“Leave me alone,” she said, although there was no heat in her words.
I came close behind her. I wanted nothing more than to sweep her hair from her shoulder and kiss her neck until she melted. I wanted to pin her against the glass and fingerfuck her as we both watched the snow fall silently into the sea.
I wanted her to understand that what we had between us wasn’t normal, couldn’t be ignored. This shit was undeniable and unfixable. Our only hope was to let it consume us and pray we survived. I wanted her to understand that I was sorry. That I knew I’d fucked up and that I was going to do better with her.
“Did you read my letter?”
She shivered as the warmth of my words moved across the shell of her ear.
“No,” she said after a minute. Her voice was quiet in the dark, book-filled room.
“No?”
The snow hissed against the glass as it fell, filling the silence before she spoke. “I haven’t read it yet because there’s nothing you can say to make it better.”
Her words sliced through me like knives, cutting clean and deep.
But she was right. There was no way to sew up the wound I’d made because the wound shouldn’t exist in the first place. There was no way to justify believing someone was beneath you.
And how could I explain that I knew better anyway? That I knew she actually had earned the Everston Fellowship? That I knew she was smart and funny and talented as hell? That once I’d thought about it—really thought about it—I became disgusted with myself for even caring about someone’s money and family? So what if my mother would hate me dating someone outside our social circle? Mum would never have to know.
Yes, Tanith was right, and no amount of chasing her into libraries could ever change that.
I leaned forward enough to press my nose into her hair and breathe her in for the last time, that faint paper-and-ink smell of hers, fresh and crisp and the tiniest bit sweet.
She froze in front of me, giving a shiver as I inhaled, and then made a soft noise when I pressed my lips to the corner of her jaw.
“Be well, Tanith,” I murmured, pulling away to leave.
“Wait,” she said, spinning around and grabbing my hand. “Just—just. Wait.”
I stopped, looking down at our linked hands, and then up to her face. She was always beautiful. Beautiful sunburnt and beautiful with a bright red nose as she ice-skated; beautiful when she laughed with her friends and beautiful as she stared out at a lonely sea.
But she was the most beautiful like this, flushed and panting, her lips parted and her eyes sparkling. It stirred more than my eager cock; it awakened something deep in my chest as well.
“Just tonight,” she said, swallowing.
I didn’t follow. “What?”
“You’re under my skin, Owen, and I hate it. I hate what you said, what you think about me, that I was invisible to you for years—but what I hate the most is that I can’t stop wanting you. I see you, and I feel like—” She was breathing hard now, the flush spreading down her chest and between her breasts. I wanted to taste those flushed tits so badly my mouth was watering.
“You’re under my skin,” she repeated. “You’re under my skin and I want to claw you out, but I can’t. And so I’m just left with this—this—need. Like if I don’t touch you, I won’t be able to breathe.”
When I spoke, it sounded like a croak. “That’s how I’ve felt since this summer.” I found her other hand and pressed it to my chest. “Like I’ll burst into flames if I’m not tasting you. Kissing you. Fucking you.”
Her eyes went half-lidded, as if my words had triggered a new wave of arousal inside her. She had to drag in a long breath to speak again. “You don’t want to want me—”
“That’s not true anym—”
She went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “And I hate myself for wanting someone who feels that way, for wanting you when I know better. I’ve known better since we were first years! But still, here it is.”
Fuck, I wished she would read my letter. “Tanith—”
“But maybe if we had tonight,” she said, not looking at me now, but at the floor, “we could get it out of our systems. You don’t want this, I don’t want this, but maybe if we scratch the itch, it will stop.”
I didn’t want it to stop. “Tanith—”
“And I have to make it stop, Owen, I have to, because I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it—”
I pulled her into me, sliding a hand into her soft, thick hair and sealing my mouth over hers, stealing her words and giving her a hot, urgent kiss instead.
She made that noise again, that tiny one in the back of her throat that simply slew me, and all semblance of control fled. My discipline, my cool, my calm—it all became nothing but a raw inferno of need. Maybe I could make her see this was not something we could just work out of our systems.
“Open for me,” I breathed against her mouth, licking impatiently at the seam of her lips. She parted them with a slow sigh, allowing me inside.
Her kiss was pure silk, warm and tasting faintly of berry lip gloss. I reveled in it, groaning as I found her tongue and stroked it with mine, as I kissed her the same way I’d kiss her cunt later. My cock surged with each sweet little flicker of her tongue,
