Page 34

Kyland suddenly broke free from my lips and kneeled up, pulling me with him. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice hoarse and clipped as if he was in pain too.

We stood up and started walking up the hill for the hundredth time that day. But now suddenly the air all around us seemed to be dancing with static electricity.

We walked in silence along the trail through the woods, our inner tubes on our shoulders. I had been cold and a little hungry before, but now all I could focus on was the wetness between my thighs as I took each step, my breath coming out in sharp exhales. I could feel Kyland behind me as if his very presence made the air all around me heavier somehow.

Finally, his house came into sight and he grabbed my hand and we ran the last couple hundred feet, laughter bursting from my chest. I didn’t know if I was nervous or just filled with anticipation or what, but my whole body was buzzing.

“Stay here for a sec,” Kyland said as he took my inner tube and walked to the back of his house, putting them somewhere I couldn’t see. Then he was back, taking my hand again, pulling me into his house, shutting and locking the door behind us.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Kyland

I was quite possibly about to make the biggest mistake of my life, and I just couldn’t care anymore. It was too much damn work trying not to be attracted to Tenleigh. I couldn’t do it anymore. The hormones had won out. Only I knew very well it was more than hormones that attracted me to her—and that’s the part that scared me so damn much. I needed to touch her naked skin more than anything I’d ever needed in my life before. It was like those Monday mornings at school when someone had left food on one of the cafeteria tables, and I was so hungry after not eating all weekend that reaching out to take it was a primal response, one I could barely control—a survival instinct. That’s how Tenleigh affected me. I wanted her so desperately I felt like some part of me was starving for her.

Was this normal? It couldn’t be. I’d never felt this way for another girl before. Maybe I just needed to get my fill of her so that this feeling would begin to fade, so that I could gather some control over it. Half of it had to be the anticipation alone.

Right?

Tenleigh walked into my house first and then turned around to face me. “You have that really intense look on your face again,” she whispered, her light green eyes wide, her lips red from the cold and my kisses.

Goddamn, I was so hard I was almost in pain.

“We need to take off these wet clothes,” I said, ignoring her comment and starting to strip off my coat.

She nodded, color moving up her cheeks, her eyes cast downward as she removed her own jacket.

She looked so innocent, so beautiful. I hesitated.

Her eyes snapped up to mine and some kind of resolve filled them. She took the five steps or so to me and then her lips were on mine and I was gripping her face in my hands and sweet little moans were coming from her chest. Any control I had had a few seconds before was gone.

Long gone.

Somewhere in Eastern Asia.

I walked her backward as we kissed, licking and sucking at each other’s lips and tongues. She tasted like something I couldn’t even identify, something so delicious that it drove me to the next level of crazy. Kissing her was like tipping over the edge of sanity. Like being drunk. The feeling was so intense I could hardly describe it. My kisses weren’t gentle—they were ravaging and wild. Desire, molten and powerful, pumped through my veins.

Somehow we made it to my room, and when the backs of her legs hit my small twin bed, she sat down and lay back. I immediately followed her down and continued to kiss her, pressing my throbbing erection down into her and moaning at the sensation. How was I going to resist fucking her? My need to press into her warm, wet body was so intense, I was practically shaking with it. But I would resist. I had to. I broke from her lips and looked down into her face, filled with arousal but still that same beautiful innocence.

“Make love to me,” she whispered.

Yes! No.

I closed my eyes tightly for a second and then looked back into her face. She was going to drive me out of my mind. “I can’t, Tenleigh. I won’t,” I said. “But I’ll give you what you need, okay?”

An expression of hurt crossed her features, but she nodded.

I kissed her once again quickly, then sat back and removed her boots, her damp socks, and then her layered pants. No girl had ever been more desirable in a more ridiculous, unbecoming outfit.