California Dreamin'

I’ve been kissed before. Brad, my high school boyfriend, kissed me a few times but that was nothing compared to this. This epic consuming of my mouth by another human being. It’s like his kiss is my entire world.

If Dean stops kissing me, I’ll die. I’ll burn.

It’s like he told me. Love is a burn. It’s an explosion, and with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, his taste—citrusy and masculine—the way he’s holding me, all tight and almost aggressively, he’s showing me that.

I kiss him back with all the pent-up emotions of the past two years. I’ve been dreaming about this ever since he left me at the airport and said goodbye. I’ve pictured his lips over mine countless times.

But I didn’t imagine this. I didn’t even know how to imagine this.

His grip in my hair, my breasts flattened against his wildly breathing chest. His mouth slamming into mine as he groans like he’s dying. His hot skin, soft hair and rough mouth.

When we break apart for air, my hands are tugging at his shirt at the shoulder and one of my legs is wrapped around his hips.

“I—I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time,” I admit to his glistening lips.

“Not as long as I have,” he says.

I creep my hand up and tug at his hair. “I should be mad at you.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you scared away my date, Dean. And then, you just… left.”

I should be angrier about this. Him threatening away my boyfriend—though later I realized I didn’t love him anyway—and up and leaving for California a month later. Not to mention the things he said to me last night when I told him I loved him. But weirdly, anger is the last thing on my mind.

“I hated myself for doing what I did. I still do.”

I raise my eyebrows. “For threatening a perfectly nice guy?”

He squeezes my waist, making me feel the sculpted slabs of his body. “For loving you a little too much.”

I bite my lip to hide my smile. I can’t stay mad at him for saying these things to me and looking so tortured about it. Maybe I’m a sucker, but whatever.

I reach up and kiss the side of his pulsing jaw—something I’ve been dying to do ever since I saw him standing across from my dorm room four days ago. “How are you gonna make it up to me?”

He narrows his warm brown eyes at me. “What do you mean?”

My thigh clenches around his hip as I arch my back against him. “You ruined my prom, Dean. No fair.”

“What did you want to do at your prom?”

“Dance, for one thing.”

“I can put on some music.”

I shake my head and kiss his jaw again. The bristles of his five o‘clock shadow taste so delicious on my tongue. “I was gonna lose my virginity, too.”

“I’m glad I ruined it, then,” he says with gritted teeth.

Smiling, I trace his harsh cheekbones and angled jaw with my hand. “Me too. Because I want you to take it.” He goes to protest, if grabbing a fistful of my butt through my shorts is anything to go by, but I put a finger on his lips. “I know what your answer’s gonna be. Because you think you know everything and I’m this innocent flower who has no idea what’s going on in the world. But I do know things, Dean. I do know what I want, and I want you. I’ve been waiting for you forever. In fact, if you hadn’t gone away, we’d be together right now. Instead of scaring away my date like an idiot, if you’d said something, we would’ve done it ages ago. So it’s only fair you make it up to me now.”

Dean takes my finger off his mouth. “We wouldn’t have done it ages ago. You weren’t legal ages ago.”

I wave my hand. “Minor detail. The point is…”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is I love you, Dean. And you love me, and we’ve wasted enough time already. So, are you gonna give me my prom or not?”

“Fallon—”

“Besides, I’ve heard it hurts, losing your virginity. And I know if you take it, it won’t hurt.”

I’ve never seen him look harsher than this. The room is flooded with light but strangely, Dean appears all dark and made of shadows. His eyes have turned black and his high, king-like cheekbones have a flush to them.

He’s hard and barely breathing as he looks down at me. “And why’s that?”

Maybe it’s the way we’re standing—my leg draped over his hip and our lower bodies intimately flush together—but I feel his other hardness too. His dick at the juncture of my thighs.

“Because you’ll take care of me.”

“Is that right?”

I move against him, against it. “Yup. Because you always do.”

He watches me for a few beats before looking up at the ceiling and shaking his head. Then he grabs hold of my waist and halts my movements.