Free Firsts by Rosalie Stanton Page B

her lips wrapped around his prick. Yesterday he'd begged the universe to give him this very thing, only to be denied. But now—Godnow—he understood. It couldn't have happened anyway but this. Perfection existed here. Right here. It wasn't whispered in the dark or off the buzz of lovemaking. This lived real in the real world. Savannah stood right here, and she loved him.
     
    “I know this isn't what you were looking for,” she said quickly. “And that's, well, that's why I came by. I wanted to call things off before I got myself in even deeper, because, hey? Lovesick Savannah is kinda—”
     
    A warm smile spread across Thorn's face, new life pulsing through his skin. “Savannah…”
     
    “Disastrous. And…ummm, well, I told you because I obviously can't… We can't be friends anymore, Thorn. I can't be the sort of friend who stands by while you date skanks like Paige.”
     
    “Savannah—”
     
    “And pretend it doesn't kill me. But you deserve the truth, and now that you have it, I'll just pick up the tattered pieces of my dignity and go home.”
     
    Thorn shook his head. “Can't let you do that, love.” Her brow wrinkled, inspiring a chuckle.
    “I really can't believe,” he continued, “after all these years, after everything we've been through…how you never knew.”
     
    “Knew what?”
     
    He sighed. “Savannah, I've been in love with you since kindergarten.”
     
    And then he couldn't stand the distance between them. He watched her race through emotions he couldn't name, watched realization, understanding, and euphoria spread across her skin, and he had to taste her.
     
    In a blink, he had her against him, her mouth a slave to his. Everything else fell aside.
     
    She loves me.
     
    If this were a dream, he never wanted to wake.

Chapter Five
    “You love me?”
     
    He barked a laugh against her lips, tugging her shirt over her head. They had somehow made it down the hall she knew so well and danced dangerously close to crossing the threshold of his room.Wesley's room . She knew what would happen there, yet her mind had joined her heart, steadfastly refusing to focus onthat when she only heard his words over and over again.
     
    It didn't seem real…didn't seem possible.
     
    “I fucking worship you,” Thorn replied, and for how hard he was trembling, for the desperate openness in his eyes—those eyes that peeled away layers with such ease, it unnerved the strongest of wills—she heard the truth in his words. Hell, shefelt the truth. It just didn't seem real. These things only happened in movies. The comically confused protagonists of some Nora Ephron feature. These things did not happen in real life, and they most certainly didn't happen to her.
     
    “For how long?” Savannah whispered. She vaguely knew her tee had disappeared gone and her jeans would soon follow. It seemed he had his heart set on getting her naked.
     
    “Told you,” he replied, his mouth dropping to nip at her bra strap. “Since the first day I saw you.”
     
    “We were three!”
     
    Thorn shrugged a lazy shoulder, and it hit her that he had officially becomeThorn to her.
    Completely, wholly, thoroughly. Wesley was a boy she'd known, a boy she loved; Thorn was the man he'd grown into, and the one she'd fallen in love with. The change happened so rapidly in her head, she nearly didn't catch it, but when she did, it shook her to the core.
     
    She'd tried to label Thorn as the side of Wesley who would touch her. Wrong. Thorn and Wesley lived as one in the same… Wesley had grown up into Thorn.
     
    “I saw you, and I was yours, baby,” he murmured, fingers deftly popping open the snap of her jeans. “I always knew it'd be us.”
     
    “But you never said anything.”
     
    He laughed again, though it sounded forced this time. “Couldn't very well, could I?
    Savannah… I'm serious. I loved you the second I saw you, and every day since then, I've just fallen deeper. But you never looked at me like