‘Jannes...’ She had just managed the word when his head lowered, eyes sweeping shut, tongue darting to moisten his lips one more time.
For a second she couldn’t move, could only absorb the soft drag of his lips over hers, until instinct took over and she started to move against him.
Her other hand found his waist and she lifted to her tiptoes, hands anchored on Jannes, using him to push herself closer, higher.
Her tongue flickered out, tasting his bottom lip, just as Jannes’s hand in her hair tilted her, changing the angle so their noses brushed together. So that when he bowed his body closer to hers, her head tipped back and her mouth opened, deepening the kiss and letting out a low moan as his tongue stroked along hers, hot and confident in her mouth.
His other arm was a vice in the small of her back, pinning her to his body with the strength of muscles built and honed as a professional athlete.
This was a kiss.
Her brain scrambled to catch up while her body took liberties. One hand in Jannes’s hair now, slipping through her fingers where he’d let it grow longer. Fingers digging into his hip. Legs tangling with the scratch of denim of his jeans. Belly pressed to the hardness of his belt buckle, his...
She pulled away suddenly, Jannes’s hand still in her hair, his arm still solid against her waist. His cheeks were flushed, his lips red, swollen, bitten, and his eyes still closed as he pulled in a shuddering breath.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NOW AREN’T YOU glad that didn’t happen at a family event?’ Lara asked, laughing shakily. They could joke about this. They should joke about this. It wasn’t serious. It wasn’t real.
He glanced around them. Somehow, life in the park hadn’t ceased to exist just because they’d been...swept away. ‘This is very public.’
‘Safer, I think. Imagine if we’d been...’ Alone. She could imagine it. Was imagining it right now in fact. And frightening herself knowing where it could have ended up if they hadn’t come to their senses.
It was just the shock, the novelty of it that had made it so explosive, she told herself. And now they had it out of their system, knew what to expect, they’d be better prepared next time. Would guard against getting carried away.
‘So.’ She uncurled her fingers from his hip, leaned back against the arm clasped at her waist. ‘Now we have a first kiss story.’
‘Yeah, I suppose we didn’t need to get too creative after all.’
‘We tell people...friends, feelings for one another, kiss in the park. Here we are.’
‘That sounds plausible,’ he said, with an expression that it didn’t seem safe to interpret just yet. Of course it sounded plausible: if she wasn’t so scared of hurting him, of being hurt in return, that was the reality they would be living right now. But she couldn’t lose him, so they both pretended that it hadn’t meant a thing to either of them. At least, she thought he was pretending.
‘Should we walk?’ Lara said, taking a deliberate step away from him, needing this friendship back on familiar ground before one of them said something that they couldn’t take back. ‘I could do with a coffee.’
‘Good idea,’ Jannes said, avoiding eye contact.
They turned back towards the park, followed a path past squealing toddlers on the playground, a group of teenagers gathered around a speaker, dodged pairs of runners sweating in the late spring warmth. She startled when she felt Jannes’s fingers thread through hers and she looked up at him, surprised.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, lifting their linked fingers with trepidation. Was he...did he think that kiss was real? That it had changed something between them? Because she thought that they had been clear. If she wanted to know why he was holding her hand, she could just ask.
‘Practice,’ he said, and shrugged as they let their hands drop.
‘You need to practice holding hands?’ she asked, forcing a laugh, trying to make light of this. ‘How long has it been since you last dated properly, more than a first date?’
She thought back, tried to remember the last time he’d introduced her to a girl. More than a year ago, at least.
‘I need to practice holding hands with you,’ he clarified. ‘Need to make it look like we do this all the time. Not like we’re—’
‘We’re walking through the park to get coffee,’ she cut in on a nervous laugh, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence. ‘We do do this all the time.’
Jannes shrugged. ‘I don’t want to walk in there unprepared.’
‘Fine,’ she said, sighing. ‘You’re right. If you want to practice, we can practice. Now, do you need to practice my coffee order? Because I’m hot and this shady bench is looking very tempting. It’s still five minutes to the coffee stand.’
‘Fine,’ Jannes said, and she knew his expressions well enough to recognise relief when she saw it. ‘You sunbathe, I’ll get the coffee.’
* * *