Page 17 of Wild Obsession

Tim squeaks, and suddenly his hands are fisting in my shirt. Without me doing a thing, he jerks closer, clinging to me in the dark.

For a second, we stand that way, so close our breaths dust each other’s throats, Tim’s hands knotted in my shirt. I thought I was the one in control here, the one doing the pushing, but when he grabs me like that, my body reacts in a startled burst of heat I have to shove back down into my gut. All of my teasing melts away, leaving behind desire — very sincere, very unwanted desire.

What the hell? I’m not supposed to be into him. I’m supposed to toy with him in a vain attempt to heal what he broke. I’ve been with dozens of guys. I don’t needthisone in particular.

Yet when Tim realizes what he did and releases my shirt with a jerk, a beat of horrifying disappointment throbs through my chest.

No way. No freaking way am I going to pathetically pine over a dude who dumped me during high school. That’s Tim’s role in all this. I’m supposed to be the savvy, experienced, worldly one, the one who’s gotten his dick sucked enough times at enough clubs that a chance run-in with some random ex doesn’t faze me.

But I don’t back away. Trapped with him in the dark, I cage him in with my arms and lean close, stopping a finger’s breadth from his parted lips.

“Afraid of the dark, little rabbit?” I say. “You should beafraid of me instead.”

“I am,” Tim says, but there’s a whole lot more than fear going on in that breathy whisper.

I let my body tilt toward him, the dark emboldening me further. Tim presses himself back, but there’s nowhere to run. When I get so close to his lips that each breath flutters against my mouth, I stop. Tim doesn’t turn away, doesn’t close his lips, doesn’t move at all. He stands there stiff and terrified and panting.

I could take him right now, I realize. I could kiss him right here like this. He wants it. It trembles in every breath. It heats the darkened elevator. It leaves him heedless of his fear. Who knows how long we might be trapped here? Who knows how much I might take before the lights come back on and plunge us into the reality where eight years of bitterness stands between us?

“Do you want me to kiss you?” I say.

Tim swallows again. “Yes.”

“So honest. You always were a good boy.”

“And you always were a bad one.”

“Is that why you left? Because I was too naughty for you? Because I might corrupt you?”

“No,” he says immediately.

I can’t help but scoff. “You don’t need to lie. It’s been a long time.”

“That wasn’t the reason, Keannen,” he says. “I—”

The elevator shudders. It nearly throws me against hismouth. Some instinct makes me brace harder against the wall and save myself, an instinct I kind of want to punch in the face. The lights flicker back on, and a grainy announcement apologizes for the delay and attributes it to a thunderstorm.

Tim takes a shaky breath. The elevator pings as it rises, announcing we’ve nearly reached floor fourteen. The lights, the noises, the reminder of the wider world — it convinces me to back off. I grab my bag where I left it on the floor and sling it onto my shoulder. Then I do my best impression of a guy who didn’t kind of want to kiss his shitty ex-boyfriend two seconds ago.

The elevator reaches my floor, but when the doors slide open, Tim follows me out.

“What are you doing?” I snap, sending a glare over my shoulder.

He holds up a keycard. “My room’s on this floor.”

Great. Fine. Whatever. It figures the bands would get a bunch of rooms on the same floor. Bands and crews take up a lot of space. They probably want to contain us in case we’re the types to host wild rockstar parties.

But when I turn out of the elevator bank and down the hall, Tim is still following. He’s at my heels all the way to room 1403, where we both stop.

His eyes are doing that spooked horse thing again.

“What?” I snap. “What is it?”

He holds up his keycard. A keycard inconvenientlylabeled “1403.”

“Cameron is with his boyfriend,” Tim says.

And Levi is out with some old acquaintance, and Shawn and Dan and Jacob agreed to share a room for the tour. Fuck. We’re the two strays in our respective bands, and they tossed us into a room together and thought nothing of it.

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