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“Yes. A very tall one who keeps looking at my mouth.”

“It sounds like you want me to kiss you again and you’re mad about it.”

“I’m mad that you’re not wrong.”

“That’s not a no.”

“I was trying to make you stay on your half of the bed.”

“I am on my side.”

“Yeah, but your voice isn’t. Every time you speak, that deep tone of yours rumbles through my bones.”

I laugh under my breath. “I think we should go to sleep.”

“One more thing.”

I shift again, at the exact time she does, before realizing it’s a mistake. She’s facing me with her blue eyes bright with mischief, close enough that if I reached out, I would kiss away every excuse she could imagine, and she knows it.

“What?”

“You can have a goodnight kiss. One. Then we sleep. Tomorrow, I bake and you act like a possessive caveman in public.”

I should say no, absolutely not, but do I? “You’re killing me, curvy. If you really want a goodnight kiss, you need to come over to my side. You asked, so you close the distance.”

She scoots closer, but not all the way, so I have to meet her in the middle. I mean to keep it polite. Quick. A closed-mouth press against her lips. That thought lasts about a second.

When her lip’s part for mine, the floor drops out from under me. The heat she tried to shut down surges back, hungrier than before, and when she makes that small sound from the dance floor, I feel it low in my spine. I’ve been hard all night for her; now my cock is throbbing, demanding I finish what she started.

My palm grips the back of her head before I can stop it. I slide my fingers through her hair and rest my thumb at her jaw, keeping her lips where I want them to be. My other arm stays locked between us on the mattress so I’m not tempted to move on top of her.

Her touch hovers first, fingertips barely grazing the flannel over my ribs, and then she presses her palm flat against my chest like she’s holding me or herself steady, so she can push me back if she needs to, but she doesn’t. She only moans as I take her mouth. Fuck me. She's pressing herself against me without realizing it, breathing heavier, faster.

My brain short-circuits, flashing images I have no business seeing. Me on top of her. That sweater, gone. My mouth on the pulse hammering in her throat, learning the sounds she makes when I claim every inch of her. Her scent on my sheets in the morning, a signal to the whole damn town that she belongs right here.

Mine.

I want my name on her lips and no one else’s. I deepen the kiss before I can stop myself and there’s nothing polite about it. She whimpers into my mouth, clutches my head and drags me closer, and I force myself to ease off. I have to, because if I don’t stop right this second, I never will.

“I guess that counts as one,” she whispers.

Exactly. Now sleep.”

“I’m trying.”

I reach behind me and kill the lamp. The mountain night floods the room, a deep, total darkness the city will never know. I listen to her breathe until it evens out, lying on my edge of the mattress that suddenly feels too small.

Lila’s foot brushes my ankle under the quilt by accident, and she pulls it back like she touched a stove. I smile at the ceiling anyway, miserable and a little proud of her.

Chapter eight

Last night, after he pulled back, I’d counted, ‘That’s one.’ But what I was really thinking was, how about one more? The memory is still humming under my skin as I watch drifts of snow slide by my window. The storm left the world battered and glittering, and I can’t help but wonder what it would be like here in spring when the wildflowers bloom ...

It’s a relief when my phone breaks the silence and pings halfway down the ridge. I glance at the screen as Gideon asks, “Roommate or Derick?”

“Contest reminders, and Maya. I think she misses me.”

“Speaking of reminders, don’t forget, Mom is expecting us for the family dinner tomorrow night before the ceremony. If the weather holds up, everyone should be there.”