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JAYMES LAUGHED ANDbellowed in the middle of Maddie’s Diner. He could hardly catch his breath.

“When I finally sleep with Jess, you’ll damn well know it! It’ll be plastered across my face like a fucking tattoo of bliss and happiness, because I’m pretty sure her p—”

I slapped my hand over his mouth, mildly mortified. I looked at him pointedly,shut up, shut up, shut up!written plain across my face. When I was sure he would, I peeled my fingers from his lips.

“—would be like holy water, cleansing me of all my sins,” he finished anyway.

The guys laughed, and Sara’s eyes brightened in a way I hadn’t seen in a while. In a few weeks, at least.

But I didn’t care about any of that right then. Not really.

Not when my heart was beating a mile a minute. Not when Greyson was sitting at the end of our long table, searing two identical, matching holes into the side of my face.

I had let him believe that I’d slept with Jaymes—willingly. But now that it was out there, that I hadn’t? I could feel the tension crackling between us like an atomic bomb getting ready to explode. Thick enough to strangle every person that sat between us.

I scooted my chair away from the table and stood up, quickly making my way to the bathrooms, avoiding the inevitable confrontation of Greyson’s knowing eyes. I felt like such an idiot, far beyond embarrassed and straight into humiliated.

But he was faster than me, already two steps ahead.

Shit.Shit, shit, shit.

He pulled me around the corner, fingers gently biting into my arm, forcing my back against the wall with the amount of space he was giving me.

I sucked in a breath. I could barely breathe. Could hardly muster up the words I knew I needed to say because of the way he was staring at me, like he was staring straight into me. It threw me off-kilter.

He’d never looked at me like that before. Had never seemed that angry before, either…or this close to breaking.

“What do you want?” I finally managed. But the words lacked their intended weight, coming out as a soft breath instead of the angry growl I’d felt churning inside.

“Why would you lie about sleeping with Jaymes, Jess?” he asked. There was a layer of hurt and betrayal beneath the anger in his tone.

“Screw you,” I said. It didn’t matter why. It was too late, and it was none of his damn business, anyway. He didn’t get to carenow.Not when he’d practically forced me into Jaymes’ bed in the first place.

He moved closer, his mouth inches away from mine, and I choked back the desperate need for him to close that distance between us. Those last two, maybe three inches between his lips and mine.

“Why, Jess?” he asked—almost desperate.

I swallowed thickly, refusing to answer. My breaths had picked up, and I focused all my energy on trying to hide that fact.

He tilted his head to the side and lowered it, whispering into my ear. “Were you trying to make me jealous?” He laughed darkly.

My heart sunk, dropped into the pit of my stomach.He thinks this is funny? This is a joke to him?I was one second from pushing him the hell away from me when he pressed his body flush against mine.

My heart climbed its way back up into my chest and started pounding—racing—my breaths coming and going in short bursts. I couldn’t hide the way he affected me even if I wanted to.

“It worked, Jess,” he growled. “It worked, and I’m pissed at you for lying, but I’m alsoso fucking relieved, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Go to hell?” I breathed, my last-ditch effort at pushing him away, because I knew—I knew—what was coming next. I could feel it with every bone in my body, with every heartbeat that thrashed against my ribcage, with every breath that rushed in and out of my lungs.

He pressed himself against me harder. “Been there. Done that,” he replied, and finally,finally, finally, finally,after all this time of waiting, his lips slammed down on mine. Hard, relentless,angry.

I moaned against his lips, and his tongue pushed into my mouth. Teasing, consuming, igniting. Every cell, every nerve ending, raged with a fire that burned through my veins. I grasped his shirt and pulled him closer, tangling my tongue with his. He tasted like mint, and chocolate, and Greyson; he tasted like pure bliss.

I had no idea how it had happened, exactly. How one second our eyes were glued to each other’s, and in the very next, our lips were touching,crashing, pushed together with the force and intensity of weeks, and weeks, and alifetimeof waiting. But I didn’t care; I didn’t need to know how it had happened.

Because in those moments, I could feel just how much he’d wanted this, all that time, too—how much he’d wantedme—in the way his mouth moved against mine, slow and devouring. In the way his hands were hurried, and impatient, and smoothing over the curves of my body. In the way he was pressed right up against me, pushing the evidence of it into my hip bone.

Relief, like the weight of a thousand pounds being lifted from me, warred with the desperate need for more—like the strength of that weight being shoved right back down my throat.