Page 50 of The Break-Up Pact

I’m blushing, burning all over my body, the words seeping somewhere deep under my skin. I have so many words of my own, so many things I want to tell him. But I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t put any of them in order. There’s just Levi kneeling on my carpet, saying the kinds of words to me I stopped imagining him saying a long time ago, and my head is swimming trying to keep up.

I lift my hand and press it into the crook of his neck, leaning down to kiss his temple, his cheek, the soft shell of his ear. He shivers, and I tell him, “You shouldn’t have told me about that dress. I’m going to use it against you.”

He lifts his head to look at me and says plainly, “June. You could use anything against me.”

And for some reason these are the words that hit home, that strike something in me so tender that I can’t help myself from saying it. Suddenly, I need him to know.

“I’ve thought about this, too,” I admit. “Dreamed about it, even.”

He eases himself back up, sitting on the edge of the mattress beside me. “And what happens in those dreams?” he asks. He gently tugs at the hair tie at the end of my braid, starts coursing his fingers through it, unraveling it.

For the first time in the night, I feel self-conscious. For the first time in the night, I wonder if I’m a little bit out of my depth here. I know Levi inside out and backward, but the truth is, I’m not so sure I know myself that way.

The truth is—the truth Levi must know, even if neither of us will say it—I’ve only ever been with one other person. And only now that I’m more undone by the mere start of this with Levi than I ever was in my entire relationship with Griffin do I understand just how much I was missing out on. Just how many things I never thought I was capable of feeling, never even imagined were possible to feel.

And now I’m feeling them all at once, and it’s so alternately overwhelming and freeing that it feels like all the years I missed out on are colliding in me at once, demanding a satisfaction I’m not even sure how to ask for.

“June,” he says gently, stirring me back.

I tilt my head to look at him. “Those dreams… everything that happened in them was almost abstract,” I confess. “I don’t even necessarily know what we were doing in them. Just that you were there, and I was looking at you, and—and I could feel you. All of you.” I swallow hard. “I never felt that way when it was actually happening.”

Levi watches me, his hands still coursing through my hair. “You have all of me,” he says. “However much you want.”

And my throat aches almost as much as the rest of me then, because it’s one thing to know it, but another thing to hear it. Sweeter than dreams, sharper than hope. I lean in and kiss him again, on his lips, the curve of his jaw, the plane of his cheek, anywhere I can reach.

“Good,” I say. “Because I want every piece.”

His teeth graze his lower lip as he stares at me, as his fingertips skim the hem of my top and then pull it off with a slow reverence. He settles it on the edge of the bed, taking in the black bra underneath. Then he leans down and presses his lips to the top of my breast, and then to the other, making me shiver with the warmth of his mouth against my cool skin. He reaches for my right breast and kneads it slowly, deliberately, tucking his thumb beneath the underwire to stroke my nipple.

It’s such a small touch. Such a subtle, little thing. But even that sends a tremor through me that feels like an earthquake in comparison to anything I’ve felt before.

Levi reaches to unclasp the back of my bra, and by then I’m aching for his hands on my breasts, for the fullness of his palms against them. But he’s still moving with that tantalizing slowness, savoring me so openly that I forget my own nakedness, forget that this is a part of me few people have ever seen; forget to feel anything but the flush of satisfaction at the way he’s staring at me right now.

He cups my breasts, and with him so close, the heat of him so compelling, I am all at once fixated on having more of his skin against mine. I find the hem of his shirt with my fingers and he leans back just enough to let me pull it up, lifting a hand to yank at the back of the neck and pull it over his head, and there he is. A torso I’ve seen plenty of times. He never lost that lankiness he had growing up, still all lean hardness and quick ease. I set a palm on his chest, trailing my fingers down to his stomach, feeling him tense under my touch.

“You know, when you run,” I say, relishing every dip and plane of him against my fingers, “it’s like you’re made of something else entirely. Indestructible. Determined. I’ve always admired that.”

I put my lips to his collarbone, sucking gently as my hand works my way down to the hem of his jeans, undoes the button.

He sucks in a sharp breath and says, “Is that why you were always so intent on kicking my ass?”

I smirk into his shoulder. “Someone had to keep you humble.”

“Believe me, June,” he says, his voice hoarse, “you’ll never have to work to do that.”

He abruptly hooks his hands under my arms, pulling the rest of me onto the bed, hiking me all the way up so I’m propped against the mountain of pillows. He eases himself up to meet me, lying beside me and angling his body into mine. I move in close enough that our noses touch, and we’re just on the precipice of a kiss when I feel the tips of his fingers against the space between my breasts, and I let out a quick gasp. He undoes the button of my jeans, watching me carefully as his hand dips low into them, past the seam of my underwear, into the throbbing heat between my legs.

“Jesus,” he murmurs low, and only then do I realize I’m achingly, desperately wet for him. That I wasn’t exaggerating before. That if I don’t have him tonight, all of him, it may very well be the end of me.

I’m wriggling out of the jeans, cursing the high-waisted trend for the first time I can remember as it takes the longest few seconds of my life to free myself of them. Levi’s hand dips even lower, making sweet, slow circles with just enough pressure to drive an ache that spreads up and out, loosening my entire body. I lean forward, reaching for the waistband of his jeans again, desperate to return the favor, but Levi shifts closer.

“Let me,” he says.

“I’m—” I put a hand to his forearm and he stills. “It’s not going to—I mean, I—don’t know if that’s going to work.”

Which is to say, the few times Griffin tried, it never did. It always took so long that we would either drop it or move on to something else.

“Do you like it?” he asks me.

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