Page 164 of Burn Bright

I understand, and I’m totally fine with that too. “Okay, then I get in the Honors House and we bang.”

Ben is vigorously shaking his head.

“What’s the problem?” I question with a pained frown. “Am I such an embarrassing lay that you’d want to keep it secret?”

“What?” Shock catapults his brows and drops his jaw. “No. I’m not ashamed to be with you—are you kidding?”

Unfortunately not.

I lift my stiff shoulders, holding my elbows.

“Harriet.” He slides his hand against my forearm, his warmth loosening the grasp I have on my own body. “If we have sex so I can get housing, it’s a transaction, and I don’t want to sleep with you just so I can have a place to stay. On top of that, I know guys like Leif, and the bet is coming at your expense. I don’t want any of them to humiliate you.”

“It’s not humiliating to me, and I’ll slingshot the panties in his face. Make him the butt of the joke first.”

His jaw hasn’t untensed, but he also hasn’t stopped touching me. He’s brought me toward his firm chest. His hand gradually ascends my hip to the small of my back, to my neck, up into my hair where he cups my skull. It dawns on me that he’s bracing the weight of my head, letting my neck rest while my gaze dives deeper into his.

I’d like to say physical touch is Ben’s love language, but does that assume he loves me? Is he loving me in this second, this moment? As his hand becomes a pillow for me to rest against.

I just want to be that for him too. A soft place. Comfort. Why won’t he let me?

“Harriet,” he murmurs.

My eyes scald. “It’s not transactional if we have sex before I’m in the Honors House—because maybe I don’t even get in.” The thought impales me worse than ever. “So maybe we just have sex, Ben. Maybe everything will fall into place if we let it.”

His desire so clearly drips over me, and as he licks his lips this time, the heat in his next breath ratchets up mine. I feel his fingers tighten against the back of my head, and the clench between my legs, my need for him to be inside me, just grows.

His flexed muscles say he’s trying not to move his hands down my body. He’s trying to root himself in place. “I want to, Iwant to,” he murmurs deeply, “but I don’t want to hurt you. Why do you think I haven’t made a move on you again?”

I just figured he preferred teasing and maybe wasn’t interested in following through. Questions tickle my brain, and I let one out, “Do you imagine lifting me in your arms?”

“All the time,Friend.” The sultry depth of his voice onfriendis cranking the temperature between us.

“Then why?—?”

“I’mleaving,” he emphasizes. “I will leave, Harriet. I will leave.” Each word is a blade, but I can see it slices through him too. His voice goes more hushed, more vulnerable as he says, “I don’t want you to think that if we have sex, I’ll stick around, because I won’t.”

“I won’t think that,” I whisper with force. “I’d rather be closer to you now, even if it’ll hurt worse when you’re gone, because I’d always wonderwhat if—and regret is more painful to me.”

Ben breathes in so deeply, his hand tangling in the back of my hair. I feel the heat of his fingers against my head. I could bask forever in his touch.

“I’m telling you Iwantto do this,” I say from within, desiring more than anything to just be there for Ben. “We have sex. You help me get in the Honors House. I help you complete the bet. We’re both benefitting here.” All I imagine is Ben hugging me goodbye, then drawing so far away, the warmth replaced with an excruciating coldness. If this is what it takes to keep him here for longer, it’s honestly not even a big price to pay. It’s the easiest deal I’ve ever made. “Don’t make me beg, Friend.” My voice carries a slight tinge of desperation that even scares me. I’ve now becomedesperateto keep him in my life?

I wish he was as desperate to stay in mine.

Maybe he is. Maybe that’s why he’s here right now. I don’t have these answers. I’m not in his head, but it must be full oftorment because fragments of confliction pulse through his baby blues.

I reach out to take my backpack from him.

He stops me. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Relief swells. “We’re doing this?”

“We’re doing this.” He unpockets his phone to prove it. He makes a two-minute call in the library, and I pretend to have more interest in my Ovid hunt than in his conversation. It’s so quiet, I can hear Leif on the other end.

“You’re one of us now. Welcome to Kappa Phi Delta, pledge.”

He had to accept their invitation into the frat first. As he shoves the phone in his back pocket, tension gnarls around the bookcases like thorny vines. Maybe we should leave before it snags us, but his eyes create fiery trails over my body, aching me, then they lift back to mine.