Page 22 of The First Kind of Love
“I guess I’m not as observant as I thought I was,” I admit with a nervous laugh, having abandoned my appetite as an uncontrollable, long-buried desire breaches my sensibility.
All I can think about is leaning across this table, cupping Shiloh’s face, and kissing her on the lips. I’m a guy who’s gone most of his adult life without romantic physical touch, but right now, it’s the only thing I crave—a hunger that can’t be satiated with good food or pleasant small talk, something so terrifyingly animalistic that I can feel it squirm deep in the marrow of my bones, searching for a life force to suck dry.
My gaze surfs languidly over the heightened rise and fall of her chest, over the way she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth unsurely, until it collides head-on with a half-lowered glare steeped in sin—one that I can feel pulling me farther out to sea.
My words are brittle as they vie for freedom. “Don’t look at me like that, Shi.”
Shi.It falls so easily from my tongue.
A muscle in her neck flickers. “Like what?”
“Like you want me to kiss you.”
She straightens her shoulders with a darkened look that tells me she’s just as hungry as I am. “And what if I do?”
I make some kind of noise between a groan and a growl. “Then I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself.”
Without warning,dinner has moved to the couch, and we’re both sitting a fair distance apart—a distance that can so easily be bridged by one swell move. When I’m this close to her, I can pinpoint the beads of sweat dotting her hairline, can faintly make out the impression of her aroused nipples against her dress’s thin material (though I try not to look there), can hear the unsteady succession of her breaths with each passing minute.
Although I didn’t finish everything in my bowl, I ate a fair amount, and I’m now regretting the heavy sludge of dinner congealing in my stomach. My anxiety is at an all-time high, and the overbearing warmth in my body nearly whites out all my senses.
There’s a sour taste in my mouth—a foreign sickness that infects every part of me with moldering rot, that calls on the self-consciousness I’ve tried so hard to suppress up until now. “I haven’t…”
She cocks her head. “You haven’t…?”
Just spit it out, dude. Rip the Band-Aid off. YOU’RE A VIRGIN! You’ve never felt the touch of a woman before! Your hand’s the only thing that’s ever made you come! You’re so sexually inexperienced that she’d gain more pleasure by making out with one of those Old Navy mannequins!
I gulp, and it’s like the deployment of an atomic bomb in myears. “I haven’t kissed someone in a long time. Or at least not someone who mattered.”
“But I thought…”
“I lied,” I divulge, caught in the throes of shame, subservient to the overbearing guilt that hovers above me like a soot-stained boot waiting to connect with my cheekbone. “In fact, the last time I pursued someone, I found out that she was just using me to leech off my fame. When she was done with me, she told me that I was too awkward and embarrassing to be around.”
As crazy as this sounds, maybe it’s a good thing Renata didn’t feel anything for me, otherwise she would’ve taken my firsteverything.
Shiloh looks so heartbroken that you’d think she witnessed everything in person. “Oh, Fulton. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. And that’s not true. You know that’s not true, right?”
Sometimes it feels like the wound is still fresh—like Renata’s words are still flaying my skin from my bones. “Yeah…I know. Since then, I’ve just had a really hard time distinguishing the difference between people who want to know me for me and people who want to know me for my job.”
“I completely understand. I’ve had my fair share of bad seeds too. I was dating this guy who abandoned me the moment my family’s business began to struggle, and he basically asked me to choose between him and my parents. He told me I wasn’tenoughto make him stay.”
“That’s bullshit. That guy clearly wasn’t a man because nomanwould ever walk away from the person he loves. I’m so sorry, Shiloh. I’m sorry you had to deal with someone so insecure in his own masculinity that he compensated for it by tearing you down.”
That dipshit is lucky I don’t know his name: otherwise, I’d probably be arrested for assault and battery. And yes, that’ssaying something considering I’ve lived most of my life like a monk who’s taken a vow of nonviolence.
Shiloh doesn’t respond. In fact, she just changes the subject. “So, you haven’t kissed someone in how long?”
“Four years.”
“Wow.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“I’m just—I’m just surprised is all.”
I know I’m usually notall therein my head sometimes, but I really can’t grasp what’s happening right now. It’s like trying to shove two incompatible puzzle pieces together to make sense of a bigger picture. “I don’t follow.”
“Look at you, Fulton! You’re…you! You’re handsome, kind, funny, generous. You’re the whole package. So it’s hard to believe that you’re even single right now,” she confesses in a whisper, lust eclipsing the rich, earthy brown of her irises.
