He brushes a lock of hair away from my forehead and stares at me, his thumb tracing small circles over the spot on my temple I hit on the door.
He dips his head, the space between us evaporating, and asks, “Are you all right?”
I nod, the last vestiges of my resistance leaving me in a rush, and sag into his embrace. We stand there for a moment, my ear pressed against his chest so I hear the tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump of his heart.
I don’t know how long we stand there. Thirty seconds? A minute? Ten minutes?
Time passes differently under the drum of his heartbeat. The last of the adrenaline washes away, leaving me clammy and trembling. Although he surely notices, he says nothing as I quake in the anchors of his arms.
My stomach grumbles, reminding me I had plans to eat lunch before my next class. It’s loud enough that he must hear it, but still, he says nothing. I separate us, searching for words I can’t find, but when I catch his steely gaze, all of my thoughts vanish like smoke in the wind.
I am dry kindling, and he is an open flame.
I am gunpowder, and he is a lit fuse.
The reaction is inevitable. The results catastrophic.
I breathe in cloves and cardamom and the spiciness of that bubble gum he likes to chew. My gaze falls to his bottom lip as he releases it from between his teeth. When I look back up again, I find his molten gaze focused on me as his large hands lift to cradle my jaw. I know it’s coming, yet I do nothing except wait for impact.
“Harlow.” My name falls from his mouth in drops of pure reverence a moment before his lips collide with mine.
I lean into the kiss, arching up on the tips of my toes until my breasts brush against the line of his chest. He tastes like cinnamon, which is appropriate because I’m not sure sweetness would ever do him justice.
His hands never move from my face, his mouth never leaving mine, as he backs me against the wall, the tile cold and hard as it leeches through my shirt to cool my skin. He groans, his tongue sweeping into my mouth and teasing mine out of hibernation. I melt against him, my hands roaming across the impossibly hard ridges of his abdomen as traps me there. He kisses me like I am his life raft, and he is lost at sea.
Hope. Worship. Reverence. Everything is in his kiss.
My fingers dance across his chest, which feels impossibly hot. Or maybe my fingers are cold because all my blood seems to be pooling somewhere else. I tug his shirt free of his pants.
I have no idea what I’m thinking, probably because I’m not. I only…need. And I need to feel him, skin against skin, real and solid beneath my fingers. Still, his hands do not leave the line of my jaw, his mouth locked on mine.
His fingers bite into my skin, but I sense the restraint there, the thread of control he clings to desperately.
A jolt shoots through me as my hands slip under his shirt and find the bare plank of his belly. He sucks in a breath from behind my teeth as a pulse beats to life between my legs.
“Mr. Beckett!” a voice shrieks, drawing up the hairs on the back of my neck.
Ian continues to kiss me.
“Mr. Beckett!”
Ian stumbles away from me, Headmistress DuMonte’s arm latched on his shoulder. A gaggle of confused faces pass a door held open by Ms. Edmonds, who looks like she can’t fathom why she just saw two students making out in front of her. I am sure worse things have happened here.
“Beckett is banging Stormy!” someone yells, and a cheery chant starts, “Beckett and Stormy banging in a tree, F.U.C.K.I—”
“Mr. Farrish!” Headmistress screeches, jerking me back to reality and the embarrassment of what I’ve done.
Her attention snaps back to the two of us as Ethan Farrish—God bless his senior, don’t-give-a-fuck soul—continues to belt out all the raunchy, mostly made-up details. Within an hour, I’ll be pregnant with twins and Ian will have proposed.
“Out!” Headmistress commands. “I don’t have time for this today!”
As I scurry away, not daring a gaze back at the boy I still taste on my tongue, she adds, “And keep your pants on!”
My cheeks burn with embarrassment. I am so hot, it feels like I am on fire.
As the flush continues down my neck and across my collarbone, I duck my head and disappear into a throng of students.
19
Ian
Practice went to shit last night before bursting into flames. Twelve hours later, I still feel the burn.
I have taken three scalding showers, used two ice packs, and chewed ibuprofen like they were breath mints, but my calves still feel like someone ran over them with a dump truck. My thighs quivered, actually quivered, when I climbed out of bed this morning. I stumbled to my bathroom like a newborn calf and popped a pill out of the stash under my sink.
Everything hurts. Sitting hurts. Walking hurts. Existing hurts.
Double drills.
Triple fucking sprints.
Then an hour and a half of alternating running the bleachers with burpees.
Every fiber of my being wants to climb back into bed and hibernate the pain away, but I can’t risk the old man finding out about an unapproved absence.
All because Coach said we needed to—and I quote—“get your heads out of your asses and focus on the game.”
Well, I hate to break it to him, but it’s a little hard to focus when your defensive line is talking about railing your girl.
The bastards know I staked my claim weeks ago on the first day of school, but what hot-blooded man could resist fantasizing about her perfection. So last night, they stuck
