“Fuckyou!”
We panted and glared. Fire and heat raged between us.
Oh. No.
Actual fire raged between us.
The flames roared as tall as us, wild and out of control. Somewhere, in another universe, Smokey Bear cried. Argument forgotten, we stared at the pillar of flames as it raged taller.Strangely, it didn’t spread much, only mounted higher and higher, lighting the entire field in flat, white light.
“Either dragon fire is the trick candles of the fantasy world, or pizza rolls are more flammable than I thought,” I said.
“Amy is going to be so pissed if we burn down the sacred field,” said Bryce.
“There’s noif,” I said, backing away from the flames. “The sacred field is toast.”
“I like toast.” Bryce’s arms dangled pathetically as he looked up at the flames.
“You know,” I remarked after a minute of watching the sparks dance overhead, “if you die here tonight, consumed by the pizza roll fire, nobody back home will ever find your body.”
Bryce turned on me. “Didyouknow that every time you wish me dead, you look at my mouth?”
“I do not.” I looked at his mouth, and an ache tightened between my thighs.
He wet his lips. “You can pretend you’re frustrated about the pizza rolls, but we both know—”
“Don’t speak of the pizza rolls,” I hissed. “It istoo soon.”
“Oh no.” His eyes widened. “The condoms.”
I gasped. “The condoms.”
United once more, we charged into the flames, gathering as many stray condoms as we could. As the heat licked around my skin, all I could think about was each foil wrapper and what it represented. Each one a symbol of what could be. The burning within me transformed as the world burned around me. I met Bryce’s eyes, lit by the inferno. I didn’t know what the burning transformedinto, only that it made me want to sacrifice my eyelashes to gather as many condoms as I could. Which meant a lot. Because getting my eyelashes done took up a substantial portion of my minimum-wage budget.
At last, when we could bear it no longer, we tore away fromthe fire. We burst into the forest, breathing very hard for two people who had just run very little.
Gasping, I looked from the strands of condoms in my arms to Bryce’s face.
Chest heaving, he nodded, dropping everything he held. With a giant, determinedfuck itwritten all over his face, he stepped over all the crap littering the ground and strode forward until he stood right before me, toe-to-toe.
“Don’t stop shaving to try to look like you haven’t shaved,” I said, weirdly choked up—maybe from the smoke, maybe not. “You look ridiculous how you are, but you’d look worse any other way.”
His eyes were glassy, no doubt stinging from smoke like mine. “I don’t shave at all,” he said simply with a little shrug, like we were sharing a deeply intimate moment of revelation. “This is legitimately all I can grow.”
My breath hitched.“Oh.”
Holding my gaze, he slipped a strand of condoms from my fingers, tearing one off and tossing the rest behind him. “I want you. Now. Against a tree,” he said hoarsely. “Or something.”
“Uh-huh,” I squeaked out because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than Bryce pinning me against a tree and spreading my legs. Not even pizza rolls.
Everything tumbled from my arms. The distance between us vanished. Bryce’s hands found my waist, pressed, urged. Back, back, back. My heels scrambled over roots. Before I could decide if I was falling, my shoulders crashed into a wide, smooth tree trunk.
He hesitated, palms pressed to the bark on either side of me. I saw the question in his eyes. When he tried to voice it, he only managed a whispered “Please.”
I nodded, and he collapsed against me, his mouth finding my neck, all hot breath, gentle teeth, and urgent lips. He didn’t ask to kiss my mouth, and I was glad he didn’t push it. I clutched myfingers around his arms as he grabbed my hips, sliding his hands low to pull me against him. My blood ran heavy in my limbs. My head spun. I might’ve been asphyxiating, not entirely because of Bryce’s charms, but also due to the fact I’d never caught my breath, and I was very out of shape.
His lips found the space where my ear met my jaw, mouth caressing my skin. While heat from the raging inferno out in the field wafted over my skin, a different sort of heat ravaged my insides. Molten rivers of desire flooded my veins.
His thigh slotted between my legs, and he pressed against me, hard. A muffled sigh escaped my lips. I slipped my hands under his shirt, around his back, drawing him closer, closer, closer. I tried not to moan as he rocked against me. It rubbed me the wrong way, him knowing how much I liked it when he rubbed me the right way. It felt like giving him the upper hand in an unspoken power struggle.
