Here & Now

by Melyssa Winchester

  Her intake of breath the minute my hands make contact with her flesh, the heated desire in her eyes when my gaze lands on her, and the wicked half smile on her lips as she lifts her hand up and motions me toward her with an outstretched finger. Cadence is being playful and it’s driving me crazy.

  I’m gonna burn up right here on the spot.

  Sliding on top of her, bringing my lips back down to hers, I pause before kissing her, focused so completely on how amazing she looks and how badly I need to tell her before this goes any further.

  She needs to know how perfect and right this entire moment is.

  “You are so fucking beautiful and I can’t wait to show you how much.”

  Kissing her, capturing those perfectly puckered lips with mine, grazing them with my teeth, tasting them with my tongue, noises I didn’t even know either of us were capable of making appear and I drown in the sound. Her moaning mixed with mine.

  Her hands move from my face and down over my shoulders until they’re scalding my back with the heat they’re creating, the kiss going deeper as my own hands feel their way around her body. The one I’ve touched so many times before, but that feels like I’m doing it for the first time now.

  I want to feel every single inch of her, while she fits so perfectly under me.

  Returning the favor, I move from kissing her lips until I’m tasting her neck, moving my hands at the same time and sliding the dress slowly down her body, moving it in sync with mine until it’s slipped completely down around her legs and I’m back to kissing her again. Starting again at her lips, sliding my hands down her body at the same time until they come to rest around her back, her body completely pressed into mine.

  I can’t believe this is really happening.

  Fuck she feels amazing.

  Tastes even better.

  A fucking angel. And she’s all mine.

  Our bodies are melding together, moving in slow motion, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes and the small breathless sounds that escape mirroring mine, but quieter. As her hands begin to move lower, sliding down my back until I can feel them brushing over my ass as she makes her way around, the reality of what’s about to happen sets in and I break away, pushing pause.

  The look in her eyes the second I slide from my position over her on the bed, it affects me, but what I need to do now is more important. There is no way in hell I’m letting this happen recklessly. I was stupid the first time I got drunk and had sex with a girl, forgetting everything I’d been told about protection and getting caught up in a drunken horny moment. I’m not repeating it with her.

  Sliding my wallet out of my back pocket, her hand hitting it the reason for the pause button being hit, I slip the condom out and toss it on the bed beside us.

  When she catches what I’ve done, her lids flutter closed and she exhales deeply, her confusion in the moment turning to understanding as I slide back onto the bed beside her, but this time, not on top the way we were seconds before.

  Stroking her jaw and watching as her face turns and curves into my hand, I smile before kissing her nose and moving lower and kissing her lips tenderly.

  “Everything about this moment has to be right. No mistakes. I’m sorry I pulled away.”

  “I thought…”

  I know what she thought and there’s no way I’m letting her do it again. I want her. I want her more than anything in the world, but not enough to completely risk not only her future but mine too.

  “Never again, Caddy. Don’t think that ever again.”

  Her body twists on the bed until she’s completely facing me, her one hand coming out and stroking my face while the other slides its way down my chest until again, her fingers are playing with the belt loop of my pants, the tiny smile from earlier back as her eyes remained trained on my lips.

  I feel like one of the candles burning away on the bedside table as her fingers stroke my skin. I’m the wax, hard and cold, until the flame heats me so much that I’m burning, melting into liquid, and the only thing able to be focused on is the way my blood runs hot through every vein in my body.

  I’m drawn to her the way a moth is to a flame and as her lips press to mine, all sense of space and time fades away, all of my senses coming together until all I can smell, taste, feel and experience is her and the way it feels as she pushes her body into mine and slides on top of me, again taking control, but this time because I’m allowing it.

  Her hands are everywhere, and every place she touches, I react, my body pushing into hers, a moan turning into a growl, turning into her name, falling from my lips over and over in a repeated cycle.

  It’s happening. She’s making me feel. Cadence is breaking me wide open, stripping away layer upon layer of walls and built up bullshit. It won’t be long now before she lays me open bare. In the physical way she already has, but this, what she’s doing now as I hear her whispering her love for me, she’s breaking me wide open to my very core.

  I thought I let her close when we got together, letting her get past the stupid beliefs I had about people who were weak and strong, even admitting to myself that she was the strong one and I was the weaker link between us. But this moment, here and now, it’s so much more than all of that.

  No one has ever been this close and until her, I never wanted them to be. I want to let Cadence past the velvet rope. Let her open me up and give her everything I have and I don’t mean physically because we could stop right now and it would still be happening.

  Love, trust, utter devotion. The beat of my heart, the breath in my lungs. I want to give all of those things and more to her because she’s it for me.

  We’re not only making love right now, we’re making history. Changing the way everything before this exact moment has been written.

  With every move her body makes as it connects to mine, she’s solidifying her place. Reaching into the dark recesses of my bruised heart and mending it.

  She’s making me whole.

  Cadence

  I’ve imagined this moment so many times in my head over the last year. The way it would feel being with Dillon for the first time. Anticipating the part where because it’s my first time it won’t exactly feel the best and how he would react to that, if it would make him want to stop or if he’d even care at all.

  Not being with a guy before doesn’t make me stupid. I know how they are. You have the ones that take being with a girl super serious and they go out of their way to make sure that the person they’re with is comfortable and every need is met, and then you have the jerks that just don’t care.

  The ones that just want to get laid and for a really long time, that’s how Dillon was. He admits it. He’s not shy about admitting that this is not his first time and that the other times he was with girls, there was no feeling involved at all. It makes the way I react to him, taking control and attempting to soften the outcome even more important.

  I want this to mean something to him and judging by the way he reacts as he pushes himself inside me, it’s a whole lot different than any other time he may have had before it. He’s as aware of every single motion, movement and sensation as I am, only more concerned.

  The second my body tenses from the pressure and the stinging sensation that follows, he freezes. He’s barely made any movement at all, but something about the way my body reacts stops him cold. His eyes find mine and the look he gives me, pulls at my heart.

  “I’m hurting you.”

  Shaking my head, I lift my body, wrapping my arm completely around his neck and pull him down to me. I may not be able to hear him, but that’s what is so perfect about this because he can hear me and what I have to say next he definitely needs to hear.

  “Kiss it and make it better.”

  Comparing the pain of being this way with him to a boo-boo a kid gets when they hurt themselves might seem wrong, but the tension, the fear I see on his face knowing how uncomfortable this is going to be for me, does what I need it to and eases it. The lines in his forehead
begin to decrease as he brings his lips down to mine, catching them and bringing them into his own, while at the same time pushing himself deeper despite the sharp intake and release of breath that happens the second he does.

  Stopping again, he looks in my eyes and lightens up when he finally sees what I hope is staring back at him. The worst is over. He’s broken the only barrier between us and now all I want is for him to move again so I can experience what comes next.

  The point where two hearts beat in the same rhythm and our two souls combine.

  “Baby, I’m gonna move now…” His breath hitches but he clears his throat, the struggle on his face speaking volumes about how worried he is. “But if it’s too much you need to tell me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  My eyes never once leaving his, I squeeze his shoulder and let him know without words that it’s okay. That I want him to move too because as wonderful as this moment is between us, the both of us completely still; our hearts no longer racing, I need more.

  I need to know what it feels like to be taken over by the emotion we feel for each other until the secure walls we’ve surrounded ourselves in long before we even met are completely broken down and shattered.

  Being with Dillon, I don’t want anything standing between us anymore.

  His body shifts and he begins to move and while at first, my body still tenses and releases around him, the cry I let out at first is replaced by something different. A need for him to go a little faster, push a little deeper so he can erase the way it started altogether. The way it feels now, it’s magic.

  Leaning forward, holding his body steady with the one arm he has firmly planted to the bed, he brings himself down until the feel of his kisses on my face, combines with the scent of us together , and the rhythmic flow of our bodies moving together completely takes over.

  “You feel—this feels…God Caddy.”

  It’s been said before that eyes are windows to what is really taking place inside ones soul and right now, Dillon is living proof. I can see the conflict there, the desire he has for me, the heat and the craving that comes from being this way with someone and it’s mixing with the sometimes overwhelming, definitely overpowering love he has for me. The way his body moves faster, only to slow down again, savoring every second.

  I never imagined conflict being anything remotely beautiful, but in this moment it is because of why it’s happening.

  “I’m never going to be the same.”

  He’s right. He won’t be and neither will I. Making love, opening ourselves up this way, it’s going to irrevocably change us both forever.

  What we have now, and what we’ll have from this second on, it’s going to be so much deeper. It’s going to transcend everything that came before it.

  “We’re not meant to be the same, Dillon. We’re just meant to be.”

  Dillon

  I want to freeze time. Make it stay exactly the way it is now because it’s perfect.

  Cadence is nestled in my arms, her body wrapped up in mine, my arms around her holding her tight enough for it to be secure, but not so tight she can’t breathe and it’s my version of perfection.

  She’s been sleeping soundly this way for twenty minutes now and even though I know we can’t stay like this forever, that eventually we need to get out from under the sheets, I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m enjoying the way she feels being this close to me too much.

  I promised Sarah I would have her home early. That even though I was putting together this elaborate night for her daughter, it wasn’t going to go against her rules. But the way I feel having her this way, it’s just proof I haven’t entirely changed because when it comes to tonight and the very real way her naked body is pressed so perfectly to mine now; I want to break every damn rule imaginable.

  Taking her home and pretending we didn’t just share this life altering experience together, it’s going to be impossible. Now that I’ve been with her, been inside her, filled up so completely by her, there’s no way I can go back to the way things were before.

  Everything is different now. I don’t want to spend another second away from her, which means things are about to get fucking messy.

  She stirs in my arms and I grip her tighter, placing a soft kiss on her head as she moves again, this time more forcefully until I can see her eyes fluttering open as her head lifts up and they find mine.

  “How long have you been watching me sleep?”

  “The entire time.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Because it would have ruined the moment.”

  The truth is, the way her breath felt on my chest felt amazing, not to mention how much softer her skin becomes to the touch when she’s completely at peace, all worry and stress completely forgotten about.

  There was no way in hell I was waking her up and missing out on all of that.

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten.”

  Her eyes widen and I know what it means. She’s realizing that her curfew is only thirty minutes away and if we want to make it, keep ourselves in Sarah’s good graces, we’re going to have to get up now and get moving.

  “When’s check out?”

  “Twelve hours from now, why?”

  Lifting herself up, she sighs softly before smiling. “I don’t want to go home yet.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Can we stay the night?”

  My head explodes, screaming at me to say yes when she asks the question. There is nothing I want more then to just stay here with her like this for the rest of the night, setting our phones to go off early enough to get her to school in the morning before heading to class myself, but I can’t do that.

  Her mom’s angry face flashes through my head. The way she used to look at me whenever we crossed paths in the hall before I met her daughter last year. I can’t have her looking at me like that again, not when I’ve been doing everything to erase that look altogether.

  “We can’t. Your mom.”

  I hate being the fucking voice of reason, especially with the frown that appears on her face. She has no clue how badly I just want to throw caution to the wind and spend the rest of the night here, making love with her until the sun comes up. How much I want to make this moment right now last forever because I’m afraid when it ends, I’m going to find out it’s all been a dream.

  “I can text her.”

  Somehow I doubt a text is going to be enough for Sarah, but with how resigned she is to the idea of staying the entire night with me, I’ll be damned if I don’t want to give in and let her.

  “Fine, but if she says we need to go home then we’re going home.”

  My attempt at being stern and standing firm in my position here, it sucks. If I can see through my own lame attempt then there’s no doubt she can too, which means even if her mom says to come home and Cadence still wants to stay, I’m going to break and go along with it.

  It can’t be wrong to want to spend the night with the girl I love after what we just shared together, can it?

  Chapter Eight

  Cadence

  Mom: Are you having a good time?

  Me: Yes. Can I stay out a little past curfew?

  Mom: How much later?

  Me: A couple of hours.

  Mom: Caddy, no. I agreed to this date because it was something I thought the both of you needed, but you still have school.

  Me: Please? I never ask you for anything. I just want to spend a bit more time with him. I’ll be fine for school I swear.

  Mom: I said no. I want you home no later than 11.

  When Dillon asked me what my mom said, I tried to lie. I told him that she was fine with me staying as long as I was at school in the morning, but he didn’t buy it. My so-called bad boy has definitely learned a lot about my mom in the last year, which meant it was only a few minutes and he had me spilling my guts.

  I thought for sure when I finished showing him the texts, he would slide out of the bed and force me
to go home. I obviously didn’t give him enough credit.

  We stayed the night together, he didn’t put up a fight even though I know a part of him wanted to, and now we’re about to make our descent back into my house, knowing full well the wrath we’re going to experience once we come face to face with my mom.

  I know what I did was wrong. I’m not a complete moron, but I’m also a teenage girl who is head over heels in love with her boyfriend. My mom; the relationship she has with my dad, she’s been there. Now I just need to make her see it and hope that she doesn’t take it all out on Dillon.

  He’s not to blame for me going against what she wanted. I am.

  Though not answering her five texts and the same amount of phone calls throughout the night, he was definitely going to pay for that. I’m just glad my mom seemed to understand at least a little what was going on because she never worried enough to call the cops.

  Proving she has more faith in Dillon then I give her credit for.

  Grasping his hand tight after unlocking the door, I open it and walk through and the second we’re in I see the light switch turn on above us and she comes out from around the corner nook leading into the kitchen.

  She doesn’t waste a second. Her hands are moving and it’s so quick, I can barely keep up, let alone Dillon. Signing is still new to him even though he’s gotten pretty good at it. If I’m having this much of an issue keeping up, there’s no way he’s going to be able to.

  “Cadence, kitchen now.” She says and when I move forward and turn to the side in order to get past her, Dillon moves with me, our hands still connected and that’s when she puts her hand out to stop him.

  Freezing in place, I watch her lips move, this time slower, almost deliberately wanting me to be able to read them and I’m suddenly not so sure the kitchen is the right place for me.

  “Stay where you are. I want to have a few words with you first.”

  Turning her attention away from Dillon, she looks back to me and points again toward the kitchen. “Go, Cadence and don’t even think about arguing with me. Not after what you pulled.”