Chapter 4: Moonlit Confessions
The champagne toast was a blur of clinking glass and forced smiles. Every time Matt’s hand brushed mine as we raised our flutes, a spark jumped between us, a secret current humming beneath the polite applause. His smile for the crowd didn’t reach his eyes; they kept finding mine, dark and full of a question I couldn’t answer in a room full of his relatives.
I couldn’t breathe. The velvet dress was a suffocating skin. The wire, though repositioned, felt like a brand. I needed air that wasn’t filtered through perfume and expectation.
“I’m just going to the garden,” I whispered to my mother, who gave a tight, approving nod, no doubt thinking I needed a moment to compose myself for more photographs.
I slipped through the French doors and the world changed. The noise of the party faded to a dull, rhythmic throb, like a distant heartbeat. The air was cool and heavy with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and damp earth. The Voltaire Estate’s hidden garden was a secret world, overgrown and wild, lit by the rising moon and a string of delicate fairy lights woven through an ancient wisteria arbor.
I walked down the cobblestone path, my heels clicking a frantic rhythm until I stopped, kicked them off, and let the cool, rough stone soothe the soles of my feet. I found a marble fountain, moss clinging to the base of a stone cherub who perpetually poured water from an urn. The sound of the trickling water was the only thing that made sense.
I leaned against the cool marble, tilting my head back to look at the stars pricking through the indigo sky. My mind was a reel of images: his tongue on my skin, the feel of him in my mouth, the shattered look in his eyes afterward. What were we doing?
The crunch of gravel behind me was soft, but I knew it was him. I didn’t turn.
His hands settled on my hips, his body a solid, warm presence at my back. He bent his head, and his lips found the sensitive spot where my neck met my shoulder. A shiver wracked my entire body.
“I couldn’t stay in there,” he murmured into my skin, his voice ragged. “Not after that. Not with you out here.”
I turned in his arms. The carefully constructed mask of the charming birthday boy was gone. In the moonlight, he looked stripped bare, his expression raw and hungry.
“Matt,” I started, but I had no words. What was there to say? That we’d crossed a line there was no coming back from? That I was terrified and exhilarated and so, so lost?
He didn’t let me finish. His mouth crashed down on mine, not with the practiced ease he used for our public displays, but with a desperate, consuming intensity. It was a kiss that held all the unspoken words of the last hour, the last day, the last decade. His hands came up to frame my face, his thumbs stroking my jawline as his tongue explored mine.
This was nothing like the frantic groping in his dorm or the shocking intimacy in his bedroom. This was slower, deeper, a conversation without words. When he finally broke away, we were both breathing as if we’d run a mile.
“Tell me this is real,” he breathed, his forehead resting against mine. “Tell me I didn’t just imagine what happened upstairs.”
“It was real,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “I can still taste you.”
A low groan escaped him. He kissed me again, softer this time, a slow, drugging kiss that made my knees weak. His hands slid from my face, down my back, pulling me flush against him. I could feel the hard ridge of him through his trousers, a blunt reminder of what we’d started.
“I’ve wanted this,” he said between kisses trailed along my jaw. “I’ve wanted you. For so long, Cami. You have no idea.”
The confession, spoken aloud in the quiet garden, was more intimate than anything we’d done with our bodies. It shifted everything.
His hands went to the sides of my dress, his fingers finding the hidden zipper. “Can I?” he asked, his voice thick with need.
I just nodded, my ability to form words gone.
He turned me gently, his chest to my back, and drew the zipper down. The velvet sighed open. He pushed the fabric from my shoulders, letting it pool at my feet on the cool cobblestones. The night air kissed my bare skin, raising goosebumps. He undid the clasp of my bra with practiced ease and tossed it aside. I stood there in only my panties, exposed to the night and to him.
His hands smoothed over my shoulders, down my arms. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice full of awe. “It’s actually painful to look at you.”
He guided me to a stone bench nestled beside the fountain, overhung with trailing ivy. He sat down, his eyes never leaving mine, dark and serious in the moonlight.
“Sit here,” he said, his voice low and rough. He tapped his lips with his finger. “Right here.”
Understanding dawned, sending a fresh, liquid heat through my veins. I moved on unsteady legs, straddling the bench, my knees on either side of his hips. I lowered myself slowly, my hands braced on his shoulders, until I was hovering just above his face.
His hands gripped my thighs, his thumbs drawing slow, circles on my inner skin. He looked up at me, his expression one of such open reverence it stole my breath.
Then he leaned forward.
The first touch of his mouth through the lace of my panties was so gentle it was almost a ghost. A soft, closed-mouth kiss. I gasped, my fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband and drew them down my legs, discarding them somewhere in the dark. Then his hands were back on my thighs, spreading me open for him.
He didn’t dive in. He took his time, his breath warm against my most sensitive skin, making me shudder. Then his tongue, flat and warm, traced a slow, languid path through my folds.
My head fell back, a broken moan escaping my lips. The sound was swallowed by the garden, by the trickling fountain. His hands held me firm, anchoring me as his mouth began to work a devastating magic. This wasn’t just pleasure; it was a dissection. He was taking me apart with his tongue, piece by piece, learning what made me gasp, what made my hips jerk, what made me cry out his name into the quiet night.
He found a rhythm, a focused, relentless attention that built a pressure deep inside me, coiling tighter and tighter. My breaths came in ragged pants. I tangled one hand in his hair, not to guide him, but to hold on, my anchor in the rising storm.
“Matt… please…” I begged, the words meaningless, just a sound of sheer need.
He understood. His movements became more insistent, his tongue flicking and circling until the coil snapped. Pleasure, white-hot and shocking, ripped through me. I convulsed, my back arching, a silent scream on my lips as the waves crashed over me, again and again, until I was boneless, trembling.
He held me through it, his mouth gentle now, soothing, until the last tremor subsided. I slumped forward, my forehead resting on his shoulder, my entire body humming.
He shifted beneath me, laying me back gently on the stone bench. The mossy surface was cool against my bare skin. He stood over me, looking down at my naked form in the moonlight, his eyes blazing with a possessive fire that should have scared me but only made my heart beat faster.
He unfastened his trousers, his movements quick and sure. “I need to be inside you, Cami. Now.”
I just reached for him, my arms open. He came down over me, bracing his weight on his arms. He nudged at my entrance, and then he was pushing in, slowly, filling me completely. We both groaned in unison, a shared sound of relief and homecoming.
He began to move, a deep, steady rhythm that was entirely new. This wasn’t the frantic, hidden coupling of before. This was a claiming, a conversation. Each thrust was a word, each sigh a sentence. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust.
He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin. “I love you,” he whispered, the words muffled but clear. “I’ve always loved you.”
Tears pricked my eyes. I turned my head, found his lips, and kissed him, pouring my answer into it. I love you, too. I always have.
His pace quickened, becoming more frantic, more urgent. I could feel his own climax building, the tension coiling in his body. He broke the kiss, his eyes locking with mine.
“Look at me,” he pleaded.
I did. I watched as he came apart above me, his face a mask of ecstatic release, his name a prayer on my lips as my own body clenched around him, triggering a second, smaller shockwave that left us both breathless and spent.
He collapsed on top of me, his weight a comforting anchor. We lay there for a long time, tangled together on the stone bench, the water from the fountain trickling beside us, the only sound in the world our slowing heartbeats.
Finally, he pushed himself up on his elbows, looking down at me. He brushed a stray strand of hair from my face, his touch unbearably tender.
“Noah gets back tomorrow,” he said quietly.
The real world, with all its complications, rushed back in. I just nodded, my throat tight.
He leaned down and kissed me, softly. “It doesn’t change anything.”
From the house, we heard the distinct sound of the front door opening and a familiar, booming voice call out, “Hello? Party’s over? Did everyone die?”
Noah. He was back early.
Matt’s eyes widened in a moment of pure panic. We were naked, in the garden, a trail of our clothes leading right to us.
He scrambled off me, grabbing my dress and his trousers in a single, frantic motion. “The side gate,” he hissed, pulling me up and pointing to a nearly invisible break in the hedge. “Go. I’ll meet you at the dorm.”
I didn’t argue. I snatched my clothes from his hands and ran, barefoot and silent, into the dark embrace of the hedges, the cool night air on my skin doing nothing to extinguish the fire he had lit inside me.
The damp grass was a shock under my bare feet as I stumbled through the narrow gap in the hedge, twigs snapping against my legs. I clutched the bundle of my dress and bra to my chest, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape. Noah’s voice echoed from the main house, too close, calling out Matt’s name again.
I didn’t stop running until I reached the relative safety of a large oak tree, its gnarled roots erupting from the soil. I pressed my back against the rough bark, the cold seeping into my skin, and struggled into my bra with fumbling hands. The velvet dress was a nightmare to pull on in the dark, the fabric clinging to my damp skin. I managed to get it over my hips, but the zipper was a lost cause.
I just stood there, hidden, listening. My breath plumed in the cool air, each gasp sounding obscenely loud.
A figure detached from the shadows near the fountain, moving quickly and silently. Matt. He’d pulled on his trousers but his shirt was still unbuttoned, flapping open as he jogged toward my hiding spot. He saw me and his pace didn’t break; he just grabbed my hand, his grip firm and sure.
“This way,” he breathed, pulling me deeper into the garden, away from the house.
We didn’t speak. We just ran, hand in hand, through the moon-dappled darkness, two ghosts fleeing the world we were supposed to belong to. He led me to a wooden toolshed tucked behind a thicket of rose bushes, its white paint peeling. He shouldered the door open, the rusted hinge groaning in protest.
Inside, it was pitch black and smelled of old soil, fertilizer, and gasoline. The air was thick and still.
He pulled the door shut, plunging us into absolute darkness. I could hear his breathing, ragged and close.
“He can’t find us here,” Matt whispered, his voice tight. “My dad never comes out here.”
My eyes began to adjust, faint lines of moonlight seeping through the cracks in the walls. I could just make out the shape of him, the pale expanse of his chest. The fear of being caught was a live wire in the room, but underneath it thrummed the raw, undeniable energy of what we’d just done on that cold stone bench.
“He said he wasn’t coming back until tomorrow,” I said, my own voice unsteady.
“I know.” His hands found my hips in the dark, pulling me against him. “I don’t care.”
His mouth found mine in the blackness, a desperate, searching kiss that tasted of night air and salt. All the panic, the adrenaline, channeled into this. My hands slid up his bare chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart under my palms.
“I can’t stop,” he muttered against my lips, his hands sliding down to my bare thighs, hiking up my dress. “I need more of you.”
He fumbled with his trousers again, the sound of the zipper harsh in the quiet shed. He guided my hands to his waist, and I helped push them down his hips. Then he turned us, his back against the rough wood of the door, and pulled me with him.
“Sit on me,” he said, his voice rough with need. “Ride me. I need to watch you.”
A fresh wave of heat flooded me. I nodded, though he probably couldn’t see it. I hitched my dress up around my waist and settled over him, guiding him inside. The feeling of him filling me, here in this dark, secret place, was even more intense than before. It was stolen, forbidden.
I started to move, a slow, tentative rhythm at first. My hands braced on his shoulders, his hands gripped my hips, his thumbs digging into my skin.
“Yeah, Cami,” he encouraged, his head falling back against the door with a soft thud. “Just like that.”
I found a pace, rising and falling, my body taking over. It was clumsy and perfect. The only light was the silver slivers cutting through the walls, illuminating the sweat-sheened plane of his chest, the intense focus on his face as he watched me. His gaze was a physical touch, as potent as his hands on my body.
“God, you feel…,” he trailed off, a groan tearing from his throat as I shifted my angle, taking him deeper.
His control was fraying. I could feel it in the tightening of his hands, in the ragged pitch of his breathing. He was close. I moved faster, driven by my own rising need, by the powerful, primal look of utter wreckment on his face.
“Don’t stop,” he choked out, his hips bucking up to meet my thrusts. “Cam, I’m—”
His words cut off into a strangled cry. His whole body seized, his fingers clutching at my hips hard enough to bruise as he spilled into me with a force that shuddered through both of us. I held still, feeling the violent pulses inside me until he finally went limp, his head lolling forward against my chest, his breath coming in hot, damp pants against my skin.
We stayed like that for a long moment, tangled together in the dark, the only sound our labored breathing. The scent of our sweat mixed with the earthy smell of the shed.
Slowly, gently, I lifted off him. My legs felt like water. He reached for me in the darkness, his hand finding my cheek, his touch surprisingly tender.
“Cami,” he started, but his voice was husky, stripped raw.
From the house, Noah’s voice carried again, clearer now, laced with confusion. “Dude, where did you go? Your mom’s looking for you to cut the cake.”
The spell was broken. The real world, with its birthday cakes and curious roommates, was waiting just beyond the thin wooden door.
Matt let out a long, weary breath. His thumb stroked my cheekbone once more before his hand fell away.
“We have to go back,” he said, the words heavy with resignation.
He bent down in the dark to pull up his trousers, the simple, mundane act feeling like a tragedy. I smoothed my dress down, my fingers trembling as I tried, and failed, to reach the zipper. He finished dressing and turned to me, his expression unreadable in the near-total darkness.
“Let me,” he murmured.
He zipped my dress up with a quiet, final sound. He didn’t kiss me. He just took my hand again, his grip firm, and pushed the shed door open. The cool night air hit my flushed skin, a stark reminder of where we were, and what we were returning to.