“I know,” he says after a moment. “I know, and I don’t care.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper. “You care and I know it.”
There’s that slight smile, the glance away before his eyes alight on mine again, his thumb rubbing slowly, steadily over the back of my hand, the friction sending hot shivers down my spine.
“You’re right, June,” he says. “I care. And yet I’m inviting you over for a nightcap without much regard for anything besides the fact that I want to, because I’ve weighed my options and I’ve found the alternative lacking.”
“A nightcap?”
“Yes,” he says. “I’d like to take you home, fix you a drink, and seduce you, and I’d like to do it without thinking even once of your brother.”
“You know I’m going to say yes,” I tell him. My blood feels like it’s crackling through my veins, every nerve alive and jangling.
“That’s the idea.”
“You’re sure?”
I can’t help but ask. I don’t want to, but it comes out of my mouth anyway, reason trying to make one last, final stand.
“I’m more than sure,” Levi says, and holds out his other hand.
I take it. He pulls me in and then our bodies are touching, my hands behind my back, our fingers interlaced, my feet on either side of his.
“Say it already, June,” he teases.
My mouth is dry, my heart fast, and I’ve forgotten every word I once knew.
“Say what?”
“Say yes.”
“Yes,” I say, and Levi kisses me.
It’s been five days since our first kiss and I can feel every minute. I can feel every single time that I thought about this and then tried not to, every moment spent wishing or regretting or some potent combination of those two things.
Levi locks his fingers around mine. He pulls me in, harder, our hips resting together as my back arches, my arms held behind me.
There’s a moment where he pulls his mouth away from mine, pauses, and I’m the one who closes the gap between our lips. He lets one hand go and I stand on my tiptoes, push my fingers through his hair, open my mouth and let him in.
I want Levi. I’d take him right in this truck if I had slightly less sense. I want him and I want more than drinking cocoa and talking about trees, more than hiking together through the forest, more than gifts of stolen pens and secret pizza. I’ve taken everything that he offered, and it wasn’t enough for either of us.
Finally, we pull back. I’m breathing hard and my heart is beating harder. Levi’s hand has somehow made it under my shirt and is tracing slow circles on my lower back, my hand on his chest, my mind racing with the things we could do without ever leaving my parents’ driveway.
“You ready?” he asks, rough, quiet, so low I feel it in my bones.
“Yes,” I whisper back.Chapter SeventeenJuneThe car ride back to Levi’s house is strange and wonderful. I wind down my window and stick my hand out, diving it through the humid night air, the anticipation like snowflakes against my skin.
We hold hands except for when he has to shift gears. At stop signs, he leans over and kisses me, and it takes everything I’ve got not to unbuckle and crawl onto his lap.
And we talk. We talk about the oddness of late-night radio, about whether anyone else is awake. The world is quiet, asleep in the way that only a small town can be, in the way that makes it feel like we’re existing together in a space that only the two of us can inhabit.
We leave town, turn onto the Parkway. The Milky Way is bright above us. Africa is on the radio, and Levi pulls off the road at a vista point, the inky blackness of country night stretching in front of us.
“What?” I ask, voice hushed.
He leans in and kisses me, fingers curling through my hair.
“Just that,” he says when we part, that sneaky smile on his face as he pulls back onto the road.
I don’t think I’ve ever been seduced before, not properly. I’m not even sure that I know how it ought to go, other than like this, with anticipation so strong I want to crawl out of my own skin.
Booty calls, yes. Boozy hookups, yes. I’m not a stranger to the act of sex but I’m a stranger to patient seduction, to letting the tension ride, to not rushing, and I didn’t even know it until now.
Levi turns into his long gravel driveway, shifts gears, takes my hand again. My skin prickles when his house comes into view, the porch light on.
I’m already unbuckled when he puts his truck into park, kicks down the parking brake. He’s barely gotten his own seatbelt off as I straddle him, still in the driver’s seat, and I kiss him as slowly as I can stand to.