I bite my bottom lip, and she briefly closes her eyes.

“Gem,” she says, her voice low and breathless. “What are we doing?” She sounds almost pained.

“I don’t know,” I reply in an equally hushed tone. “But I can’t control how my body reacts around you. I’ve been trying since we first ran into each other at that bar.”

She moves aside the things she brought me and comes to stand beside me by the kitchen counter.

“Maybe we just need to do it once,” she murmurs, slowly leaning into me. “You know, so we can take the edge off—”

I don’t even give Celeste the chance to finish her sentence before I kiss her, softly and gently at first and then roughly when she returns my kiss. This time, she touches me, too, wrapping her arms around me in a warm, sensual embrace before she steps back. Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she places her hands on my hips and then slowly makes her way up to my chest, lightly tracing the word BABY—and my hardened nipples, through the fabric—with her thumbs before she pulls the sweater off above my head.

She settles into one of the kitchen bar stools and says, “Sit on my lap, Gemma baby.”

I straddle her, and heat builds in my core as Celeste starts kissing me again, running her hands down my spine. Wetness pools in my underwear as she cups my face, gently but firmly, so she can kiss me deeper, longer.

Back at my friends’ place, I was too desperate to touch her to think about much else. But today, I relish every single detail of her as I slowly take off her sweater, too.

“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I first saw you in that restroom,” I say as I run my hands over the gorgeous black flowers on the left side of her body. Now that I’m actually touching her tattoos, though, I realize that just using my hands isn’t nearly enough. I take one of her hands in mine and start kissing the flowers, working my way up from her wrist, along the length of her arm, all the way to where they end below her collarbone. She arches her spine as I drag kisses up her neck and across her jaw, just the way I know she likes it.

“Gem.” She bites back a moan, and I pull on her lips with my teeth.

“I love your tattoos,” I say softly as I start kissing them again. “Is there any particular reason you got them?”

Her eyes half-closed with pleasure, Celeste replies, “I got them when I moved back to LA. I’d always wanted tattoos and, after the hell I went through, I thought, why not? My family hates them, since they’re afraid the tattoos will scare off men.”