Page 56 of Head Over Heels

“Chase,” I murmur. There are things I want to ask him, but I don’t know what they are. There are things I want to tell him, but I don’t know what they are, either. I feel languid and urgent at the same time, like honey and buzzing bees.

He only touches his mouth to mine. “Mmm,” he says. “I love the way you taste.”

“I love the way you taste, too.”

He kisses me again, this kiss a little longer, a little more complete. I want his tongue in my mouth. I want his hands on my breasts. I want—

“I like kissing you more than I’ve ever liked kissing anyone,” he says.

My heart pauses.

“Me too,” I manage. But I feel such a mix of things. Such a rush of lust I can barely keep it inside my skin. So much impatience. And also the feeling of teetering, like I’m balanced somewhere precarious and might fall at any moment.

He kisses me again. Slowly. Closing off that kiss, beginning another one, long sweet kisses with no tongue that make me hungry and jittery. My fingers sift through his hair and clutch at his clothes and go on long journeys I didn’t plan, from the nape of his neck to the bare skin between his T-shirt and his jeans, into his pocket and out again, my thumb tracing the waistband of his jeans and finding the button. I unbutton his jeans and slide my hand in, under his boxer briefs. I groan. He grunts.

“We should go upstairs.”

We pile the blizzard of paper in one stack and then race up the stairs. As soon as we’re in his room with the door shut, he pulls his shirt over his head. “Take your shirt off,” he commands. “I want to feel your skin next to mine.”

I take my shirt off, and glory in the look on his face when he sees me in my lacy bra. Chase all fired up with lust. My new favorite drug.

“Bra, too,” he says.

We stand in the middle of his bedroom, hot skin slipping and sliding against hot skin, kissing and kissing. Every kiss is different. Some end decisively, some go on forever and won’t end. There are chains of little mini kisses and long, hot licks. And the whole time, there is his skin and my skin, the roughness of his chest hair, the texture of his tight abs against my belly, and lower, his arousal between us, urging us on.

It feels like hours before we are naked and in bed together, under his covers, and he rolls a condom down and eases into me.

“So wet,” he gasps. “So tight.”

He moves slowly, still kissing me. Kissing and kissing, his tongue aggressive now. Wild. Like his tongue is telling me what he wants to do, even as his cock is so, so careful. Gentle. And that contrast makes me crazy. I claw at his back, grab his butt, trying to get him to fuck me like his tongue is telling me he wants to, but he keeps that slow pace up, and it does something to me. It dissolves me. The whole lower half of my body is melting, turning buttery and soft, and he makes a broken sound like he feels it, too.

I’m a tiger but he won’t break the pace, and the more he kisses like a predator and fucks like I’m fragile, the more the heat rises and the tension twists, the contrast winding me up and up and up. “Chase—” Now I’m the one who sounds broken, because I’m breaking, and he is, too, his rhythm going jerky, his hips suddenly pumping, pistoning, and I’m coming so hard I can’t breathe.

Now it’s his kisses that have gone so unbelievably tender until he breaks them off completely and rests his cheek against mine and bellows his release.

Chapter 30

Chase

“I think we should have a party,” I tell her, when both of us are able to speak again, which is probably fifteen minutes later.

“We just did.”

I stick my tongue out. “A real party. Invite a few of my friends, a few of yours.”

“Like a going-away party?”

Here’s my chance to say,On that subject: I’ve been thinking. I don’t want you to go away. I want you to think about staying.

The problem is, every time I think about asking her to stay, I flash back on when I asked Thea to stay.

Don’t go. I love you. And I know, if you give me the chance, I can make you happy.

It was hard to get the words out; it felt like they were being forced through a too-small tube; it hurt my chest. But it felt good, too; they came out on a wave of hope that lasted about as long as it took for Thea’s expression to change. Her face—even her body language—went very still.

Thea said,I’ve thought about this a lot, Chase. We’re too different. I know they say opposites attract, but that’s bullshit people comfort themselves with. Even if I told myself I wouldn’t, I’d always be wanting you to be different. I’d be waiting for you to catch up. To polish up, clean up, to be smoother and suaver. We’d go to parties and I’d feel you next to me, rough around the edges, and I wouldn’t think we complement each other so well; I’d want to buff the roughness off. Make you someone you aren’t. And—it wouldn’t be fair to you, and it wouldn’t be fun for me.

“Chase?”

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