Before Sunday

Ten

4:37 AM

He walks us to the couch without breaking the kiss and he spins his body, sitting with more grace than should be possible. I move my legs to accommodate our new situation. Problem is, now I'm straddling him. I feel him between my legs and although it's scary, it's somehow magnificent at the same time. With courage I never new I had, I push myself against him. The friction feels amazing. I move even more. I'm no expert—having never done this before—but everything about it comes naturally.

My hips move against him, my hands cupping the side of his face. My actions prompt him to bite down on my lower lip before I can feel his mouth spread into a full on smile. "You'd better watch yourself, Angel. I might just turn into the devil if you're not careful."

He moves his fingers to my shoulders, sliding the strap of my sundress down before placing his lips there. "I missed this," he whispers, tracing his finger where his lips just were. "I miss you."

Three words that make me almost unbearably sad. I want to miss us, this, him. I want to remember what it is I'm missing.

"Jax?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me," I say, "about us."

He pauses to kiss my shoulder once more before slipping the strap back in place. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know," he says, "but you're going to have to get your perfect body off of mine. I'm only human, Angel. You're turning me on something fierce."

Ugh. I've never turned anyone on before. At least not to the point where they'd say so. The fact that I can affect him, affects me so much more than it should. A voice in my head reminds me that I don't actually know him. Not yet.

I swing my leg over him, feeling heat rush to my cheeks. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize for my weakness. I can't lie though, you're my kryponite." He rises to his feet and I suddenly feel cold. Alone. The space where he belongs is empty.

What on earth is wrong with me?

He walks to the kitchen and grabs two glasses of water. When he returns to the couch, he hands one of the glasses to me. "First," he says, "we are health conscious."

I take the water. "Good to know. How did we meet each other?"

He smiles at the memory only one of us has. "I'll never forget the first time I saw you. It was a dreary day, there'd been three days straight with no sunshine. I walked to the bookstore around the corner from my place, mostly because they serve the very best Americano coffee there, not so much because I actually wanted a book."

"Rainy day coffee?"

"You bet," he says. "That's the best time to go for coffee. When it's all raining and miserable. Anyway, there I was with this impossibly good coffee, walking around the store, killing time more or less and there you were, this impossibly perfect girl."

"Standing in the middle of the bookstore?"

"You were sitting on the floor with your arms wrapped around your knees which were pulled to your chest, a book in your hands. You were so into that book, you didn't care that people were stepping around you, stepping over you, you had tunnel vision for the words on that page. Whatever they were, they captured you."

Sounds about right.

"And?"

"And you captured me, Angel," he says with a grin. "I'm a curious person. I had to know what you were reading."

"So you asked? Is that the first thing you said to me?"

He shakes his head. "Naw, I didn't ask."