Ethan had always been like this. Thirty-nine, divorced once, cautious but confident. He didn’t rush into anything—not business, not pleasure. He’d told her once that anticipation was half the fuel of desire. That what most men didn’t understand was this: if you make her wait for the kiss, everything else feels like breaking rules.
Amber, thirty-five, wasn’t used to being denied. She’d left a marriage because she was tired of being invisible, tired of a man who touched her like a checklist. She thought she wanted someone who would take her fast, hard, with no hesitation. And yet here she was—aching because Ethan wouldn’t kiss her when everything else in his body said he wanted to.
She trembled as his lips found her collarbone, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. Her head tipped back, lips parted in a silent plea. Her hips rocked against him, chasing friction, but his mouth kept dodging hers, teasing, withholding.
Finally, she snapped. “Goddamn it, kiss me!”
Her voice cracked the room like lightning. His smile widened. He grabbed her jaw, firm, forcing her eyes on his. The pause stretched out just long enough to break her pride. And then—finally—his mouth crashed into hers.
The kiss was brutal, desperate, messy. Teeth clashing, tongues tangling, saliva and moans blending in the kind of chaos that only comes when restraint finally shatters. She clutched him, nails raking his shoulders, her hips grinding harder as if the kiss unlocked every part of her body at once.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was everything she’d begged for without words, everything he’d held back until she couldn’t stand it anymore.
When they finally tore apart, gasping, her forehead rested against his. Her lipstick smeared across both their mouths, her chest heaving. She stared at him, dazed and furious all at once.
“You’re an asshole,” she whispered, her voice shaking.
“Maybe,” he said, thumb brushing her swollen lower lip. “But you’ll remember that kiss longer than any you’ve ever had.”
And she knew he was right.
Because it wasn’t the hands on her thighs, or the dress pushed high, or the way his body pressed hard against hers. It was the kiss—the delayed, denied, finally delivered kiss—that broke her open.
Later, when she lay tangled in his sheets, skin still hot, she replayed it over and over. The hunger, the denial, the release.
And she realized something uncomfortable.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kiss her when things got heated.
It was that he knew exactly when she needed him not to.
