Page 71 of The Final Faceoff
I blink at him. Hard. How do I get out of here without losing him?
“We’re not discussing what you think you heard.” My voice is a strangled, barely-there whisper.
Leif just leans in, close enough that I can see the exact moment amusement turns to something darker. Something that makes my skin prickle and my thighs clench. I’m getting wet and he hasn’t done anything—no touching and I’m already wanting him to . . .Stop, Hailey.
“I heard you, Hailey.” His lips brush the shell of my ear, the bastard. “You screamed my fucking name while doing it.”
Oh my actual—fuck, this can’t get worse.
Except it does, because my entire body lights up in ways that are absolutely not okay. The memory crashes into me—the way I ached last night, the way my toy and fingers weren’t enough, the way I gasped his name because my mind wouldn’t let go of the way his hands felt on me.
I want to die.
I want to sink into the mattress and never resurface.
I want to. . . and why am I turned on right now?
For fuck’s sake, Hailey, what is wrong with you?
Can we talk about the kiss instead?
No. Because then I’d have to admit how I nearly melted in his arms. How I practically sprinted to my room, thighs pressed together, shaking, pretending I didn’t need him. Pretending I didn’t want to fall apart beneath him.
“You—you weren’t supposed to hear that,” I stammer, horrified, defensive, so painfully aware of the way my pulse is hammering in my throat.
He just shrugs, too damn smug, too damn calm. “Thin walls.”
I groan, slapping my hands over my face. “You paid a lot of money for this place, and they couldn’t put in thicker walls? You should ask for your money back.”
Leif laughs, rich and deep, and I hate that it makes my stomach flip all over again. I am so unbelievably screwed.
His fingers skim up my back, slow, deliberate, and I feel it everywhere. “You were definitely thinking about me,” he says, voice low, smug, impossibly sure.
I want to argue. I want to deny it, however, it’s impossible. He knows me too well and right now I think I’m running a fever. I’m delirious. Does the book say something about fever while being horny? Damn, I should be reading those pregnancy books more often.
I make a small, strangled noise, shoving my face back into his chest. “Can we pretend this conversation isn’t happening?”
He chuckles, and I feel it beneath my cheek, deep and amused.
“Do you want to pretend last night didn’t happen too?”
I freeze.
Because that’s the real question, isn’t it? The one neither of us is willing to say out loud. The one I don’t have a safe answer to.
We kissed.
And not the kind of impulsive, barely-there, oops-did-our-lips-just-brush kiss you can laugh off in the morning. No, we kissed like a match striking gasoline. Like years of restraint going up in flames; like we had been waiting for an excuse to lose control and burn together.
The worst part of that kiss is that it wrecked me and put me back together. Not just that, but I want to do it again. I want to shove my fingers into his hair and taste every inch of his mouth until I’m drunk on him. I want to press up against him, let my hands roam over the broad, solid lines of his body. I want to feel him react to me, to us. I want to tear down whatever wall we built between us and climb him like a personal Everest I’ve been too cowardly to scale.
Oh, I want him.
My eyes flick to his lips, and just like that, the temperature in the room skyrockets. My breath goes shallow, my brain goes offline, and the only thought looping in my head is yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Instead, I force myself to take a mental step back. To inhale. To look him in the eye even though I already know how this is going to end.
