Page 21 of Fly's Path

“Maybe I should call you Prince Charming instead of Fly. But the only problem with that is I haven’t kissed enough toads yet.”

His rough laughter comes from deep down in his soul.

“Though, to be fair, I don’t want to risk the toads catching the fly first.” I push up onto my tiptoes and set my lips on his. Fly has a sweet tooth. The scruff on his cheeks tickles mine. But none of those things distract from the fact that the hand wrapped around my waist turned to a band of steel, locking me to him like I am the only lifeline keeping him from expiring.

The problem is, if he lets me go, I might be the one who’s unable to survive without him. How can one kiss make me feel desperately needy and wildly alive at the same time?

A woman doesn’t need to breathe if she’s being kissed like this, and she certainly doesn’t need to think about the fact that thiskiss has gone way beyond the point of protection and into the stage where you begin to wonder if you ever want to come up for air ever again.

As his lips move away from mine, I know without a doubt that I didn’t.

“Do you think one is enough to fully ensure my safety?”

One will never be enough. “It will have to do. I need to go meet my friends.”

“Until we meet again.”

Who says stuff like that? And why can’t I wait until the next time?

There won’t be a next time. I’m not kissing that man again.

He takes the granola bar out of my fingers and bites a piece off of it.

Like the coward I am, I race away before I can turn around and kiss him again.

Most of the group is standing near the bus when I get there, completely out of breath.

“There you are. We were going to send out a rescue party. Is everything okay?” Dahlia stops and stares at me. “You kissed someone. You actually kissed someone. I was sure you were just going to ignore the whole Kissing Pact.”

I was. I should have. “Did anyone else do it?”

“Oh yeah.” Dahlia nods toward the others who are approaching us. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

What Happened?

Fly

Out of the millions of possibilities of random things that could have happened today, that wasn’t even on the list.

What just happened?

More importantly, why did I let her walk away?

My hand still tingles from when I held her close to me. And my lips can still feel hers even though she’s almost completely out of sight.

What was I thinking, walking up to that woman and kissing her…letting her kiss me?

Never in my life would I have thought it would be that sexy to have a woman kiss me first. I need to convince her to do that again soon. Right after she tells me her name.

This definitely wasn’t the end, like she seemed to think.

I close my eyes and see the stunned expression on her face when I released her from the kiss. The blend of shock, awe, and passion made a perfect kiss into something else.

Something I want…no, something I need to explore further.

If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I prefer to trust skill rather than put blind faith in the impossible, I would gamble every cent I had on that being her first kiss.

But the woman I just met wasn’t a shy little wallflower, and she certainly wasn’t dressed like a nun. That little wrap dress of hers showed enough curves to make a man drool.