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His eyes held hers. “Don’t what?”

She didn’t know.

Don’t look at me like that.

Don’t make me want this.

Don’t make me remember that you were my favorite person in the world once—that I used to race my bike to your house every morning the summer I was nine; that you taught me how to play Pokémon and I taught you to braid friendship bracelets, and we swore on a pinky promise we’d be best friends forever.

She had loved Cole Alders the only way a young girl could, one who hadn’t learned yet that people could disappoint you. And now he was sitting beside her, his breath warm against her face and his body pressed against hers.

But her body, traitorous as it was, moved first.

She leaned in, meeting him halfway.

Then Cole closed the last inch between them, and his mouth crashed down on hers.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t testing. It was all-consuming and demanding: a kiss that stole the air from her lungs and set fire to every inch of her.

Nutmeg bolted away.

Cole tore himself away just as suddenly.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, already sitting back. “I shouldn’t have⁠—”

Emily threw her hands up in the air. “Seriously, Cole?”

She stared at him, dazed and breathless and furious at him for stopping. Furious at herself for caring that he had.

“Don’t kiss me like that and then apologize like I wasn’t right there with you.” Her hands fisted at her sides, tingling with the urge to grab him again. “Did I push you away?”

“No.”

“Did I tell you to stop?”

His jaw flexed. “No.”

“Then don’t stand there looking noble about it. You—” Her next insult never left her lips.

One second, they were shoulder to shoulder; the next, his hands were fisted in her hair, dragging her against him. Emily didn’t hesitate. She shoved her hands under his shirt, palms sliding over the hard plane of his stomach—hating how good he felt, hating herself for noticing—as he kissed her like he had something to prove.

She wrenched her sweater over her head. His jacket was already gone. Her fingers found the suspenders next, sliding beneath the wide black straps and pushing them off his shoulders in one motion, letting them fall to hang at his hips. She felt his sharp intake of breath against her mouth and filed that away for later, that she could do that to him, that the simple act of her hands on those straps could make Cole Alders lose half a breath.

His mouth dragged down the side of her neck—teeth, then tongue—while she went for his belt with shaking fingers. She freed just enough, suspenders hanging loose at his sides, and he dealt with her jeans: one leg free, the other tangled around her ankle.

“Wait—” His hands caught hers, stilling them. His voice was rough, strained. “I don’t have a condom.”

Emily’s pulse hammered. “That’s okay. I’m on the pill. And I haven’t been with anyone in… well, ages.” She hated how soft the admission came out, how exposed it made her feel. “You?”

“Same.” His eyes stayed locked on hers. “I’m clean.”

The last thread of hesitation snapped. She sank onto him without another word.

The feeling knocked the breath clean out of her—the sheer, overwhelming fullness of it—the way her body stretched to take him. A raw sound escaped her throat that she would take to her grave.

She didn’t let herself think. She moved.

This was anger. This was two months of gritted teeth and clenched fists every time he walked into a room like he owned it. Her palms braced against the cabinet behind him and she rode him hard, chasing the heat building low in her belly, grinding it out, refusing to be gentle about any of it. He met her thrust for thrust, hands locked on her hips like she might escape, and some furious, traitorous part of her was glad she couldn’t.