Page 128 of Spearcrest Knight

I glare at her. “I’m not pi—” I stop, sigh. “Well, how can I not think about it? Don’t you think about it?”

“Right now, you should be thinking about my bishop and what that means for your knight.”

“My knight?” I glance at the board, realise she’s just trying to deflect and look back up at her. “Forget about my knight for a second. My knight hasn’t noticed your bishop because he’s probably thinking about kissing your queen and having really hot sex with her. Does your queen think about that?”

“My queen has more important things to think about,” Sophie says with a serene smile.

I lean forward, narrowing my eyes. “You’re telling me you’ve not been thinking about it?”

She waves a hand, though her cheeks are a little flushed. “It’s just sex, Evan.”

“Justsex? What kind of a life are you secretly living for what we do to bejust sex?”

Now she leans forward, and her eyes narrow, and her lips curl in a sarcastic smile. “Oh please, Evan. Look me in the eyes and tell me you haven’t fucked dozens of girls exactly the same way.”

“Definitely not the same way, are you crazy? Besides, it’s not like—” Instead of defending myself, I realise she just handed me something to get her with. I tilt my head. “Wait a second. Are you…jealous?”

She laughs, a low, scratchy sound that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You have no idea just how jealous.”

My heart skips a beat, my throat suddenly feels a little tight. “Really?”

“No,” she says, moving her bishop and knocking my knight off the board. “Check.”

But I’m too invested in this line of questioning to even acknowledge the chessboard. I watch her face intently, looking for signs of the truth to reveal themselves on her pretty face. “You’re lying.”

She shakes her head and speaks with a little smirk. “Is it so hard to believe I might want more for myself than hooking up with a rich boy in his dad’s expensive cars—or whatever it is you do?”

I sit back in my chair with a shrug “We don’t have to hook up in my dad’s expensive cars, Sophie. We have options, you know. We can hook up in my dad’s expensive jacuzzi.”

For a second, Sophie just looks at me. Then she raises an eyebrow. “You have a jacuzzi? You never said that.”

“Yeah, we have a jacuzzi.” I laugh. “Wait—that actually worked?”

She shrugs. “I’m literally cold all the time. Of course it worked.”

I narrow my eyes, trying to work out whether she’s being sarcastic, which is always impossible to tell with her. “Really?”

She nods, perfectly earnest. “Really.”

Sophie

AgreeingtostayatEvan’s house definitely felt like a mistake at the time. But I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be careful, trying to do the right thing, that doing something I want somehow always ends up feeling like a mistake.

So I guess, in the end, I make a lot of mistakes while staying at Evan’s house. Mistakes like accepting his mum’s generous offer to intern at her publishing company, or agreeing to his sister’s offer to take me to real American house parties over the summer.

Mistakes like sitting in Evan’s jacuzzi with him knowing full well any amount of nudity between us can only end one way. Mistakes like relaxing a little too much under the silvery lights of the jacuzzi, and oversharing about this year and my parents and my hopes and dreams.

Mistakes like noticing the droplets of water tracing the muscles of Evan’s arms and chest, and the way his wet hair curls around his temples and neck. Noticing his hooded gaze, the blue of his eyes, bluer in the pretty lights. Letting Evan touch my hand, lace his fingers through mine, pull me closer.

In the blur of steam and bubbles and low music, all the mistakes merge into one mistake.

A slow, dream-like mistake, where Evan draws me gently to him, and whispers in my ear, in a low, broken voice, how much he likes me, how much he wants me. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, and because I’m straddling his lap, I can tell that the sweet, dirty things he’s murmuring in my ears are all true.

For someone so blunt and artless, Evan is capable of devastating tenderness.

That tenderness glows in everything he does: the way he sweeps the hair from my face with a slow caress, the way he traces wet, lingering kisses up my neck, the way he wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me to him in an irresistible embrace.

Kissing his open mouth is definitely a mistake, right? But a delicious, delirious mistake, because Evan’s kisses are wet and deep, and my body arches against his, beyond my control.

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