Page 42 of My End

“I liked kissing you, Jake.”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “I’ve been wondering what it’d be like since I saw you.”

My body was already responding. Heart thudding. Blood roaring in my ears.

“Tilly…” I warned.

But she wasn’t backing off.

“You don’t scare me,” she whispered.

“You should be scared,” I growled and took a step closer. “I’m not a good guy. I’m not someone you should want.”

“You keep saying that, but then you keep looking at me like you want me more than air.”

My jaw flexed. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then stop looking at me like that.”

I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

Instead, I reached for her. My fingers curled around her waist, and her breath caught in her throat. I dragged her to me in one hard movement, and when our mouths met, the world burned away.

It wasn’t a sweet kiss.

It was desperate. Starving. A week’s worth of tension spilling out between parted lips and aching hands.

Her fingers fisted in my shirt.

Mine gripped her hips, then slid up her sides, memorizing every curve through the thin cotton of her sweatshirt.

“I’ve been losing my goddamn mind over you,” I muttered against her lips.

“Then stop pretending you don’t want this,” she whispered.

“Ishouldn’twant this.”

“But youdo.”

I growled again and kissed her harder. She moaned into my mouth, and it damn near undid me.

She leaned back against the stone wall that lined the edge of the garden path and pulled me with her.

I braced a hand above her head, the other gripped her thigh.

Her eyes were heavy-lidded, and her lips swollen.

“You’re so much better than me,” I rasped.

“Don’t say that.”