn’t he?

“Moll.” He said her name as if it carried a secret, his voice low and thick, and something inside her broke apart. It filled her with such longing and something more, something dangerous, something she had no name for. She felt like Elizabeth to his Darcy. Cleopatra to his Mark Antony. Juliet to his—

“Molly?” A knock at the door scared the crap out of her.