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**Part 22**

What were we doing?!

My mind was racing, yet was still completely unable to keep up. Similar to the way I had momentarily kissed Annabelle back out of reflex, I found myself naturally leaning in due to the way she had set things up. We were sitting so closely together, her voice was quiet and subtly intimate, and I was at all times a sucker when it came to my hair. The moment her fingertips brushed the side of my head for the little tuck, I immediately lost whatever words were at the tip of my tongue.

“Umm . . .” I muttered. All of a sudden, I felt more like my teenage self stumbling through her first kiss. Glancing down at the girl’s lips for a moment and the way they were still slightly pursed in a sultry smile, I quickly course corrected and looked back up while blushing a bit. Meeting her eyes was almost worse. She looked so calm and confident; patient, too. Between us, I was the older one, but it certainly didn’t feel that way at the moment.

After a few seconds of stillness, she ever so slightly cocked her head to the side. “Oh. Can you not handle it?”

There was just something about her. It was the same unplaceable feeling I got when we first met. The need to impress her, or at least the impulse to avoid her judgment. So, with a question like that, I didn’t pause to think before reply. “No. I mean, I can.” Trying my hardest to will away the blush that I could feel worsening, I concluded with the whole thing. “I can handle it.”

It was only after I said the words that I grasped what they were referring to. Kissing her. Kissing Annabelle. Instead of jumping off the sofa and giving a big speech about professionalism and boundaries, I had squandered the ‘out’ she just gave me by affirming my commitment. Technically, I could still take my answer back, but something about saying it out loud made it feel more binding. More real. Apparently I needed to kiss another girl to be brave, and now I had more firmly agreed.

“Then prove it, Mere.”

My heart was practically pounding out of my chest as I felt her warm breath tickle my lips. I didn’t flinch in the slightest at the nickname; there were more essential things to focus on. Like the fact that I was about to initiate a kiss with a high schooler. Sure, she was eighteen, but she also hadn’t graduated yet. It was one thing for *her* to kiss *me*, because she was being all young and impulsive. But for me to lead? That was different, even if she verbally started it.

Wrong. Inappropriate. Taboo.

And yet, I was leaning in. Eyes fluttering closed as I tilted my head and allowed Annabelle to gently guide me into place with the hand that had stayed nearby after brushing my hair back, my lips brushed against hers. For what felt like an eternity, we stayed just like that. Dangerously close to crossing a line, all while our breaths mingled and the suspension increased. The longer we remained poised for more of a real kiss than the one that was sprung on me earlier, the more I almost *wanted* to go for it. All the hang-ups were still there, but they were more and more muted as I focused on all the sensations I could feel with closed eyes.

Annabelle was content to wait as long as it took, apparently. While she made a point to reciprocate what little I had given her by brushing and nudging her lips against mine, the girl hadn’t made any effort to push forward for something more.

Finally, I mustered the courage to kiss her. I certainly didn’t have the strength to break things off after the longest tease and build-up I had ever had before something as simple as a kiss. And if I didn’t do something soon, my nerves were gonna make me freeze up indefinitely as my mind remained at war with itself. Ultimately letting my body make the decision, and doing the thing that it was telling me to do, I brushed my lips against Annabelle’s own one more time, and then leaned the rest of the way in to press mine against hers.

Like the few other girls I had kissed before, albeit dared and/or drunkenly compared to this fully sober moment, there was a softness to Annabelle’s lips that contrasted that of guys I had been with before. A unique patience, too. Not just from the way she had been waiting for me to make the first move, but also in that she didn’t immediately push for more like I had experienced with the opposite gender more often than not. Her lips parted just enough so mine could gently lock with hers; what would normally feel like a peck ended up feeling like more as we let the light pressure linger for quite some time.

It was officially a new sort of kiss for me, one that I had never experienced before. Which, of course, only sparked my subconscious curiosity and made me want to stay. Shifting to her upper lip, I kissed her just as delicately as before. Once again, we fit together effortlessly and stayed intimately connected for a few long seconds with just the right amount of teasing pressure. I was about to pull back, in both awe and fear that kissing Annabelle felt a lot better than I expected; I *needed* to get some distance, before this turned into something more.

But then she began playing with my hair. Just a few fingers, idly twirling whatever strands she managed to discover. In an instant, I found myself melting from the combination of her inviting lips and the weakness of mine. Fuck. How did we get here?! The rational Meredith was still somewhere, trying to voice all the reasons why we should abort, but the flustered and tempted me couldn’t think as clearly. I met Annabelle’s lips for a third time, sinking mine more fully into hers before I could stop myself. Why did it feel so good?

Finally, Annabelle took some initiative. Leaning in and more assertively locking her lips with mine, she gave a small nibble to my lower lip. And, with a simple flick of her tongue, she managed to bait mine out as I readied myself for a deeper kiss. But it never came. The moment I tried to lunge forward and turn a few intimate kisses into a full-blown make-out session, I found myself chasing her lips to no avail. Every time I inched forward, I could only barely brush mine against hers. It happened several times in a row, leaving me frustrated and more desperate for what I suddenly couldn’t have.

“You-” I began, at a loss for words as I whispered the begin of an accusation. Tease, perhaps? It *was* a tease, but I slightly came back to reality from the spark of emotion brought on by fruitlessly trying to deepen our kiss. My eyes flickered open, and a knot immediately formed in my stomach when I saw the smirk and the amused emerald eyes waiting for me.

I had just kissed Annabelle. And, for a moment, I had wanted to do more.

“Mere,” she quietly said, “Don’t worry. No one has to know.”

That I kissed a girl her age. I could only imagine it would do to my reputation, and potentially to my career. The Alodia family was wealthy and influential! Part of the reason I had accepted this job was for the potential doors it could open, but now I could see the opposite happening. I would be the horny university girl who made an advance on their ‘innocent’ daughter; there was no doubt in my mind that Annabelle would spin it like that if she were the one telling the story.

Of course, that was my mind getting carried away with projections. Annabelle literally just said that she wouldn’t tell. “Thank you,” I awkwardly replied. Worried that she might take it as thanks for kissing me, I abruptly pulled back. “Can we just pretend this never happened?”

Though we were no longer in kissing range, the young redhead still held the ends of my hair. Her fingertips had slid down when I pulled away, naturally landing where they were when I stopped. “Never happened?” she echoed. Going back to the idle twirling, Annabelle never took her eyes off mine. “You don’t want to kiss me ever again?”

Well . . . That wasn’t exactly true. The look on my face must have said everything; I wasn’t capable of lying to her or to myself. Not when I was still coming down from the confusing physical connection we just had.

“How about this, Mere?” she said. With a playful tug on my hair, she slightly leaned forward. “I have a fun idea.”

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NSFW: yes

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