But I had a small bit of comfort.
"You don't have to talk about them," I offered, shrugging.
Like my touch, I wasn't sure that his was exactly intentional either. Because he seemed almost as taken aback as I was when his thumb moved to slide between my thumb and forefinger, allowing it to move gently over the top of my hand.
Shivers, I tell you.
There were actual, real-life shivers.
I couldn't claim to have experienced everything there was to experience with a man, but I had known enough to know that the shivers you read about, hear songs about, see in movies, they didn't happen often. In fact, I had gone all my years without having felt them at all.
Feeling them now, in this quiet, badly lit street, with a man I had only officially just met, whose past was a mystery, whose previous six years had been spent in a prison cell, it couldn't have been any more unexpected.
"Don't," he said, his voice barely above a rough whisper, but somehow still pleading.
"Don't what?" I asked, hearing the neediness in my voice, but finding myself suddenly completely unconcerned by it.
His hand slid from mine, leaving an odd tingling in its wake as his arm lifted, and his fingertips brushed near my eye. "Don't give me this look," he finished, fingers moving back toward my temple, brushing my hair behind my ear.
"What look?"
As if I didn't know exactly what look it was.
It was the shameless slut inside all of us screaming out take me, take me now!
"The one that looks a hell of a lot like permission."
Because it was.
It so, so was.
To hell with rational thought, with consequences, with the knowledge that this was likely a horrible idea.
All I could focus on was the way his touch was making my belly go liquid, making the pressure on my lower stomach all but impossible to bear, was making my heart race and skip.
And I just wanted more.
"It is permission."
That was apparently that.
Whatever thread of control he had been holding onto, snapped.
His fingers slid back into my hair, grabbing my head at the base, and yanking me forward.
I collided with his body hard enough to make my body jerk.
But I couldn't even focus on that for a second.
Because as soon as my body hit his, his lips crashed down on mine.
And the world ceased to exist.
I'd been kissed wildly before, without restraint, without anything but primal need.
But, apparently, that was nothing like getting kissed by a man who hadn't known the touch of a woman in six years.
His lips bruised into mine as his fingers curled into my skull, holding me flush to his body as his teeth bit my lower lip, as his tongue took the opportunity when I moaned to slip inside and claim mine.
A shudder racked through my body, making a low, guttural, almost pained groan rumble from deep in his chest as he turned us suddenly, slamming me back against the brick wall to a building, his hand taking the impact as his thigh slid between mine, pressing them open slightly so he could move in closer.
My hands went up, one clawing at the skin on the back of his neck, the other low on his hip, dangerously close to grabbing his ass.
His lips took mine again just as his body shifted, and his hard cock pressed against my sex, pressing right where I needed contact most.
There wasn't a force on Earth strong enough to contain the pained whimper that escaped me as my hand forgot all about things like how to act in a civilized society when you were in, for all intents and purposes, a public place. My hand sank into the firm cheek of his ass, dragging him against me, begging for more.
On a growl, as his teeth snagged my lower lip and pulled hard, he gave me more, grinding his cock against my pussy as my leg rose to the side of his hip, opening up to him more.
His lips moved from mine, going down the column of my neck as he kept grinding against me, as I kept moving my hips against him, already almost to the brink of oblivion.
His lips sucked in the sensitive skin of my neck as his cock hit my clit.
And it was close.
So so close.
His hips pulled back to thrust again, sure to make me completely explode into an orgasm the intensity of which I wasn't sure I had felt before.
It was that precise moment Coop not only became a shoe-eater, book-destroyer, attention-demander, but also a cock-block.
He jumped up with a bark, one foot landing on my side, one on Eli's, making us both spring apart unexpectedly.
Coop hopped back down, oddly silent as the sound of our heavy breathing seemed to fill the air around us.
Eli's eyes looked as heavy as mine felt.