ELLA

I was still talking when he reached out and pulled me close to him. Our bodies were so close to one another that I could hear his heartbeat and breathe in the smell of his cologne mixed with sweat.

I blinked and stopped talking for a moment, not because I had run out of words to express myself - far from that. I had a number of things to say, and I wasn’t close to being done, but I had genuinely lost my train of thought.

For the first time that evening, I was grateful it was dark and he couldn’t see the effect that singular act had on...