Emmett chuckles, and I slap his chest.
“You’re too stiff,” he says.
“Iknow.So teach me how to do it better.”
His gaze flicks down.
He presses his thumb to my bottom lip. Automatically, my jaw unhinges and my lips drop open. “Relax,” he whispers against my mouth.
It’s softer this time. He weaves one hand through the tendrils of unbound hair on my neck and another around the small of my waist. The heat and the weight of him is everywhere, as if my body is covered with a cascade of sparks.
My hands scramble for purchase. I wind them through his hair and tug just a little too hard. “Easy,” he murmurs.
His tongue darts between my lips, and I freeze.
“Let me in,” he breathes. “Take it.”
I open to the velvet pressure of his tongue, his mouth soft but unrelenting.
He tugs hard at the hair at the nape of my neck, tipping me back onto the bed. He hovers over me, caging me in with his tall frame.
I move, desperate for some relief, and he pulls me against him until I can feel every hard plane of his body. I gasp, desperate for air, and he trails his tongue along the jackrabbit beat of my pulse until he reaches my earlobe. His teeth close around the tender skin, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make me arch against him.
He kisses the exact opposite of his brother. He’s not polite at all, it’s like he’s starving for it.
His hands wander even lower down, ghosting over my breasts, then grasping the soft part of my waist hard enough to bruise. I want him impossibly closer. He’s unlocked something in me. I didn’t know kissing could feel like this. I didn’t knowanythingcould feel like this.
Suddenly he pushes me away. I raise my hand to my kiss-swollen lips. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Ivy,” he says in that peculiar, exhausted way of his.
“What?” I whisper.
He stands suddenly, backing away from the bed. “You’ve done perfectly well. I think the kissing lesson is over.”
I’m feverish with jealousy of the girls who got to have him before me, for real, without the veil of pretense and denial.
“Perfectly well?” I try to keep my voice light. It’s taking all mystrength not to reach out to him and beg for more. “Top marks in His Royal Highness Prince Emmett De Vere’s school of kissing? Will I be valedictorian?”
He laughs humorlessly. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
I’m just another in a long list of girls. I would be foolish to let myself think I was special. “I wouldn’t dare.”
I wrap my arms around my middle and hug myself tight. I try to think of Bram and his easy smile. He’s such a lovely boy. Emmett isn’t lovely at all. He’s reckless and mercurial, and he will never be mine.
I felt his body against mine. I’m not foolish enough to think I’m alone in my want. Emmett would give me more, I know he would. All I’d have to do is push a little harder, and he would have me pinned to this mattress in seconds.
But I am alone with this stupid, throbbing ache in my rib cage that longs for something like love. Emmett can’t give it to me, and it wouldn’t be mine to take anyway.
He disappears into the attached washroom and is in there for so long, I begin to fear he’s sleeping in the bathtub, but finally I hear the squeak of the door and the soft padding of his footsteps. The bed sinks as he lies down next to me.
Emmett’s ragged breathing slows after a long time, and I think he must be asleep. It gives me the bravery to ask a question that’s been weighing on me.
“Were you always on the lookout for the perfect May Queen?”
