It had never before been quite like this.

Never before had she felt such mixed emotions of anxiety and godforsaken hope all at once when she found herself drawing closer to him. Never before had the twisting in her gut been so bad as to render her speechless seconds before she'd even acted on that grand impulse that had suddenly overtaken her. Never before had she found herself trembling almost violently, when her gaze fell to his lips, mere seconds before she brushed them with her own.

Never before had she been so blown away by a first touch.

She had ample experience when it came to kissing (somehow, most virgins tend to have just that as if they were making up for their lack of experience in other sectors), but every lad, every kiss with any other seemed to tumble out of her memory all at once. None of them had ever come so close as to having her surrender herself so mindlessly, so unhesitatingly as he had by simply meeting her willing lips with his own.

The air between them had perceptibly shifted, thickened with the tension and something else, something more subtle, but hardly dismissible. Breathing became a task she nearly frogot about for a few seconds, the air so difficult to draw in through her lungs that she was overcome by the sudden realization that this was what death must feel like.

Well, what the French would refer to as a little death...

But there was far more to take in than such feeble musings.

If the first touch of his hand had sent a jolt through her, it was nothing in comparison to the rush that overcame her when their lips came together for the first time. Soft, pliant, willing, she molded into his with a need that surprised her, her heart quickening in its pace when she felt him, after an imperceptible second or so - in turn, respond to her.

Shattering, unsettling, and deeply threatening, the feel of his lips brushing, gliding against her own left her invigorated, so much so that in retelling the accounts of that afternoon to others in the secrecy of her dormitory she would whisper that she had never before known what it was to, how others put it, feel alive. Exaggeration is only instinctive in the retelling of stories however, so that is better left to later, but for right then and there- she was moved beyond any of her expectations.

And that, that was enough.

At the feel of his fingers gently, ever so gently press into the small of her back (almost for her sake more than his own), Anjali leaned further into him, her lips feeling as if they were burning when they moved against his own to a coaxing rhythm that pulsed in the darker recesses of her mind. His hand holding her own drew her further towards him but she hardly needed the tug, a small step bringing her to press against him, her lips softly parting under his own when she did so.

Oh, and how intoxicating it was to have heaven and death and life all mingling together, if only for a moment in time far too short, far too tempting.

Her eyes remained fluttered shut, her lashes leaving the most appealing of faint shadows against her cheeks. The heady dizziness that crept into her conscious was the sort left after the departure of intoxication so sweet that only a barren slip of reality remains, and when her eyes finally, gently slid open and happened on his own, it was as if hope had been reborn.

"You foolish thing,"

The words on their own would have been enough to leave her devastated, but the manner in which they were whispered, intimacy laced in his voice, left her feeling anything but chastized. She would forever be victim to that tone of his, tinged with wonder and desire and profundity, and the haze had only begun to slip away from her eyes when he continued in like.

"You daft, daft creature, what in merlin's name drove you to do that just now?"

"I had to know," she responded softly, her gaze falling from his own to their entwined hands when she was suddenly aware of how little she had going in explaining the impulse that had overridden her. "I had to see.. if there was something there."

Closing her eyes for a second before lifting them once more to his, she managed through the dryness that had suddenly affected her throat, her words tinged with the sort of shaky uncertainty that had her eyes searching his own for a sign, "There was, wasn't there?"