“No,” he said, “No a kiss isn’t over the line.”

He said it. He really fucking said it. A kiss, a moment that can sometimes be even more intimate than sex, wasn’t over the line for him? Fucking really?

It made me angry and with that fire in my eyes and in my heart I turned all my attention to Chance. I stepped up to him and arched my head back, giving the man a quick nod before I pressed myself forward and pressed my lips against his.

Just before our lips touched I remembered the last time we’d been this close. It was our last year of college and I was heartbroken because a guy that I fell for turned out to be terrible in the sack. I loved the man, really I did, but I was so young and so dependent on this idea that sex mattered, that it really needed to be a part of any relationship.

Chance hadn’t bought it, “You’re always talking about the deeper connection and you said you really felt it with him. You can teach him how to fuck, Lily, if that’s all that is holding you back.”

“But it’s not just one thing,” I protested, “It’s every last thing with him. Anything past holding hands and he’s a bumbling idiot. He doesn’t even know how to kiss me.”

We were in his dorm room, Chance lying back on his bed while I paced back and forth and debated ending everything with the guy. I’d burst in here without any regard for his privacy, which was pretty much par for the course when it came to my relationship with him.

As such I’d caught Chance relaxing in bed and studying. Bare from the waist up with his hard and chiseled torso on full display but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen this much of him, because Chance knew what he had to offer and liked to show it off.

“But Lily,” he protested, entirely reasonably and at any other point I might have been willing to hear him but here and now I wanted none of it.

“Stand up,” I ordered him, “You obviously need an example.”

With a sigh he got to his feet, standing up from the bed and shifting his weight to one side. He practically had his arms crossed across his chest, practically had a look of dismissive disapproval on his face, but he did a good job hiding it.

“I’m him,” I say, “And I decide to kiss you so I just barge right in and close the gap and then stop real close and freeze. My hands extend but they don’t touch. They twitch and then they pull back and then I just wait. He just fucking waits. And that’s just the build-up.”

I’d done everything, impersonating my inadequate boyfriend as I got close to him. It was goofing around with a friend but then we were close and as my voice dropped away I found myself looking up at him and marveling at how tall he was, how good he smelled, how clearly strong he truly was.

“Then what happens?” he asked me.

“Then I kiss him,” I told him, “I’m always the one who kisses him. He just freezes even harder while I do it, too. It’s like kissing a block of ice.”

Chance grinned, this grin that I recognized. It was a grin that he’d given to so many girls in so many dark bars. It was the last thing they saw before they let him lead them out the door and back to their place or his. Before they gave him everything.

“So if you’re him in this example,” he said, “I guess that makes me you. Should I kiss you then? Lily? Do you want me to kiss you?”

I remember that it was hard to breathe. I remember that I couldn’t think of anything but that lingering question. I remember knowing what I wanted the answer to be, but knowing that saying yes would destroy the gap between us.

And it was clear in that moment just how Chance looked at me. For a man who always got what he wanted I was the one who got away, but in the process I was also the only woman he’d ever gotten to know. That put me in a rare position, with the chance to push beneath his surface and make a lasting bond.

Kissing Chance then, it might have been the start of something great or the end of something magnificent. Kissing him would mean we lost the place we were in, the delicate balance of friendship edged with mutual attraction. So what would kissing him now do to us?

But it didn’t stop me now. Now there was nothing that could pull me from this moment. Anger had blurred my lines and pushed me over the edge into his arms and as I kissed him, I felt a spark that I hadn’t felt in all the years I’d been with Greg.

Because Chance didn’t just kiss me, he consumed me. Without putting a single finger on my body he commanded me. My lips parted and his tongue snaked forward with a taste of what he was giving me and a promise of more to come.

I found it so hard to keep from pushing on. I found myself trembling as I felt his body so steady beside me. I heard a moan and only vaguely realized that it was coming from me, the momentary pause that seemed to last forever as our lips broke and I stood there realizing that everything I was worried about had come to pass.

I’d kissed him and it was going to ruin me.

“Lily,” I heard my name from behind me and realized that we weren’t alone.

In the moment of giving myself to Chance I’d forgotten all about the real purpose here, but hearing Greg behind me stoked the fires of my rage and they mingled with the passion inside of me as I turned and locked my eyes on my husband.

“Was that cheating?” I demanded from him, “Would it be cheating if we went further? Would it be cheating if we pushed it a little bit more?”

I wanted him to say no. I wanted him to urge me onwards. I stared daggers at my husband but I begged him for the response I needed, nearly gasping until I saw him nod.

“It wouldn’t be cheating,” he reassured me, “That’s not over the line.”