Chapter 3

“And it’s so quiet here. I’m not used to it. In our dorm, someone’s always making noise, even at night.”

“I know. One year was enough for me to move out here.”

Several more silent minutes passed.

“You know,” I said, turning my head toward him on the pillow, “I think this is going to be harder than we thought, isn’t it?”

Kaylen sighed heavily and turned his head toward me too.

“Yeah. Seems that way.”

I suddenly gave a small snort.

“We’re like spouses after forty years of marriage. Hey, maybe we should talk about the grandkids? Although”—I immediately checked myself and sighed—“my grandparents still sleep under the same blanket and ask people to knock before coming into their bedroom. I think I’ve already started talking nonsense.”

“I don’t mind. Keep going.”

We kept looking at each other. My eyes adjusted to the dark, my hearing to the silence, and the guy beside me felt like something logical, something my analytical mind could entirely allow. Weird.

“I know what we need, Kai,” I said suddenly. “We need rapid bonding, like when we were kids, or we’ll never work up the nerve to do anything.”

“What kind of method is that?”

“We have to tell each other a secret. Something stupid, something that doesn’t matter at all in adult life, but something nobody knows about you. Everyone has a secret like that. I promise I won’t share yours with anyone. You’ll just let me past your boundaries, you know?”

“I think so.”

Kaylen thought for a moment, sliding an arm behind his head and staring at the ceiling. Then he admitted, very seriously:

“When I was little, my mom called me Mr. Donut. I was horribly offended and cried. Does that count?”

I giggled softly.

“Perfect. But I need to know why.”

He smiled.

“I had these cheeks like they’d been stung by wasps, or like I was storing winter supplies in them. Your turn.”

I sighed.

“My mom is a math teacher, and my dad is a school coach. When I was little, Mom often went away for different seminars, working on her degree, so my sister and I practically lived on the school athletic field. But while my sister made eyes at boys and kissed them behind the greenhouse, I climbed over every fence and all over the pull-up bars. I was always walking around with scraped knees and could basically live on bananas. So Dad called me Monkey. He still calls me that when I start arguing.”

“Mr. Donut and Monkey. Sounds like an excellent sandbox team,” Kaylen said with a snort.

“Exactly,” I said, smiling.

But the smile quickly faded when silence caught us again in quiet and fixed stares, even if the dark hid them.

“You know, Bri,” Kai’s voice grew more serious. “You’re going to have to make the first move. I’m not used to taking what isn’t mine.”

I understood what he meant. That very morning, I’d still been the girlfriend of Travis Sanders, popular player on the college football team, and now I couldn’t even seduce a guy properly. So I drew as much air into my lungs as I could and went for it. Under the blanket, I reached out and found his fingers. Carefully, I threaded mine through them, immediately feeling goose bumps race over my skin from that simple touch. And before I could change my mind, I pulled his hand over and placed it on my thigh.

Okay, not on my thigh. Directly on the triangle between my legs. Mega-loser now came with mega-seductress.

Kaylen sucked in a sharp breath and said hoarsely:

“Oof, Bri… that’s not exactly what I meant.” But he didn’t pull his hand away.

Panicking, I immediately moved his palm back where it had been.

“Oh, sorry! I rushed that a little, didn’t I?” A nervous laugh escaped on its own. “Damn, Kai, that came out awkward. Let me try again, but maybe not quite so decisively, okay?”

“It’s all right. Just give me a second to breathe.”

We both exhaled and stared at the ceiling.

“You know, if people are physically incompatible,” I began, “they should be able to feel it right away. And if you feel that…”

“I’m just afraid of scaring you, Bri,” Kaylen admitted suddenly. “Hell if I know how this works for other people or what it’s supposed to feel like when… it’s like this.”

“I know. I saw it today,” I said darkly, remembering my return to campus and the sight of Travis’s bare ass in the window. “Nothing good, believe me. Although… they seemed to like it. Kai?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll make the first move, and I promise I won’t regret it. But you promise me one thing too.”

“What?”

Kai looked at me.

“Don’t think about your ex. Let this be only our night, even if it turns out to be the stupidest one in the world. Just imagine that tonight there’s only us.”

“I promise.”

“And if it feels wrong, or you can’t with me… well, you know,” I faltered. “Tell me, and I’ll understand. Okay? Do you have condoms?”

“I do.”

“That’s good.”

I propped myself up on one elbow and turned toward him. My eyes had already adjusted to the dark, and I could see the clean lines of his face. Slowly, I moved closer. Closer still. So close that the ends of my long hair fell onto his bare chest. Looking into his eyes, I lifted a hand and touched his cheek with my fingers. I traced the sharp line of his cheekbone and jaw, returned my palm to his cheek, and stroked his temple. Kaylen went still, as if he’d stopped breathing.

After waiting a few seconds for him to get used to my touch, I leaned in and uncertainly touched my lips to his. Catching his lower lip, I kissed him carefully and felt nothing unpleasant at all. The opposite, actually. This guy was practically a stranger, but the physics of my body didn’t resist what was happening. If I was doing something stupid tonight, I had no plans to regretting it. I hadn’t lied to him about that. The only thing left was to find out whether Kaylen would reject me. Then I’d just leave and forget all of it. Even in the middle of the night.

At first, Kai didn’t respond, as if he were listening to his own reactions. Or maybe giving me a chance to back out. But then his hand under the blanket came to rest on my bare waist, hot and sure. He pulled his other hand out from under his head and wrapped his arm around me. Slowly, but with no hesitation at all, he drew me closer and finally kissed me back.

My breath stopped, and I gulped in air greedily at the possessive, masculine movement of his palm sliding over my bare back. Kaylen easily took the lead. Rolling me onto the pillow, he hovered above me, stopping an inch from my lips.

Our eyes met in the dark, and so did our breathing. Then Kai suddenly tilted his head and kissed me himself. Slowly and deeply. He kissed me for a long time, until I relaxed and loosened my grip on his strong shoulders. Once he’d tasted that kiss and my surrender, he pushed into me more boldly with his tongue, pressing me into the bed with his body.

Well, damn. This guy was fire. And he was the one not used to taking?

A heavy, hot wave suddenly rolled over me under his lips and hands, and I arched toward him before I could stop myself. My head spun, my heart beat somewhere in my throat, and my palms slid on their own to his hot back. I’d never felt anything like this with Travis, not in the first month and not in the eighth. My inner mathematician immediately suggested writing the whole thing off as adrenaline and the stress of tonight. I agreed.