“Yes.”
His hands find my waistband, yanking at the button of my jeans. I help him - shove them down, kick them off, leave myself in just the thin cotton of my underwear and my shirt.
“I was thinking about this.”
I push him back toward the bed. He stumbles, catching himself on the edge of the mattress, looking up at me with something wild in his eyes.
“This,” I repeat, climbing onto his lap, straddling him. “You. Me. The way you look at me like you’re trying to figure out a puzzle.”
“I got there.” His hands slide up my thighs. “Eventually.”
“Eventually.” I press closer. Feel him hard beneath me. “What took you so long?”
He flips us so I’m on my back, the cheap hotel blankets scratchy beneath my shoulders, and he’s above me, bracketing me in, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
“You were good,” he says. “Too good. I didn’t want to see it.”
He pulls my shirt up and off over my head. The bandage is exposed now, white against my skin, marking the place where I bled on the ice. He stares at it for a long moment. Then he leans down and presses his mouth to the edge of it.
I gasp. His lips are soft against the tender skin, the bruising fresh beneath the tape. He kisses the edge of the wound, then the center, then lower, down my sternum, between my breasts, his hands sliding behind me to unhook my bra.
“Zane-”
“Don’t.” His voice is muffled against my skin. “Don’t tell me to stop.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He looks down at me. His eyes are dark, his hair falling across his forehead, and he looks like something out of a dream I’ve been having for weeks. “Good.”
He strips the rest of my clothes off - underwear gone, socks gone, everything gone - until I’m naked beneath him and he’s still wearing his sweatpants, still looking at me like he’s deciding exactly how to take me apart.
He pulls his pants off. Then his boxers. And then he’s above me again, skin to skin, nothing between us, and I can’t breathe.
He kisses me again. Slower this time - and deeper. His tongue slides against mine and I feel the anger still there, underneath, but there’s something else now too. Something that feels like surrender.
“You should have told me.” His mouth moves down my throat. “At the Halloween party. At practice. Any of the hundred times I looked at you.”
“I was scared.”
He bites down on my collarbone - just hard enough to make me gasp.
“I’ve always seen you. I just didn’t know your name.”
His hand slides down my stomach, between my legs, finding me wet and ready. I arch into his touch. My fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Say my name,” I breathe.
“Leonora.”
He pushes inside me. Slow. So slow I feel every inch until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
“Zane-”
His forehead presses against mine. His breath is ragged. Hishands are shaking.
“I’m so angry,” he whispers. “I’m so angry at you. But I can’t stop wanting you.”
“You have me.”
