“Right here?” He presses down, his fingers finding the exact place where my muscles are bunched too tight, and as he starts to massage the spot, the soreness melts into a pleasurable ache.
A sigh slips through my lips, and I find myself leaning almost automatically into his touch. “That feels really good.”
“Does it?” His voice is a low murmur, and then he grabs my chin, lifting it up toward him. His gaze is scorching. Pure heat. Radiant and deadly and impossible to resist. “What about this?”
And then he’s kissing me, and every rational thought burns away. I rise from my chair, my back against the table, and his hand curls over the corner so it doesn’t dig into me when hepresses closer. It’s perfect. It’s so perfect I can’t believe this is only the second time it’s happened. I’m used to having to teach guys how I want to be kissed, like offering assembly instructions for furniture:Move this part here, be careful with this, repeat this step.
But somehow, Ares knows exactly what to do.
Knows to tug my hair a little, just firmly enough to make me gasp against his lips. Knows to push me against the table until there’s nowhere else to go, no possible way to be closer, kissing me the entire time with such urgency it knocks the breath out of my lungs.
I don’t realize how much control I’ve surrendered, how eagerly I’m kissing him back, until he pulls away without warning. When I try to close the distance again, he deliberately moves just out of reach, teasing, grinning down at me like the devil himself. “You didn’t answer me,” he says.
“I—what?” I ask, the words loose as wine on my lips. God, I sound drunk.
His fingers thread back through my hair, holding me there. “Does this feel good to you too?”
I manage to make a vague noise, the most that my pride will allow. “Mmm.”
“What’s that?” He moves his hands down to my neck, and a violent shiver courses through me, terror inseparable from desire, dread twisted with anticipation. I don’t know if I’m scared of the way he’s touching me, slow and reverent, or if I’m scared that he’ll stop. “I want to hear you say it again.”
“I hate you,” I mumble, but maybe what I really mean is:I hate the effect you have on me. I hate that my own body won’t listento me when you’re around.Because I’m still reaching for him, my hands moving over his chest like I’m trying to find an answer, my mouth open and waiting for him to kiss me again.
His eyes gleam. His lips are swollen, his long, crow-black hair still rumpled from where I’d run my fingers through it. “If this is how you act when you hate me,” he says, glancing down at my hands on his body, “then I wouldn’t mind if you hated me more.”
But he stops taunting me and pulls me back to him, and I can’t think of anybody I hate more, just like I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.
Our study sessions continue over the next few days, each one running longer than the last.
By the time we finish all the practice questions on Wednesday, it’s already midnight. My math textbooks have been left lying open on the table, and we’ve migrated to the couch, where I’m draped over his chest like a blanket. He’s writing something on my back with one finger, his touch soporific and so light that it tickles. The living room is warm, peaceful. Through the sheer curtains, I can see the few scattered squares of orange and pale blue light glowing from the other apartments. How many of them are staying up to prepare for a presentation, like my father would, or study for a test, like I’m sure Alice is right this moment? And how many are seeing a bad idea all the way through, like me?
“What are you writing?” I ask him sleepily.
“Guess,” he says, drawing out a horizontal line at the base of my spine.
I close my eyes, which were falling shut anyway, and try to focus on the sensation, the strokes of each character. But instead I find myself listening to his breathing and wondering when that became such a familiar sound, like the song of sparrows at dawn or the sound of footsteps outside my bedroom.
“Can’t guess,” I mumble. “Just tell me.”
When he speaks, I can feel the reverberations in his throat. “Then it’s a secret.”
“You keep a lot of secrets.”
“So do you.”
I can’t deny it, so I stay quiet. Or I try to, but my stomach chooses to interrupt the silence by growling loudly.
Ares laughs. “Are you hungry?”
I’m starving. Have been for the past day, or the past thirteen-something years, if I’m being honest. I would never usually admit it, except I’m already on a horrible streak of making exceptions, and it’s as if my brain has lost the ability to think beyond what I would likeright now, in this very moment. Ares has a strange way of rooting me to the present, when all I should really be thinking about is the future, the vision, the fire. “Yeah. A little,” I say.
“I’ll cook you something.”
“What?” My eyes open again. “Right now?”
“Yeah,” he says, sitting up, the front of his tank top creased from the weight of my head.
“But it’s way past dinnertime,” I say, lifting my legs off his stomach and swaying slightly before I rise to my feet. Despite my half-hearted reasoning, my mouth is already watering atthe idea of food. Real, substantial food, not the plain salad I forced myself to choose for lunch. “I didn’t even know you could cook.”
