I leaned forward, hands twisting. “Well?”
Xander set down his red pen with a sigh and shook his head gravely. “Emery…”
“You havegotto be kidding me. I felt really good about this one.”
“I don’t know what happened, but…you got every single one correct.”
I froze. “Wait, what?”
Xander grinned, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “You nailed it.”
I stared a moment, then swatted his arm. “Oh my God, I am going to kill you!”
He laughed as I shoved all the papers and notebooks aside and climbed onto his lap, straddling him. I took off his glasses and settled against him, ringing my arms around his neck.
“That was mean,” he said, his hands running up my jean-cladthighs to my hips. “Do you forgive me?”
“No,” I said, all my mock irritation and even relief burning away at his touch. I let my lips hover over his, breathing hotly. “And you’re not sorry at all.”
“That’s true, but I’m proud of you. This stuff isn’t easy.”
“It’s too late for sweet talk.” I brushed my lips against his. “I’m mad at you.”
He craned up to kiss me, but I moved just out of reach and rolled my hips, grinding against him and eliciting a gruff sound from deep in his chest. “So mad…”
Xander groaned and gripped my hips, pulling me down on him while lifting to meet me. He lunged again, this time capturing my mouth. Taking what he wanted. A soft whimper escaped me, and he took that too, devouring me with biting, sucking kisses that set my blood on fire.
My hand slipped down his chest, over his T-shirt, to his erection straining in his jeans. “You’re so hard,” I breathed between kisses. “I want you, Xander. I want to…”
“I know,” he said gruffly. “I want you so bad sometimes I can barely think.”
“That’s saying something…”
“But we should wait,” Xander said seriously. “I’m eighteen. You’re seventeen. Even if you and Tucker have already…” He bit off his words.
“We haven’t. We never did.”
“Really?”
“Really.” My hands were back in Xander’s hair, then tracing his jawline with my finger. “I could have a hundred times, but I kept waiting towantto. But now, with you, I want to. I think maybe I was waiting for you, even if I didn’t know it.”
“Me too,” he said.
“You’ve never…?”
“Emery, you’re my first girlfriend, my first kiss, my first everything.”
I stared. “I was your firstkiss?”
My mind went back to the rainy night when he kissed me for the first time, the moment taking on a whole new depth I never thought possible.
“I can’t believe you’ve never kissed anyone,” I said. “I mean…look at you.”
He smiled bashfully. “I could have, once or twice. But I think I was waiting for you too.” He glanced down. “So if it’s okay with you, I want to wait a little longer. To experience just being with you and being good for you in a bunch of other ways that aren’t about sex.”
I stared in disbelief. My entire life, my mother put me in pageants and contests, teaching me that being beautiful was the most important thing—that my value lay in how attractive I was to men. Men leered at me, made lewd comments, told me to smile because what I felt inside wasn’t nearly as important as giving them something pretty to look at. Hell, Tucker had spent our entire time together assuring me that I was a hot piece of ass, good for one thing and one thing only. And then came Xander…
“No one has ever said something like that to me before.”
