I so desperately wanted to ask him if he did anything with her. Held her hand. Kissed her. Promised her another date. But I didn’t because I was enveloped in his arms in the middle of the night beneath the glow of several dozen globe lights, and it was pretty perfect.

A few minutes later, Fisher sat up partway, taking me with him, guiding my legs to straddle his midsection. He held the most contemplative expression on his face. I wanted to solve it like one of my puzzles, looking for clues in his eyes, the part of his lips, or his hand brushing the hair away from my face before caressing his knuckles down my neck.

I closed my eyes, reveling in the moment, in the way he made me feel like I was flying. Free of everything that kept me from finding myself, my voice, my place in the world.

When I opened my eyes, he feathered his other hand along my cheek, his thumb tracing my bottom lip. The night air was no comparison to the way Fisher’s touch elicited an endless emergence of goose bumps along my skin.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

His gaze followed the trail of his hand along my skin for another breath or two before he gave me those intense eyes of his. “I’m apologizing.”

From earlier that week …

The car dealership. The park. His extreme extra.

Sorry meant nothing if that kind of touch was his way of apologizing. My soul felt it.

“Fisher?” I whispered.

He seemed mesmerized with my lips—his thumb ghosting along them, eyes drifting from mine to his thumb.

“Are you going to kiss me?”

The hint of a grin moved his mouth. “I was thinking about it.”

My hand curled around his wrist, pulling his hand from my mouth as I leaned in a few inches and grinned while my lips brushed along his. “You think too much.”

We kissed.

We let our hands explore each other’s bodies.

We made out … the first time I actually made out with a guy.

No sex.

No orgasms.

Just lots of kissing and touching.

Eventually, our hands stilled, our bodies entwined, and our lips eased apart as we fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke first, lifting my head from his chest. One of his hands rested on top of mine pressed to his chest next to my head. His other hand … it was resting on my butt … on the inside of my panties. I wasn’t sure when it laid claim to that spot, but I kinda liked it.

That was a lie.

I kinda loved it.

If I was going to Hell, I wanted to go there with Fisher’s hands all over me, his lips on mine, and his dirty words in my ear.