Page 49 of The Pucking Kiss

“You passed?” her face lit up immediately.

“Yup, and I owe it all to you!”

For a moment, she forgot about whatever thing she was mad at me for and jumped straight into my arms. “I’m so happy for you.”

I grinned, holding her close to me. “But it’s not over yet. I still need your help.”

She pulled away, and the smile from her face faded. “About that… I’ve been thinking about this arrangement between us.”

“I guessed,” I shrugged. “But you probably realized you missed me too much, right?”

She did not deny it. “This whole fake relationship thing is getting to my head.”

“But it was your idea to start off with,” I shot back.

“It was,” she shrugged. “I’ll still help you with your tutoring, but I think we should cool it off with the relationship shit.”

Fuck, was Romai breaking up with me again? I’d thought that some distance between us would be enough to change her mind, but it seemed like I had been wrong.

Something felt different about her today. She was still the same shy Romai but somehow seemed just a little more confident.

“You really wanna do that?” I asked, walking closer to her. I could see her expression change as I slowly put my hands around her, pulling her close to me. “Are you sure?”

She began to blush furiously. “Not when you’re so close to me like that.”

“Then why do you want me to stop being close?” I whispered now, leaning in.

“It’s just….”

I closed the gap between our lips before she had a chance to respond.

Romai wasn’t going to break up our fake relationship just like that. I wasn’t going to let it happen.

She kissed me back, and I could feel the eyes of the entire team on us.

It was at that moment I realized that I wanted them to know that she was still with me. My possessiveness surprised me.

When we broke apart, she looked up at me with her eyes widened, and her lips still parted slightly.

“You know you’re good at that,” she muttered under her breath.

“I just want us to stay like this until the end of the semester,” I bargained. “It works for both of us. You know this. Why ruin a perfectly good thing?”

She seemed at war with her own thoughts. It was clear that whatever decision she had come to had dissolved away with the kiss.

“I… okay, fine,” she finally replied. “But this is strictly business between us, okay?”

“And occasionally pleasure,” I winked, watching her blush again.

“Your coach is calling you back,” she said to me as the whistle to end the break went off. “You should probably go now.”

“Promise me you’ll wait here for me,” I said to her. “We still need to go over my chemistry component after practice.”

“Bryan…”

“Please?” I gave her my best puppy-dog eyes.

“Fine.”

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