My panties were still on but he didn’t let that stop him, nosing them out of the way and tonguing my sex, making low, growling noises in his throat like a big cat purring with pleasure while it devoured its prey.

I looked at him like a stranger, someone I’d never seen before, and he looked at me like I’d been lost to him for a thousand years and finally found.

Every day for a week, sitting in my idling car, saying goodbye without saying anything at all—the touch of his hand, his forehead pressed to mine, the way he brushed my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. And still, he hadn’t kissed me. Not once. Nothing but that brief brush of his lips. I was beginning to go a little crazy.

We were a galaxy exploding into a million pieces, creating a whole new world, as we crashed against each other on the soft surface of his mattress, a cloud in the darkness, our bodies finally falling together like rain.

We fell into each other’s arms and kissed like we were coming up for air after being underwater for days. The melding of our mouths was sweeter than oxygen. We took huge, deep gulps of each other as we struggled with worldly constraints like clothing and gravity, seeking to transcend it all in our coming together.