"Kissing is a two-way street," I murmur as I lift my head. "You can kiss me, too."
A'tam's smile flashes and then he cups my face in both his hands and kisses me with unbridled enthusiasm. It's a little more skilled than the first round, though, and I enjoy it. By the time he lifts his head, I'm ready to take things to the next level. When he pulls away, I lean forward and lick at his mouth.
He stares at me, dumbfounded. "You licked me, B'shit."
"Bridget," I correct, pushing down the flash of annoyance I feel at the name. "And kissing involves tongues, too. Want me to show you?" When he groans, I decide to take that as a yes and continue the education. I kiss him lightly again and brush my tongue against the part of his lips. It takes two attempts before he gets the hint, and then he parts his lips even wider, letting me inside. I tease my tongue into his mouth, flicking lightly and exploring him. His fangs scrape against my tongue, but it only adds to the sexy thrill of things…as does the realization that his tongue has all kinds of ridges on it, just like his cock does.
Oh boy. Now my mind is on fire with possibility. I whimper.
A'tam groans and locks his arms around me, and his tongue barrels into my mouth with zero subtlety. I don't mind—it's all about the kissing now, and we're both attacking each other with fierce, unbridled need.
His hand slides to my ass, squeezing it, and I realize things are going to get out of control very quickly if I don't say something. While I love the kissing—and I do—I also don't want to make out behind the outhouses. "A'tam," I say, pulling away. "I should go."
"Go?" The look he gives me is glazed with hunger and confusion. "Go where?"
I bite back a chuckle of amusement. "Go to bed. Go to sleep."
He pulls me tight against him again, his mouth on mine. "You should come to my furs."
"Aren't you sleeping in a tent with I'rec and the others?" When he shrugs, that decides it. He might not care if we fool around in front of the others, but I sure do. "Not tonight."
He grunts and kisses me again. "Tomorrow, then."
"We'll see." He's always so damn impatient, A'tam.
"Tomorrow," he repeats firmly as I slide out of his grasp.
I have a feeling my answer is going to be the same tomorrow as it is tonight. If there's no privacy, we're not doing anything. But I just give him a coy, playful smile and walk away. My head's buzzing from our kisses, and suddenly this snowy world is very full of promise.
5
DAYS LATER
BRIDGET
It's finally happening. Tonight's the night.
I go to bed early, watching through my lashes and pretending to sleep as person after person files into the women's cave. Tia yawns widely, and Raven thumps her pillow a few times, but eventually everyone settles down and goes to sleep. All gets quiet. I'm wide awake, though. It feels a bit like I'm back in boarding school, getting ready to sneak out. If my mother caught me, I'd be grounded for months. Or worse, she'd send me to a brand new boarding school where I didn’t know anyone. Either way, the goal was to make me completely miserable, all for a little bit of fun. My mother didn't want me happy, I think. She was a miserable person, so she was determined to make everyone else around her miserable, too.
I shake off the thought, because that life feels a million years away. I'm not on Earth anymore. Heck, I'm not even a teenager. I'm a grown woman at the age of twenty-three, and I can sneak out to go spend time with a guy if I want to.
But because I am who I am, I'm utterly quiet as I slide out from under my furs, fully dressed. I fluff my pillow and roll up my clothes so it looks as if I'm still sleeping under the mountain of furs, and then I tiptoe past the other sleeping women, my breath fogging in the chilly night air. I half-expect to get caught. Like someone's going to wake up and say my name and then everyone will know I'm sneaking out to see A'tam. No one wakes up, though, and I make it outside the cave with ease.
It's late, and no one's sitting by the main fire pit. The coals are banked, giving a dim orange glow, and the scattered seating of stones and logs is empty. I move past them, wincing as my shoes crunch on the pebbled sands. I should move slower, but if I do, I risk getting seen. So I quicken my pace and head toward the water and the distant cliffs. There's a nervous flutter in my stomach and it only increases as I move toward the line of huts hugging the cliffs.
Somewhere over there, A'tam is waiting for me.
Ever since the islanders arrived, things have been different and exciting on the beach. I mean, it's been kind of crazy ever since we were rescued from the belly of an alien ship and I still have a hard time believing that there's no going home. It hasn't quite sunk in that this primitive life on an icy planet is now what I get to look forward to. Sometimes I wake up and expect to be back in my apartment, waiting for my alarm to go off so I can head into rush hour traffic for another achingly boring day at work. But that unsettled feeling has slowly disappeared, and it's been replaced with something new ever since the islanders arrived.
Lust.
I have it so, so bad for A'tam. If I was building the perfect man, A'tam would hit all of those marks.
And the moment he arrived, A'tam made it clear he was interested in me. The hottest guy on the beach…with me. Bridget Wooten-Fuller, who is so boring and unappealing that my beautiful mother made it a point to tell me that repeatedly. Who's had maybe a handful of relationships in all my life, and all of them ended with a guy breaking up with me because I didn't excite him enough. On this planet, though, I'm exciting and alluring, and I fully admit it's flattering. I totally lean into it, too. I'm a little flirtier here, a little bolder. I play the kissing games with confidence, and I tease the men as much as any other girl does.
A'tam never takes his gaze off of me, either.
It's hugely flattering that the hottest guy here wants me. That he looks at all the faces of the women here, and I'm the one he chooses. It's been smoldering between us since that night of spin the bottle. It's been a stream of flirting and running into each other, of teasing jokes and longing gazes and a few stolen kisses when no one was looking.
And tonight, we’re moving past that.
I head to his hut. Earlier tonight, at dinner, he leaned close and invited me to come take a look at his home after dark, when everyone else is asleep. The meaning of that is loud and clear. We’ve been stealing kisses for days and days now, but the fact that there’s no privacy has always been a sticking point.
There’s privacy now, though. And his meaning is loud and clear.
I'm a little nervous, but mostly, I'm excited. This is a new life, a new me, and who knows what tomorrow's going to bring? So I'm going to enjoy today, and I'm going to enjoy a furtive hook-up with a smoking hot guy with a banging body who absolutely cannot get me pregnant.
There are zero downsides to this.
I move toward the cliffs and the line-up of huts makes me pause. In the dark, they all look the same. Each one is built on a low platform of wood to keep it off the sand, and then it's mortared rock walls with a teepee-like domed roof with a smoke-hole. Several of them have tiny curls of smoke coming up from the apex, because of course. It's late and people are keeping their huts warm. I suddenly panic, though, because in the dark I can't tell which one is A'tam's hut. I don't want to go knocking on the wrong guy's hut or it'll be all over the camp in the morning.