Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(79)
As Peter continued playing, the room filled with light. Wendy gasped as the sea-glass floor of the lantern lit up with a thousand tiny stars. The light from below projected around the glass, and she was suddenly swimming in fragments of blue-green light, each one the shape of a tiny star. She reached up her hand and let the lights play over her splayed fingers. “What magic . . .”
Peter stopped playing and laughed. “It’s not magic. Look.” Wendy opened the tiny door and looked out over the ocean. Below the lantern, for perhaps just the length and width of a mile, the sea glowed with stars. Peter leaned over her, his arm around her waist. “They are starfish, and this time of year they illuminate their limbs in hopes of attracting a mate. It happens every night around this time for a couple of weeks; then once they have found their mates, they disappear back into the sea, back into the night.”
The ocean surface swayed over the starfish, but their light pulsed on, steady and bright, their stars hopeful of the perfect mate, their light beaming up through the waves that battered around them. Wendy raised her eyes to Peter, his eyes looking out over the water, so happy and so lovely, and it was then that she knew she would lose herself here, to him, to this place. He looked back at her.
“Wendy . . .” He clasped her against him, and then they were floating up into the lantern, the light of a thousand stars all around them, the green glass around them dancing with reflections.
Peter’s face was shadowed by the light as he bent to kiss her. Wendy felt a twinge of guilt sneaking its way back into her heart, but she chose to ignore it this time, and without thinking, she threw herself into his arms and pressed her lips against his with abandon, so unlike her, so brave. Their lips were salty with the ocean air, the warmth of his mouth and tongue brushing over her own, driving her mad. Wendy gasped with desire, and Peter pressed against her again, harder this time, his arms crushing around her waist, his mouth on her own.
The fire inside of her felt like it would consume them both, and yet she wasn’t able to keep the nagging guilt down. It pressed harder and harder against her heart as she pushed herself further and further into Peter. Peter was kissing her hair, her neck, his hands roaming up and down her sides, Wendy dizzy as she lost herself in his mouth. They were circling slowly in the empty room now, the room glowing with the light of a thousand stars, his boyish face so beautiful that she could hardly breathe. She couldn’t breathe. The guilt was so present now that it was practically thumping against her chest, bursting, crying to be let out. She couldn’t breathe.
“Peter,” she cried. “Peter! I’m sorry, this is improper; we must slow down.”
“Never,” Peter mumbled, wrapping her waist in his arms and diving back in for another kiss, drinking in everything about her. He was like a current—just when she got her feet underneath her, he pulled again and she was lost, drifting, Peter encompassing every breath. Now he was pulling them downward in the lantern, toward the blankets that sat on the ground, and Wendy put a cautionary hand up against him, trying at once to control her own passion and understand why she was suddenly so nauseated and unhappy.
As Peter continued kissing her, a face appeared in her mind, hazy, particles of a face, discombobulated. Blue eyes. A strong mouth. Brown hair, straight and dripping with rain. Wendy’s teeth clamped shut and she pushed Peter back, her body mourning the loss of his heat, his embrace. She realized in that second that he was away from her that if she let herself go with him, she would never be able to reclaim her innocence. Not ever.
“Peter, please, slow down. Something is happening to me . . . my mind . . . I think there is . . .” Peter pulled her roughly down onto his lap and kissed her hard again. “Ignore it. It’s probably the weather,” he whispered frantically, tugging at her dress.
Wendy was flustered and embarrassed, unsure what to do, trying to keep her passion at bay, trying to piece together the puzzle that was tearing her apart. Her heart and mind wanted one thing, her body another. She felt ripped to shreds, as if she could howl at the moon and curl up in a ball, all at once.
“No, please, stop. Peter, I’m not ready. Peter . . .”
“Shhhh . . .” he pressed his lips against hers roughly. Her fingers trailed down his neck as she kissed him harder, harder, tumbling down into Peter Pan, feeling the light of the starfish pulsing from somewhere inside her. Her fingers found his collarbone, the place where his muscles became chest. His skin was smooth and clean under her fingertips, so warm and welcoming. Wendy leaned back from him, breathless.
“Your scar?”
Peter pulled back from her, his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Your scar? From Hook? Where is it?” She gently ran her fingertips over his collarbone. “It was your shoulder, right?”
Peter pulled his collar back angrily. “Don’t worry about it, Wendy.” Then, with a growl, he buried himself in her neck and was kissing her harder and harder.
Something inside of Wendy broke open, gushing forward like a broken dam, the pressing on her chest becoming unbearable and painful. She didn’t know what the word meant, or who it was, but she could only hear one word, pounding against the inside of her head: Booth. Booth. The word rushed through her veins, calming the fire that was consuming her judgment. Booth. The word echoed in her mind, again and again. She was outside herself, inside the word; it was all that mattered. Booth. “Peter, no.”