“Will you think about it?” His lips brushed against hers, their softness and warmth tantalizing. “Please?” And when his thumb pressed firmly into her cheek, tilting her head to the side, his fingers tightening and curling against her neck just so, so urgent, so wanting, so—
Oh.
“Theo,” she breathed as she leaned into his touch, her mouth already instinctively chasing his. “You’re cheating.”
He pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Cheating how?” Her nose was next, and then the other corner.
“You know how.”
Somehow, her chest was pressed all the way up against his.
When did that happen?
His right hand slipped beneath her sweater, vibrating against her skin as he nudged his fingers under the band of her bra and caressed the curve of her breast. “I’m not doing anything.” He was just as breathless as her, and she gasped as his thumb grazed across her nipple.
He swallowed it with a kiss.
“We could have this every day.” His voice rumbled deep in his chest, and all it did was make her want him a thousand times more. “We could have this all the time.”
Audrey drew his face into the crook of her neck, holding him tight and tucking him close.
But in the end, she sighed.
“I’ll think about it.” She could practically feel all the hope flee his body at her words, and she squeezed him tighter. “It’s not that I don’t want to—it’s just that it’s sudden. And I’d feel bad.”
He pulled away from her and frowned. “Bad? Why?”
She smiled sadly at him. “I come with a lot of baggage, Theo.” She swept some of the hair away from his face and tucked it behind his ears. “A lot of baggage, and a lot of loans.”
“So?” His frown deepened. “You can save money by living with me and pay them off. It’s not like you’ll have to pay me rent.”
“I don’t want to be financially dependent on you, especially not this early.”
“Well, then you could just let me pay your loans for you. Then you wouldn’t be financially dependent on anyone.”
She stared at him. “Theo, they—they’re six figures. I have well over a hundred thousand dollars of debt.”
Going out of state for school was expensive.
Flunking her first semester of college because she couldn’t cope with the change and losing her scholarship was expensive.
Living in New York was expensive, even if all of this had been her dream.
But he didn’t even blink.
“Okay.”
Okay?!
“No, you shouldn’t have to pay that for me. It’s not your burden, it’s not due to your mistakes, it’s not—”
“It’s not that much.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“No. No, itis, it’ssomuch, and then I’d be indebted toyouinstead.” She shook her head. “What if we broke up? What if—”
“I’d still feel good about doing it even if we weren’t together.”
