My cheeks burn, though there’s no light out here to show it. My body betrays me in every way. My shivers, my shallow breathing, the way my knees weaken when his lips trace the curve of my jaw. I want to say something sharp, to hold onto a shred of control, but the words are dust. The only truth left in me is the way I lean into his heat.
His hand trails down the outside of my thigh, fingers slow, deliberate, brushing the hem of my skirt. The air is ice, but everywhere he touches is fire. He’s not reckless, he’s deliberate. He knows exactly how close to get, exactly how to make me tremble just by hovering on the edge of too much.
I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. It doesn’t work. A soft whimper slips out, uninvited. His answering chuckle is dark satisfaction.
“That’s it.” He murmurs against my throat. “Let me hear it.”
If anyone steps outside now, they’ll see us. They’ll see everything I can’t hide. His body pressed to mine, my head tipped back against the shed, the guilty flush in my cheeks, his hand below my skirt. Panic stabs sharp, but it’s laced withsomething worse; something better. The danger makes me feel more alive than I have in a year.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “This is wrong.” I whisper, though the words are weak, crumbling even as I say them.
“No.” He breathes, lips brushing my ear. “This is inevitable.”
The certainty in his voice sinks into my bones. My hands are flat against his chest now, not to push him away, but because I need the anchor. I feel the steady drum of his heart under my palms, strong and fast, matching mine.
The party roars on behind us, someone cheers, a burst of laughter, but out here it’s a different universe. He tilts my chin up with a finger and, finally, claims my mouth with his.
It isn’t a soft kiss. It’s consuming. Possessive. A claim written in the press of his lips and the way his hand fists at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. My gasp slips into his mouth, and he takes it like it belongs to him.
The kiss breaks only long enough for him to whisper. “You’re mine, Sammie. Say it.”
I shake my head, or try to, but it doesn’t matter. He kisses me again, deeper, until I’m dizzy, until I don’t know if the world is spinning or if it’s just me. My hands curl into his shirt, clutching like I’ll fall without him.
“Say it.” He repeats with his voice rough. His forehead rests against mine, his breath hot between us.
The word hovers on my tongue. I shouldn’t. I can’t. But when his thumb strokes along my jaw, when his eyes pin me in the dark like I’m the only thing that’s ever mattered, I break.
“Yours.” I whisper.
Satisfaction rolls off him like heat. He kisses me again, harder this time, swallowing the confession. My chest aches with the weight of it, but also with release. I gave him the word. He owns it now. He owns me.
And in that moment, pressed to the shed, the October night holding our secret, I don’t want to fight it.
Not tonight.
Chapter Seven
Sammie
The door back into the kitchen is heavier than I remember. It thumps closed behind me with a little gust of warm, cider-and-spice air, swallowing the night whole like it never happened. The party rushes up to meet me, music thudding, voices cascading, laughter peaking in jagged waves. And for a beat I just stand there with my hand on the knob, trying to remember who I’m supposed to be in this light.
My lips tingle. My throat is a field where his breath has been. The word I gave him—yours—still hangs inside me like a struck bell. The pulse and wetness built between my legs.
“What took you so long?” Jenna pops her head around the fridge door, glitter smeared across one cheek like a comet tail.She’s dressed as a cat, ears crooked, eyeliner whiskers smudged from dancing. A plastic cup appears in my hand before I can form an answer. “Refill. Hydrate. Coach’s orders.” She adds with a teasing grin.
Coach. My dad.
I manage something that sounds likethanksand sip. Sweet, cold, blessedly normal. I scan the room because some part of me has to. Because my pulse won’t settle until I know where he is. The crowd shifts. Bodies blur. Then I see him.
Triston is on the far side of the living room, anchored like a dark star. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s looking at me. One corner of his mouth lifts, not a smile, not really, just the ghost of one. A reminder. A hand at the small of my back without touching me at all.
Heat blooms under my skin again, treacherous and obvious. I force my eyes away and pretend to study the snack table. Jenna chatters about costumes she’s spotted and a dramatic breakup by the coat rack that I apparently missed. I nod at the right moments. I can’t remember a single word she says.
I canfeelhim across the room long before I see it. Not because the floorboards tilt or the music quiets, but because the air changes, that strange pressure that means he’s near sliding over my shoulders like a second shirt. He doesn’t come to me. Of course he doesn’t. He knows what it does to me when he takes his time.
“Sam.” My dad’s voice snaps like the break in a stick. I flinch and almost slosh cider down the front of me. He’s in the kitchen doorway, brow set, jaw hard, scanning the room like he’s counting threats. He looks older under the orange lights, the skin around his eyes drawn tight, mouth a line that wasn’t there before the last Halloween.
“I was just—” I gesture vaguely at nothing, feeling six years old and guilty.
