Wowsers.
He doesn’t let go of my face, he holds me captive while his tongue explores every crevice in my mouth. His tongue presses against mine harder and harder like he’s trying to convince me to give in and let him own me.
It’s only when my body relaxes, that he eases off the gas, kissing me with a lazy cadence like it’s a summer’s afternoon, and we’re out for a walk in the sunshine. Oh, my god, I want him to kiss me forever.
When he pulls back, his chest heaves with gargantuan effort as though he has to remind his body how to breathe.
Makes two of us. My breathing isn’t much better, though I’m almost frozen, like he’s overloaded my system, and I need to wait for everything to reboot and start up again. I just stare at his lips. His beautiful, swollen, dangerously addictive lips.
Without saying a word, I pick up the glass on the bar and swallow the last dregs of my drink.
“Karlya?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“I need to leave.” I haven’t broken eye contact with Tate, and he’s still holding me, his shoulders rising and falling with hard breaths. The way he’s staring at me, the heat licking in his eyes, his lip nipped between his teeth, reminds me of a predator in the wild, staring down his dinner.
If I run, he’ll chase me and tear me limb from limb.
If I don’t, I’ll die anyway.
Karlya grips my elbow and pulls me away from the silent stand-off. I stumble out of the bar in a heady daze, eventually we come to a stop and she pulls out her phone. “Lyft,” is the only explanation I get.
“Thanks,” I mumble, idly trailing my fingers across my still-tingling bottom lip.
“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you, I did it for the poor, unsuspecting patrons of the bar who didn’t need to see that Milkshake Man of yours rip your clothes off and fuck you senseless right there over the counter.”
“Nuh uh.” I make a guffawing noise that only makes her raise her brows.
“Don’t.” I cover her whole face with my hand.
She snickers. “We need more alcohol.”
She’s not wrong.
The car ride back to the dorms is blissfully quiet, and I keep my eyes pointed out the window to my left so she can’t stare into my brain matter.
We get to the door, and she pokes me in the side. “Prepare yourself, Peppy.” When we were little, she couldn’t say Penelope so Peppy was what she called me. “It’s almost time to spill those guts of yours.”
I swing open the door, and turn my head to her as I walk forward, straight into something sticky. Sliding my hand on thewall, I grope around for the light switch. What the fuck is in my hair?
As soon as the light comes on, Karlya gasps. There’s globs of silly string around the room. That prick somehow managed to string it across the door so I’d walk into it face first. Except I didn’t, I walked into it side-face first, so it’s now in my fucking hair.
There’s a large piece of paper sitting on my bed, and all it says is “Your move. – T.”
Thirty seconds ago, I wanted to kiss him again. Now? Now I’m going to fucking kill him.
CHAPTER 9
Tate
She’s going to fucking kill me.
Even though Penelope and her cousin left the bar before I did, I still got back to my room and was in bed before she got home. They must have taken the long way home, or stopped somewhere for dessert, or pizza. My stomach growls. I should have stopped for pizza. Or asked her to bring me back a slice, she might have done before she’d seen what I did to her dorm room, but now she might lace it with poison.
I was halfway back to my dorm room when I remembered the mess of silly string draped around her room.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, waiting for her to get back and realize I’d covered her room in sticky stringy decorations. Her scream of frustration should have made me laugh, or even made my blood run cold with fear, but all it did was get me even harder.
