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“I remember everything you say. It’s a problem.”
“Come here.”
“I’m here.”
“Closer. I have a hypothesis.”
I should say no. I should go take a cold shower and then climb into bed, not lean over my drunk roommate who just confessed his crush and called me pretty. I lean over anyway to fix the quilt at his shoulder, because I’m weak and he asked.
Quinn reaches up with both hands, catches the front of my shirt, and pulls.
I go down easy. Too easy. His mouth finds mine off-centered and then he corrects and kisses me with none of the first-time panic and all of the tequila he just ingested. Open. Warm. A little sloppy. He makes a small sound in his throat that wrecks me on a sober Tuesday, and it wrecks me more now.
“Quinn—”
He kisses the rest of my sentence off. His fingers are in my hair. He nips my lower lip the way I did to him and then soothes it, clumsy and proud of himself, I can feel it in the way he smiles against my mouth. I groan before I can stop it. He takes that as a green light and pulls me down harder, until my hand is on the mattress beside his head and I’m laying on top of him, kissing him like I can’t breathe without him.
It’s heated in two seconds. His tongue and mouth. My jaw. He arches up into me, and I can feel the hard length of him press against mine, and I have to plant a hand on his hip to keep him from turning this into something he didn’t consent to sober.
He brings his mouth back to mine and then breaks the kiss just far enough to whisper against my mouth. “Don’t go out. Stay. I don’t like when you leave and kiss other people. I like when you kiss me. I’m better at it now. You said I was teachable.”
His words are like a cold shower. I can’t do this. What am I doing? Shit.
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m honest.” He kisses the corner of my mouth, then my cheek, misses, laughs, finds my mouth again. “You taste like lime. And you smell good. I like you.”
I kiss him back. I hate myself a little, and I do it anyway, because his mouth is my favorite stupid idea I’ve ever had, and I’ve been craving his kiss since the last time we kissed.
Then I make myself stop.
I press my forehead to his. We’re both breathing like idiots. His eyes are half-open, pleased, unfocused.
“Sleep,” I say. It comes out wrecked because I know in the morning he might regret all of this. “Water’s on the nightstand. I’m not going anywhere tonight. Just my bed.”
“I like feeling how hard you are.”
I remove myself from the bed and try to back up, but he’s fisting my shirt still. “Okay. That’s enough truth serum tonight. Close your eyes.”
He lets go of my shirt in increments. I pull the quilt up again. He catches my wrist before I can stand back up, squeezes once, and lets go.
“Night, Daniel.”
“Night, brain.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
QUINN
Holy flipping cow. My head is pounding. No. Not pounding. Attempting to explode. I think it might be a bomb. A bomb might have been surgically implanted in my head last night.
I squint against the bright light coming in through the window. I feel like a vampire. I mean, if those were real. And I can’t remember much after the drink.
The drink. Oh. I’m not friends with tequila. It’s evil.
My tongue is wearing a sweater. I’m cold above the comforter and too warm under it. I lift the blanket to the bare minimum and look down. Socks. And my boxer briefs. That’s all I’m wearing.
Uh.
