But I don't move.
His fingers flex against my hip. "Jade."
"This doesn't mean anything," I whisper.
"Okay."
"I still hate you."
"I know."
"And I'm not forgiving you just because?—"
"I'm not asking for forgiveness." His hand slides from my hip to my stomach, pressing flat against my skin beneath the hem of my shirt. "I'm asking for this. Just this. One night where we stop pretending we don't want each other."
I should say no. I should push him away, rebuild the pillow wall between us, go back to the cold war we've been waging since we got here.
Instead, I roll over to face him.
He's so close. Close enough that I can see the firelight reflected in his dark eyes, the stubble along his jaw, the way his lips part slightly when my hand comes up to rest against his chest.
"One night," I say.
"One night."
"And then we go back to?—"
He kisses me before I can finish the sentence.
It's not gentle. It's not tentative. His mouth devours mine. His hands are everywhere—in my hair, on my back, sliding beneath my shirt to find bare skin. I'm gasping against him, grabbing fistfuls of his t-shirt, pulling him closer even though there's nowhere left to go.
The pillow wall between us gets shoved aside, knocked to the floor along with any pretense that we can keep fighting this.
He rolls me onto my back and settles his weight between my thighs, and the pressure of him against me makes me moan into his mouth. I can feel how hard he is through the thin layers of fabric separating us, and some desperate part of me wants totear everything away and feel him inside me right now, right this second.
But he pulls back.
I make a sound of protest, reaching for him, but he catches my wrists and pins them above my head.
"Not yet," he says, and his voice is so rough it barely sounds like him.
"Phoenix—"
His eyes rake over me, dark and hungry.
He's been thinking about this for years. Reading my blog, looking at my photo, imagining this moment while I had no idea he even existed.
It should disgust me. It does disgust me. But it also makes feel something else.
"Tell me you want this," he says.
"You know I do."
"Say it anyway."
I glare up at him, my wrists still pinned, my body aching. "I want this."
"Want what?"
