“Oh no, I’ll take the train. Thank you. Goodnight.”

“I insist,” he says, warning. Low.

He puts on his jacket and grabs his cell phone from the table.

I pause, breathless when our eyes meet as he pockets his phone. It’s as if he knows I was having a moment in the ladies’ bathroom. “I don’t want you to go out of your way,” I breathe.

“I won’t.” He nods down at me, his voice a little tender.

Cole notices something off for his tone changes too.

“I’ll drop off Therese,” Cole interjects.

“Thank you, goodnight,” Aaric says noncommittally, putting his hand on the small of my back as he leads me outside.

We head for his car. I’m trembling. He puts his arm around me and pins me to his side.

I press closer.

His little act of kindness makes me feel accepted—understood. I feel as if he sees me, and it causes me to come unhinged.

I slide into his car when he opens the door for me, despite my previous efforts to avoid it. I thought it would feel intimate and it does. He’s a powerful, attractive man and I’m only human.

I smell the leather of the car and Aaric as he slides in behind me, shuts the door, and tells his driver his Park Avenue address.

The car heads into traffic.

I turn, and he cups my jaw and presses his lips to mine.

Christos

14 years ago…

“He’s the new guy. The older one. He was held back for two years because his mom is sick.”

I slam my locker shut, aware of the speculations around me and Cole.

I scan the halls for my class when I spot the back of a girl’s head, and my eyes lock on it. On her. The girl who was at the shop last weekend with her dad.

My chest feels heavy. My legs, thighs, every muscle in my body is ready to pounce. I hesitate for a second, aware of the curious gazes on me, then I charge forward and catch up with her and her friend.

“Hi,” I say, my voice a little lower than I expected. “I’m Aaric.”

“Bryn,” she says in return, a blush on her cheeks.

She turns away to head off with her friend, but when she opens the door to her room, she glances back at me with a smile on her face.

I stare at her. Bryn.

I don’t know what it is, but I can’t take my eyes away from her. The way she looks. The way she walks. The way she smiles. The way she talks.

The solar-plexus punching, gut-wrenching, bucket-of-water feeling of seeing my future in her eyes.

Bryn

His tongue flicks into my mouth, and it’s as if the whole universe is opening up to swallow me. I feel helpless to stop it, this sensation of being devoured as his mouth opens and his tongue plunges in—hot, wet, greedy.

A soft moan escapes me, and a shudder of warmth wracks me head to toe as I reach out to slip my fingers in his hair. He groans hungrily, grabbing me by the back of the neck and holding me in place as he presses his thumb to my lips and eases back to look at me.

He looks devastated.

As if I just gave him food for the first time in his life.

He murmurs fuck me under his breath and rubs his thumb over my mouth—like he did once, at Kelly’s. Then he presses his mouth to his thumb and sets his forehead on mine, waiting…

I meet his gaze and pant wildly in shock. I want to open my mouth, but I know I shouldn’t. I am not sure if he knows that he shouldn’t.

But, fuck me too, because oh, how I want. I want to crawl out of my skin and into him, if only to get rid of the fire burning every inch of me. I want everything this guy can give me. Things no one in my life has ever given me. Forbidden things that scare me, thrill me, churn a crazy wild fire inside me. Bryn the Good Girl wants out, and Bryn the One Who Doesn’t Play It Safe wants in.

Christos is taken. He’s completely wrong and it doesn’t even matter. He’s the last man you’d take home to your parents because he doesn’t belong to you—because even when you knew he wanted you, you feared he’d never belong to you.

But I want him. No, I don’t want to marry the guy, or even date the guy. I want his hands on me. His mouth on me. I want it raw and hard, but I’m afraid for him to know it.

I’m afraid to even want it.

I’ve seen him with his girlfriend, and he’s never looked at her with the warmth he looks at me. I’m shocked to realize I’m selfish, terrible, because at this moment nothing is as important as the fact that I want his hands on me.

I stay in place, motionless, and feel his thumb push a little bit upward, then a little bit downward, opening my mouth and then…

Fuck us both, because his mouth is covering both my top and bottom lips and his tongue is covering the tiny space in between, widening the part and going in.

I get caught up in it, in him, in how right it feels, in how 14 years could have never happened because he is still him. I’m swept away by all of what really happened and dive into my what if…tasting him back. He’s moving his head, this way and that, never once taking his lips away from mine, groaning when my own tongue, thirsty and reckless and thoughtless, comes out to rub his. Taste his.

He kisses a thousand times better than in my decade-long fantasies. So good my heart beats in my whole body—my chest, my stomach, my thighs, in between…

The car jolts to a stop, and I jolt back—blinking again as I try to place myself.

I can’t believe I’d ever be this girl. That I’d kiss a guy who had a girlfriend, but I know it would never happen with any guy. Only this guy.

Christos sits up with an exhale that causes his nostrils to flare, and he pulls me up while I slowly come back to reality.