She can’t help herself.
That’s what she keeps telling herself as she feels her heart swell up painfully with want, and honestly, need.
She can’t help herself, she thinks like it’s happening in slow motion, her moving in toward him, then up on her tip-toes.
She can’t help herself at all, not even a little bit as she licks her lips, eyes snagged up on his gorgeous dark ones.
She wants the man. Wants him so badly, it physically hurts somewhere inside her she couldn’t quite pinpoint if you asked her to, because while she’s kissed men before, wanted it and quite enjoyed it, she hasn’t ever physically ached over it before.
So she kisses him!
She kisses him on the scarf, right over where his mouth would be if he had one. And it’s warm. Unbelievably warm! She likes that!
But…he gives. He gives where he shouldn’t. He should have lips, a jaw, he should be solid. And she knew that, never did give a damn, but she can’t help that initial surprise at how different it feels.
So she twitches back with a slight gasp, all on reflex.
And now she’s mortified.
She immediately knows shouldn’t have.
She sees it in his face, the astonished light and widening of his eyes, the tension across his cheeks telling her if he had a jaw, it’d be at her feet.
Then she sees the insecurity immediately rip through and dim him down, sees the discomfort in how his eyes skitter off from hers. She feels the stiffening of his long, lean body, and even though he doesn’t step away, it’s only because he’s sort of stuck.
He’s embarrassed. Self-conscious.
She did that to him with one stupidly done kiss. She could’ve literally kissed the man anywhere else, but she’d unintentionally, impulsively gone in for a kill, and hadn’t been able to control a reaction she hadn’t in one million years anticipated having. And now, where it’d earlier seemed to unwrap in slow motion leading up to the kiss, the reality of everything slams into her face at sudden speed, and she sort of panics.
Badly.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that—holy shit you don’t even have a mouth—!”
“Luv, it’s fine, really—”
“—well fuck, that just made it worse,” she continues rambling even faster, slapping her hand to her face, “I have no idea why I said that about your mouth like it matters, because honestly I don’t actually give a crap about that, like, not at all—”
“Lee, I—what?”
“—seriously not in the slightest, I wanted to kiss you,” she continues, brows knitting up, completely missing his startled pause. “So yeah, if I wanted to kiss you, then obviously it doesn’t matter, right? It was just reflex, I swear!”
“I…uh, I guess?” He tries again, and she normally would have noticed, she loves the sound of his voice in her head, but she’s not yet done with her verbal shits.
“—and you know what, I’m not sorry,” she insists, “and I don’t care that you can’t kiss me back, as long as you actually want to kiss me back—“
“—well, I think I would, yes—“
“—because actually, I like you quite a bit, and I want to kiss you again—”
“Jubilee!” He bites through her rambling, his telepathic ‘voice’ rippling across her brain.
“—what?” She snaps back, and his eyes catch hers, and she feels again that ache to touch him.
“Just be still,” he laughs softly against her mind, and she shivers, because he’s also giving her a ‘smile’.
He does that. Sort of shoots out an image behind her eyes of his expression.
Sort of.
She can’t see his face whole. A better description would be that it’s like a snapshot memory of his features, lines crisp, yet so fleeting, they’re vague and gone, his expressions more of a vibe than an image.
She loves it when he does that. She likes his face just fine as is, but she’s also eager for every show of what his face had been. He had a crooked front tooth, a cleft chin, and his mouth had been wide, lips full, lip-line fine—
She closes her eyes at the press of his face close to hers. At the brush of his scarf against her lips. There’s pressure this time, and more intense heat, and she can feel that same flare up radiating off his torso.
He’s kissing her.
He’s kissing her!
She explores the sensations, the silk-soft of his scarf, the heat flare against her lips like warm breath, the luxuriant sink into the kiss as he leans in and tilts his head slightly.
It’s like that one time she’d tried cauliflower ‘alfredo’ sauce. It hadn’t tasted a thing like alfredo sauce, but she’d liked it so much, she’d preferred it over actual alfredo sauce when she made the pasta dish at home.
That’s how Jono’s kiss is for her. It’s not a mouth-kiss, and it doesn’t feel like one, but it’s still a delicious kiss, and she wants it.
Actually, she wants more. She’s had the hots for Jono for a fat minute, he’d just never noticed her for the longest because of his feelings for Paige.
But there’s time for more later. This is new. They’ve gotten so close in recent months, and she’d started wondering if maybe her feelings weren’t quite so unrequited after all. Being around him feels good, amazing, and she doesn’t want to screw it up.
She wants to take it slow and enjoy the long stretch of it.
So she’ll enjoy his kiss, and she’ll reach up on her tip toes and loop arms around his neck, and when he circles arms around her and stretches her up off her toes, she’ll wind fingers in his thick hair and just let shit happen.
He slowly loosens his hold on her, just enough to let her stand flat-feet again. She lets her arms go lax around his neck, her finger now twirling the hair at his nape.
“As I was sayin’ luv yes, I’d really like to kiss you back,” he teases, and she can feel his smile, a most definitely kissable quirk up of his mouth.
“Hmm, so what you’re actually saying is, I should continue keeping still right now,” she grins up at him, pulling a hand back to tap her chin as if thoughtful. “‘Cause I’m not gonna lie, my motivation levels are highly rewards-based, and all I heard just now is ‘be still and I’ll give you a treat’.”
“Something like that, yeah,” he readily agrees. And then he pulls her back up on her toes and kisses her again.
She may or may not have popped her leggy a la Princess Diaries as she happily does exactly as he’d asked, refusing to move even a centimeter from her precise spot, wrapped up in his arms and in his kiss.
She can’t help herself at all, not even a little bit.