Legs locked around his waist as her back pressed against the wall, the world suddenly so right again when she was in his arms, his lips on her neck, making her feel so vibrant, so colourful, so full of life and bursting with colour, and everything she hadn’t felt with her little head pumped with drugs and pockets full of stones. Arms fixed about his shoulders, her hands rooted in his hair, he became her anchor, compass point clicking only to him. “Of course we get tired! But that’s the fun part; we start again. Re-invent ourselves, perhaps. We become new characters, live in another story for a bit, until that one becomes a little too mundane for your reckless ways. Doesn’t change the fact that the you I love is the you here–” Tessa’s fingers strayed to the planes of his chest, slipping through the gaps between buttonholes, plucking the fabric open to trace the skin that sheathed his heart, his lips on her neck giving rise to a gasping moan as her thighs only clamped tighter around his hips.
“Oh, there’s definitely things worth growing up, Ronan,” Tess began, her index finger tracing the chapped skin of his lower lip, split lip she had stitched haphazardly so many times, wishing she held the boldness to kiss it better. She’d always find a reason not to, convincing herself that Ronan saw her as a fragile little thing, not the kind he’d wanted the heated pleasure of a love affair with. Lips found his in an gasoline inferno, hard enough to bite, her hands tugging at the coarse raven of his curls as heat seemed to pump from every pore. The taste of his mouth was something she’d never grow bored of, still wrapped up in the way it felt the first time, the utter weightlessness of her body, the sinking feeling in her stomach always leaving her aching for love. She could feel the swell of it beating in her chest; everything she’d never been certain of with anyone before. Her heart was a ticking time bomb caged in egg shell. She was reckless with it, abundant with it, pulling the pin grenade for any boy who kissed her like she mattered, but in Ronan’s hands she felt like cast iron. “The rest of your life? That’s a long time, Ronan. Be careful what you wish for, and don’t promise me forever. But instead you can promise me the deepest and truest love your heart can offer. That doesn’t have a time stamp on it. It’s purer. Time grows tired, but the heart never does.” Spoken like a true poet, but somehow he brought out the beauty in her, the poetry in her, he made her magical by seeing her that way and allowing to see herself not as rotten, or wilting, but as a beautiful, mythic thing.
The feel of chilly winter air against the newly exposed skin of his upper chest caused goosebumps to break out on his arms. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that they were still in public and that their classmates could see their wildly intimate position. To them it must have looked incredibly sexual; two people that craved each other so desperately that they couldn’t make it to a supply closet or a bathroom for privacy. He supposed it was partly true, he hadn’t had the patience or willpower to drag them off to a more secluded area of the boat. It wasn’t about sex, though, it was about having her as close as possible. It was about making sure the only person who could hear his words was the petite girl sandwiched between him and the wall. It seemed as time ticked on, Ronan only desired to be touched by her more and more. The night that they’d first spoken to each other, the night that she’d dragged him to her house to be patched up for the first time, it had taken everything in him not to pull away from her healing hands. It was astounding how much could change in a year. "Tessa.” Her name was groaned against her rose petal lips, his tongue then slipping between them to get a better taste of the flavor that was distinctly her’s. The tang that he was sure he’d long for for the rest of his days. Not just because he liked the taste itself, but because of the feelings that came with it. The way his heart sped up and adrenaline spiked at the briefest brush of her lips against his.
The feeling of her thighs tightening around him and her hands pulling on his hair caused his lower half to involuntarily push closer to her’s. Since their night together under the starry Mexican sky, they’d had a difficult time keeping their hands off of each other, and now they were being reunited for the first time in nearly a month. “I could spend five lifetimes with you and never grow tired of our stories or bored with our life--” The boy’s battered hand moved between them to curl around her throat, pushing her head back against the wall. “I know because when I was pumping your chest, breathing air into your lungs, trying to recall basic air deprivation knowledge, I could feel myself getting heavier. It felt like, if you died, gravity would smash me face first into the ground and I would never be able to get back up.” His index and middle finger moved to the skin just beside her windpipe, relishing in the feel of her heart beating through her carotid artery. “Why would you do that?” He questioned in a daze, the agony he’d felt moments before rushing back and pulling him from the moment. For three weeks he’d asked himself over and over again: why? He’d thought she’d been satisfied. How could he have been so wrong? How could he have missed the warning signs? All the research he’d done said there usually were signs, even if they were subtle. How could he have not picked up on any of them with how much time they spent together? With him sleeping in her bed at night? “I’ll promise you both,” He affirmed once his head returned to Earth. “I’ll give you everything my heart has to offer-- the good and the bad.” With his hand still around her neck, he leaned forward and smashed their lips together in a hard kiss. “And I’ll always be there for you, in whatever way you want me. Time wont change my need for you in my life. I know it just like I know the brain uses twenty percent of the body’s oxygen and that brain cells begin to die after a minute without air.”