Page 103 of The Facade

For a brief second, I wondered what he planned to do if we lay down together, but I trusted him and figured he was just asking since his body was tired after everything, so I said, “Yes.”

I held tight onto his shoulders as he carried me to the head of my bed and laid me down with my head on my pillow. I was already barefooted, but he wasn’t, so he kicked off his shoes and knelt on my bed.

I watched him remove his jacket, swallowing hard as I took in the toned strength of his arms and the triangle of skin at his waist where his shirt rode up above the waistband of his sweats. He had always been beautiful to me. His eyes, his lips, his face, but I’d never realized how attracted I was to the rest of him until now that he was hovering so close to me in the privacy of my room.

I reached out to touch his chest after he tossed his jacket to the ground, and when he lowered himself down beside me, I slipped my hand up to caress his light-brown cheekbone with my thumb. He was perfection. From the top of his head and down to his toes—all six-foot-five of this broken boy was perfect.

He watched me with hesitant eyes, breathing hard as I slid my hand down his neck, across his shoulders, along his sides, memorizing the parts of him I hadn’t touched in a week. And when I reached beneath his shirt to run my fingers along the muscled planes of his hips and abdomen, he closed his eyes and sighed like he needed this touch as much as I did. I pushed my hands farther up to feel the skin along his side, and he twitched with surprise and mumbled, “That feels good.”

“I like it too.” His warm skin under my fingertips felt incredible.

He opened his eyes again, and when I took in how huge his pupils were and recognized a desire I hadn’t seen before, I had to remind myself that he was a virgin. That we both were. And that while we had insane chemistry and this could easily turn into something more with him beside me on my bed, I didn’t want tonight to go that way.

Not yet.

Not right now.

Tonight was about distracting Mack. Not about making life-altering decisions that we might regret when we were thinking more clearly.

He slipped his fingers behind my neck to cradle my head and whispered, “I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”

And then we were kissing again. He was crushing his lips to mine, and I tasted the salt from the tears he must have cried earlier. It broke my heart to think about how he must be feeling right now. Desperate and lost and so overwhelmed with feelings of loss that he needed this escape from reality.

His arm slipped behind my waist, his hand flattening against the small of my back as he pulled me somehow closer, pressing me against him. And with no space between us, our kisses grew deeper and longer. It was as if we didn’t need air, and this kiss was the only thing that mattered. My body ached for him—a deep, longing that made me lose sense of everything besides Mack and me and this moment.

He slid his tongue across my bottom lip, asking for permission to enter, and I opened my mouth to his. Our tongues fluttered and danced together, my lower belly flipping and stirring.

I arched closer, wrapping my arm behind his waist as the kiss deepened further, pulling him closer as my whole body pulsed with heat. And then I was rolling onto my back, and he was covering my body with his.

He felt heavy. Heavier than I was expecting. Not because he was overweight. But because he was solid and six-foot-five.

But it felt so good. So good to have the weight of him on me.

“Is that okay?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” I gasped.

Because it was. Better than I thought it would feel to have his body covering mine.

He ran his hand down my side, along my pajama shorts and behind my thigh and I shivered under his caress because I loved the way the heat of his hand felt on my skin.

He trailed frantic kisses along my neck and across my collarbone, leaving little blooms of heat everywhere his lips touched. And just when I didn’t think I was ever going to draw in a full breath again, he slid off of me and rolled me back to my side with him so I could fill my lungs with oxygen again.

“You sounded like you couldn’t breathe,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” I gasped once more. “I mean, I liked being like that. I just…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“I’m just a lot bigger than you,” he finished for me.

I nodded. “But I like how tall you are,” I said. “It’s nice.”

“You feel nice, too,” he said. As if to prove his point, he slipped his hand across my back where my shirt had ridden up, pressed his forehead against mine and said, “I love the way you feel next to me.”

He moved his hand across my side and squeezed the small layer of insulation I had over my ribs, and for a moment, the self-conscious part of me worried he wouldn’t like the way I felt. But then he whispered, “I think I love everything about you, Cambrielle.”

And even though he hadn’t said he lovedme, my heart soared because he wouldn’t have said that and wouldn’t have touched me and looked at me the way he was if his feelings had disappeared the night he’d broken things off with me.

His hand spread a little higher along the sides of my ribcage, and that was when I realized I wasn’t wearing a bra under my pajama shirt.

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