Page 20 of Stoker's Serenity

The way she looked at me, eyes wide with surprise, dark eyes, expressive and so alive, I could drown in their depths. I could deep dive into the bottom of her soul and suffocate and die, and never, not once, even consider resisting the siren’s call of her lonely heart that dragged me to my death.

I brought up a hand and touched her cheek, her skin smooth and soft beneath my calloused fingertips. Her eyes fluttered shut, the lashes dark against her pale skin and she turned her face into that light touch like it was everything. She craved contact, and I knew the feeling, but not like this. I don’t think I’d ever met someone so nervous to be touched yet so touch-starved in my life.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked, my voice hoarse with my restraint, but after Faith, I couldn’t be sure what kind of trauma lurked in Serenity’s past. All I knew was I saw all the signs and that there was trauma there. Something dark and deep, something that set her apart from the rest of the world, kept her bound with fear and pain.

Her eyes flicked open and up to mine, her lips parting seductively even if she didn’t know it, and she asked, breath held, body and chest so still, “You’re sure?”

I didn’t understand how she could think herself so undesirable, but I damn sure wasn’t going to ruin the mood. Instead, I closed the gap between us slowly, carefully, inch by excruciating inch, giving her every opportunity to step back, turn her head, pull away – anything to stop me but she didn’t. She inhaled sharply, just before my lips touched her and it was like being struck by lightning.

The jolt of pleasure, amplified by anticipation, traveled straight from our softly touching lips to my dick, warming me through the chest, sensation cascading down my limbs as her hands slipped along my ribs to rest on my denim-clad hips. She stepped closer, tucking herself into the shelter of my body, and whimpered softly as I flicked my tongue against her bottom lip.

Her mouth opened to me, lush, warm, and inviting, and I took the invitation, kissing her like she should be kissed, tasting the desire, the want on her lips fused with the spicy fruity flavor of her iced tea.

Fuck, she was perfect.

7

Serenity…

His kiss was everything. As if it somehow wiped my slate clean, a new beginning just at my fingertips, if I were only brave enough to grasp it and hold on. It shook me to my core, suffused me with a warmth I hadn’t known for a very long time.

It scared me, how deeply his kiss made me feel, and I tried to hold on, I did, but the fear overwhelmed me to the point I jerked back, breaking the kiss, snapping the magic, the moment falling away and shattering around us.

He let me retreat graciously, his thumb smoothing soothingly against my cheek as I tried to regain my faculties and pull myself back from the brink.

“Um, wow,” I breathed, my chest rising and falling unsteady with the cascading thrum of my heartbeat, so strong I felt it in my spine and against the inside of my ribs.

“Yeah.” Even he gave a little nervous laugh. “A little more intense than I was expecting.”

“Mm, yeah,” I murmured, pressing the back of my hand to my swollen lips, trying to keep the sense memory of his lips against mine in place as long as possible, my eyes closing unbidden as I savored the lingering tingle.

“I want to see you again,” he said.

“I’d like that,” I whispered, lowering my hand, smoothing my other thumb against his ribs, over the butter-soft tee just above the waistband of his jeans.

“Yeah?” he asked, and he sounded uncertain.

“Very much so,” I murmured, my voice thick with emotion.

“Good first date,” he whispered, and I smiled in spite of myself.

“Best first date I’ve ever been on.” I was staring pointedly at the floor and raised my eyes to his; he was staring at me so intently it put a sudden knot in my throat.

“It’s late, I should have gone a while ago,” he murmured, and he was right. The light had grown dim in my little apartment, the reddish glow of the setting sun through my kitchen window painting the opposite kitchen wall in fire and heart’s blood.

“Stay with me.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them and he smiled, pleased.

“I mean, it only makes sense. Your job is here, and I’ve kept you out way too late and I don’t really do sex on the first date, but I feel so bad I’ve kept you and –”

I was rambling, and he shushed me with a light touch of a fingertip to my lips.

“You had me at ‘stay with me’, and I just want to hold you,” he whispered.

My heart dropped into my toes. Just clean fainted in melodramatic southern belle style, hand raised to its forehead and all.

“I’d like that,” I breathed, amazed my vocal chords worked at all with how tight my throat was.

“Go put on something to sleep in,” he ordered gently and I nodded, suddenly struck mute, mouth dry as my brain caught up to what my heart had done.

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