Free Brave Enough by M. Leighton

happen tonight, and if I don’t stop now, there will be no stopping later.
    When Tag tugs on my hand, urging me to follow him back to the door, my feet know the answer before my mind does. They follow him without thought, without qualm. Without caution. And just like that, my decision is made. I’m going. And I’m not looking back.
    Tag leads me silently through the house, down the stairs and through the kitchen to the back door, holding open the screen until I pass through. It hisses slowly shut behind me as we step out into the night.
    A soft, warm rain is falling, but I barely feel it. Every nerve, every sense, every thought is focused squarely on the man in front of me, leading me. To where, I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.
    We walk across the yard, the wet grass teasing my toes and tickling my ankles. Tag’s hand is warm and solid around mine, his smile reassuring when he glances back at me. His face is shadowed in the pale moonlight, giving him an air of mystery that he doesn’t need. He’s already mysterious. Enigmatic in the way he has captured my interest so completely, so effortlessly.
    The grass changes to smooth dirt as we pass into the first row of grapevines. My captor pulls me gently along until we are four rows deep, an island in the darkness of the night, and then he stops and turns to face me.
    â€œClose your eyes,” he whispers, his voice as velvety as the onyx sky above.
    I obey without question, my breath coming in quick, anxious bursts.
    â€œNow, take a slow, deep breath,” he instructs. And so I do.
    That’s when I smell it.
    It’s sweetly aromatic with just a hint of sin drifting around the edges. The grapes scent the air with a fruity musk that is as delicious as it is sexy.
    â€œThey only smell this way when it rains at night. I don’t know why, but it’s like they come alive in the dark. In the warm, wet dark.”
    When I open my eyes to find Tag’s stormy silver ones, the perfume roots in my chest. It grows there as though the bud of everything that is between us—the sweet, the sexy, the forbidden—is blossoming like a rose in the sunshine. Spreading its petals within me. Driving its thorns into me. Holding me. Trapping me.
    â€œSay yes.”
    I don’t have to ask what he wants me to say yes to. I already know. I think I might’ve known the instant he showed up in my bathroom doorway and stole my breath, my logic, my caution.
    He waits. But not patiently. I can feel eagerness, anticipation radiating from him like sound waves from a speaker, tickling my senses, teasing my sensibilities. He wants me to say yes. I
need
to say yes, but still he’s leaving it up to me.
    I take one step toward him, bringing my chest flush with his, my stomach pressing to his all the way to the impressive bulge I feel below his waist.
    â€œShow me,” I murmur. The moment the words leave my lips, I feel him tighten against me, as though his every muscle is straining to get to me, but he’s holding himself back.
    Tag bends and sweeps me into his arms. I can see the wicked flash of his teeth in his tanned face before he says, “I hope you don’t mind getting dirty.”
    Before I can answer, he drops to his knees and lays me gently on my back in the soft, wet mud. When he stretches out on top of me, I sink ever so slightly as though we are cocooned within the earth itself. Protected. I smell only the sweetness of the grapes, I hear only the muted patter of the rain, I see only Tag.
Feel
only Tag. It’s as though, in this grove, on this night, we are hidden away from all the world.
    Resting his weight on his forearms, Tag cups my face with his hands. In his eyes is all the desire I feel for him, harnessed carefully so that it doesn’t lash out and hurt me. “You’ll never look at these grapes the same way after tonight,” he whispers. “I promise you that.”
    And then his lips