He slid his other arm around my waist. “Thank God for that,” he said on a sigh.
“But it has to be a new us,” I said as he nuzzled his face into my neck again. I squirmed at the delicious fluttering trailing over my hypersensitive flesh as he kissed my ticklish spot. I had to lay down rules. Be strong for both our sakes. “We have to start afresh, get to know each other all over again. We have to take it slow and steady, like adults.”
“Suits me.” His fingers curled beneath the base of my hoody. “I’m keen to get to know every single bit of you all over again as slowly or as quickly as you want me to.” He lifted upward and I raised my hands and let the heavy material slip over my head. “I’ve thought of nothing else for more months than I care to admit. It’s been obsessional.”
He’d obsessed about me. The way I had him.
“And,” I said, watching as my hoody landed on top of the black jeans and t-shirt he’d worn on stage—now in a heap in the corner. “You have to promise to trust me. I am where I say I am, doing what I say I’m doing.”
“I get all that now. I’m not twenty and ridiculously insecure anymore. I won’t fuck up over something so stupid.” He lifted the butterfly necklace sitting in the hollow of my throat. “You still wear this?”
“Sometimes.” I watched his reflection turn it over in his big fingers and felt the chain tug the base of my neck. “I wear it when it’s your birthday, Christmas, anniversaries, you know, when I feel the need to be close to you.”
His lips tilted. “Anniversaries of what?” he said, laying it gently back on my skin.
I swallowed as he smoothed his hands into the dips of my waist, tracing the outline of my body. “You know…firsts.”
“Firsts?”
“First kiss, July 8, first cinema trip March 4, first time we…”
“First time we…?” He began to pull my thin t-shirt upward the way he had my hoody.
“The first time we made love.”
He paused and his eyes sparkled in the mirror. “In the tent, at the bottom of my garden.”
“You remember?”
He slipped the top over my head and tossed it aside. My hair fell around my shoulders, a couple of tendrils landing over my white bra. I hadn’t planned on putting my underwear on show tonight so it was nothing special, but it was clean and neat.
“How could I ever forget?” He gave a small groan. “I performed terribly.”
“It was both our first times and it wasn’t that bad.”
“Yeah, it was. But I’m pleased to say I’ve improved considerably.” He rested the flat of his hand at the base of my neck, over the butterfly on my necklace. I was sure he’d be able to feel my pulse. “A lot of my improvement is thanks to you. We had fun practicing, didn’t we?”
“Mmm,” I managed as he slid his hand over my right breast until he cupped me through the thin material of my bra. “We did.”
“And these babies,” he said, smoothing over my other breast so he supported them both, “were the stars of all my teenage wet dreams. Right from that first day I spotted a bra through your school blouse and realized you were going to grow a set, I wanted to see them, touch them, kiss them.”
“You did, plenty of times.”
“Yeah, but it took me a few years to get there.” He released my breasts, pulled back slightly, and the next thing I knew my bra was sitting at my feet. “It took me a while to persuade you to let me do that.”
“That was in the alley, between Mr. James’s and old Gerty Drew’s, June 29.”
He grinned and let his thumbs brush over my tight nipples. Darts of pleasure shot through my chest and settled low in my belly. My nipples strained for his touch and I watched in the mirror as he lowered his head over my shoulder and studied his own delicate caresses. “I just about went off in my pants that day,” he murmured.
I sucked in a breath as my breasts grew heavy with need and my pulse rate picked up further.
“You’re even more exquisite than I remembered, Jenny. I want you so bad, not just for a quickie. I want to savor making love to you all night long, and then again tomorrow night and the next. Do you remember what we said?”
I turned in his arms and pressed against his hot chest and hard pecs. “What?”
“That we would be each other’s first and last.”
I gave a small nod. “Yes, I remember that.”
“We promised,” he said. “Not just that night in the tent but a hundred more times over the years.” His lips brushed mine. “Have me back, Jenny, be mine and we can pick up where we left off and start being each other’s last, right now, tonight. I don’t want anyone but you, ever again.”
I slid my hands around the base of his neck, my soul swelling with joy and love. My stomach clenched, I could hardly breathe. Never in my wildest dreams had I dared to hope that he still felt the same way about me as I did about him. I pushed to my toes and pulled his mouth to mine. “Yes,” I said breathlessly onto his lips. “Yes, I want to be yours again and I want you to be mine, forever.”
He shut his eyes and blew out a slow breath. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”
And then we were kissing, hard, fast and urgent and I forgot all about my ‘slowly’ rule. His hands were at my jeans, tugging and popping open buttons. A hunger grew inside me. A hunger that couldn’t be ignored, not for another moment.
He shoved at my jeans and knickers, dragging them down my thighs. I gasped as he stooped to take my nipple into his wet, warm mouth. I arched into him and groaned for more. “Sit down,” he said on a rush of breath, urging me onto the bed. He knelt in front of me and slid off my sneakers. Tugged away my jeans and underwear completely.
Before I knew it I was sat before Robbie Harding, lead singer of the Manic Machines, totally, utterly naked.