“I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. And you’rebrave, Mars.You’re going to get everything you’ve ever wanted in life, and I’m…what? Not going to be there to see it happen? Too scared of my own feelings to read your book?” He shakes his head. “That’s not the guy I want to be.”
“Who do you want to be?”
He drags his fingers slowly from my shoulder to my wrist, his hand collecting goose bumps as it moves. “I’ll be whatever you want, Mars Darling.” Two fingers pause on the inside of my wrist. His mouth hitches up into a wolfish grin as he measures my pulse. “Interesting.”
I’m tachycardiac. Drenched in endorphins.
His hand slides to my waist and urges me toward him until our bodies are flush. My breath hitches in disbelief.This can’t be happening.
His eyelids droop to half-mast, and the aching need in my stomach spreads out, traveling lower. My blood is hot, and my skin is tingling, and if he doesn’t kiss me soon, I might collapse. He leans in until our lips are touching. “Admit that I’m Fox.”
My eyes are closed, but I feel the smirk against my mouth. I nip his bottom lip with my teeth as he groans. “Never.” My fingertips slide over his stomach and up to his chest as I enunciate the word slowly, but I barely get it out before his mouth is on mine, muffling my response. He reaches up to cup my face in his hands, his fingers spread across the sides of my neck and up to my jaw. His lips catch mine, slow and questioning. He inhales through his nose as his chest shudders, and then his tongue sweeps once over my lip before he pulls back. He is completely still, attention rapt as he gauges my reaction.
Desire courses through me, hot and impatient. I need contact. I twist his shirt in my hands and pull him back to me,molding my lips to his. This time, he presses me hard against the wall, pinning me with his hips as he kisses me. His hands slip to my waist, his thumb brushing under the hem of my shirt, and suddenly I need him closer. I open my mouth, and his tongue brushes over mine as I slide my hands up to his jaw, feeling it move as we kiss like we invented it.
This kiss is chaos and fervor and speed, and I can’t get enough.
I lose sense of where I am as he rolls his hips against mine, the sensation making starbursts appear behind my eyelids. I arch against him and thread my fingers into his hair, pulling a moan from both our lips. His mouth works its way to my neck, lips traveling greedily over my skin until he finds a spot below my ear that makes me squirm under the heavy weight of him. His hands skirt over my body as we kiss like we’re making up for lost time, but I don’t even care about any of it. I would do the last three years over the exact same, because it brought us to this moment, with West’s hand slipping under my shirt, his fingertips searing the small of my back.
“For a guy who doesn’t like PDA, you keep kissing me in public.” I gasp as he presses a kiss to the underside of my jaw.
“And for a character who isn’t based on me, Fox is a hell of a lot like me,” West retorts, his lips turning up into a smile against my mouth. My feet leave the ground, and I scream in surprise as he lifts me up and walks out of our empty courtyard with my legs wrapped around his waist.
“What are you doing?” I laugh until I snort, and West’s eyes shine as he grins up at me.
“You don’t want me to kiss you in public? Looks like we need to find somewhere more private.”
“Now?”
He pauses. “Now. Tomorrow. And the day after that.”
I slide through his arms, my curves dragging over his body until my feet touch concrete. “Do you mean it?” I whisper.
West leans down and presses his lips to my forehead before tracing his nose over the length of mine and parting my lips with his tongue. He pulls back, his eyes nearly black. “I’ll kiss you for as long as you let me, Mars Darling.”
17
Present Day
West pulls asmall tool out of his pocket and picks the lock to the food court with a quick flip of his wrist. He opens the door, checks to see if the coast is clear, and then holds it out so I can enter first. I throw him a quizzical look as I slip inside the empty building.
“Um, we’re definitely going to talk about why you carry a lockpick,” I whisper.
“Up there,” he says, pointing toward a staircase leading to the second level. We pass a handful of fast-casual restaurants, all of them locked up for the night, and take the stairs in silence.
The top level is an open cafeteria, and West strides confidently across the tile floor. He hops over the stainless steel counter with the remembered ease of a former employee.
“What are you doing?” I whisper as he fiddles with the buttons on a large machine. He ducks under the counter, tears open a bag, and pours it into the top.
“No one is going to hear us,” he says at full volume. The machine hums to life, and West turns to me, satisfied. “Fifteen minutes until soft serve.”
“They sell soft serve on University.”
“Bougie stuff that comes in flavors like charcoal and mocha.”
“I like mocha.”
He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “Who are you, and what have you done with Mars?”
