Page 25 of Second Story

The last thing I see before that curtain closes is his nod, and I do what I wanted to last time.

I push willow branches aside and follow.

We’reboth shadowed in this sheltered spot hidden from the school and car park. Isaac is splintered by sunshine passing through thin leaves, fractured somehow, even with his chin lifted and his eyes narrowed. Slivers of light show him nodding again, so I give him what he once asked for.

I always regretted not getting to do this. Today, I brush a kiss to his cheek, to his jaw, and my mouth grazes his ear. “Sure?” I slide my mouth slightly lower. Beneath my lips, a pulse hammers so fast I can’t help pausing.

Isaac doesn’t.

He shifts, turning so our mouths meet, and it’s everything I wondered. Everything I wanted.

His lips are soft but closed, and thank fuck he backed into this spot hidden from view—his mouth opens, and I wouldn’t have cared if the whole world watched us.

Our tongues touch, and I know a countdown has only paused on him opening a storybook to score his spot here, but this slick slide feels like finally getting to turn a last few pages of my own.

Isaac lets out a small, soul-deep sound suggesting he’s also wondered how we’d fit together.

Fucking perfectly is the answer. For me, at least.

For him too, I guess when that sound rumbles through him again and he tugs me closer.

I don’t fight this unprofessional pull, this chest-to-chest contact that I wouldn’t let happen if his brother were still mine to shield and shelter. Right now, I don’t do much thinking at all, apart from wishing we had time for more than kissing. I’d be on my knees in a heartbeat for him.

I’ve never wanted to get my mouth on anyone more,to know if this is getting him as hard as me. I’d help him get there and then get him off if there weren’t only leaves between us and a school building.

This doesn’t feel like settling for less.

We kiss, and Isaac’s tongue in my mouth is one intense connection, but getting to run a hand through his hair and finally smooth that wildness scratches a caretaking itch I didn’t know I had until him. Today my combing fingers snag, which should hurt, and I had thought he already let out a couple of soul-deep sounds in the shelter of this willow.

I was wrong.

Isaac’s next groan pulls from someplace deeper. Don’t ask me why that is a heavy finger on a trigger, or which switch gets flipped on a connection I’d convinced myself was one-sided. All I know is that Isaac curls a hand around the one I have in his hair, and that tightening hold tells me that my grip does something for him. Just like that, our kiss is rougher—wetter—a full round in a ring that leaves both of us panting. We cling like evenly matched fighters who need each other to stay upright.

If I ever spent nights alone in bed wondering what it would have been like to fuck him, this is a clue that he’d go all in. So is the way his hands lower to grasp my arse only to let go abruptly.

It takes me longer than him to register that a second bell rings. Or that his mouth is damp and reddened when he rasps, “I gotta go.”

I rasp too. “Let them help you. Accept a bed for the night. Tell your story tomorrow or whenever they say. Pretty sure it doesn’t matter what story you pick to read out. I bet you could even read out whatever Lenny scribbled in that scrapbook, and they’d say yes.”

He’s silent.

Gorgeous.

Still too fucking worried.

“You’ve got this.” I smooth my own hair while making a promise I hope to fuck Luke Lawson keeps for me. “He wants you.” So do I, but I part willow branches for Isaac to pass through, then I crunch across gravel towards my vehicle.

I almost reach it.

“Joe?”

Isaac is still beside that tree, still as tense as the night I left him. “You used to wonder about what happened to us? About how we were doing?” His touch to his lips looks involuntary. “About howIwas doing?”

I’ve been asked plenty of tough questions. These are so easy to answer.

“Never stopped, mate.”

His gaze flicks up to a now-empty upstairs window, but his voice lowers. “You’re in Cornwall until tomorrow?”

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