Page 174 of The Storm

That finally wakes me up enough for some hard truths.

I need to get out. This is masochism. Nothing more, nothing less.

I try to roll away, but his arms only tighten around me. I let out a frustrated exhale.

“It’s not even morning yet, Blue,” he mumbles into my hair.

I freeze.

“Blue,” he says again, and I look up.

His eyes are sleepy. His hair a mess.

“Blue.”

He slides his hands up my back, fingers slipping into my hair. My body is still impossibly tight against his, my chest pressed against his chest.

“Blue,” he says again. He cups my cheeks with both hands, and I can almost pretend there aren’t years between us.

He tilts my face up.

“Blue?” he says.

“Yes?”

His eyes search mine. “I’m going to ruin our friendship in about two seconds.”

I let out a shaky exhale.

And I give up.

“We were never fucking friends anyway.”

He tightens his grip and our mouths crash together. I surrender to his demanding lips without any hesitation. Our tongues tangle in an openmouthed kiss full of desperation.

He’s warm and firm, and one of my hands finds its way to his nape, where I grip him maybe a little more tightly than necessary, but I need to know he’s here, and I’m not imagining it.

My skin sparks with electricity everywhere his hands roam, and this twisting sensation in my stomach is getting almost painful, and Jesus, I’d forgotten anything could feel this way. Thisintense. I try to think, but my mind is a vast expanse of nothingness.

There’s no room for thoughts. There’s only him and me after all these years, and I’m pressing my body closer and closer to him because I need this.

I need him.

I’ve only ever needed Nick.

He makes a sound; a low, thick, helpless noise in the back of his throat, and my breath catches over and over again.

He’s pressing our foreheads together and breathing into my mouth, and then he’s biting down on the bend of my neck, sucking the skin between his teeth, and there’s a sting of pain. And my whole body jolts, fingers twisting in his hair.

His hips press into mine, rubbing against me.

The desire is a tidal wave, a thousand times more powerful than anything else I’ve felt in the years he’s been gone.

For so long, I’ve been searching for this feeling, chasing it in strangers and brief sparks of attraction. In late nights and bad decisions and people who were never going to matter.

I convinced myself that once I found it again, I’d finally be okay.

Because if I could want someone else like this… If my pulse would once again race, and my breath could catch, and the world could narrow down to just that one person standing in front of me, then maybe what Nick and I had was never that special after all.