Page 9 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

“I can’t remember,” I whisper into his mouth, because he’s not the only one who plays games. I have some cards I want to keep close to my chest and it’s too early in the game to play my entire hand — or my heart.

“Liar,” he bites out, and then I’m kissed again until I’m seeing stars. He thinks the force of it is a punishment but for me, it’s not; deep in my soul I want more and more of what Rory can give me, and the intensity of his mouth is like feeding on bliss.

He still has me in his grasp, so I can’t cling to him. I can’t grab and squeeze and bury my body against his. I can’t roll him over, grind against him, use him for my own pleasure — and yeah, that part is punishing. The strength and bulk of a man is a sweet punishment indeed.

We kiss long enough for the sky to blacken dramatically. Rain hardens, spitting on us in tremendous bullets, followed by a ferocious rumble of thunder. And in the distance, haloed by Rory’s head, is the spark and crackle of lightning. It splits the sky open, bitter forks of brightness blooming and highlighting the pale gray of Rory’s eyes, the angular curve of his jawline.

The ground beneath me becomes marshy and cold. Every shred of common sense is telling me to get the hell off this hill, but every nerve inside me jangles, electrified, by the wild passion in Rory’s eyes. The angrier the storm grows, the more fiendish he looks. And how can I deny him when he looks at me that way, with a dark, voracious fever that turns the insane weather into soft white noise?

He leans down to me, his lips against the shell of my ear, and murmurs, “I want you.”

I can tell. He’s hard against me, something severe and yearning digging into my hip. I want to reach out and touch him, grab him, see what Rory looks like naked and vulnerable against me. But it’s not my place. It’s an unwritten rule that I don’t reach out and take him for myself, no matter how much I want to. I’m thoroughly, unquestioningly his; that doesn’t make him mine. My wrists remain confined by the tightening fury of his fingers, each one a lead bolt securing me into an unthinking, submissive place.

And if that’s what he wants…

I could never deny him. I could never deny him with the vicious, violent hunger in his gaze.

I’ve driven him to this, a man losing his mind on a mountaintop just from looking at me.

Who’s the real weakling now?

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