Page 81 of Make Me Mean It

Connor’s breath catches as my lips close around it, sucking.

“Fuck.”

His hand closes around my arm, hauling me upright so quickly my legs barely manage to catch up. I grab his shoulders for balance, but then his forehead is against mine, and there’s barely time to drag in a breath before he’s kissing me.

I groan, sinking into it.

There’s nothing uncertain about his mouth now. He kisses me deeply, tasting himself on my tongue, and my already shaky legs threaten to give out all over again.

The sound of voices approaching outside cuts straight through us, and we tear apart so quickly I stumble back a step.

“Go,” I rush out, the word scraping painfully up my throat, Connor’s eyes snapping to mine.

He doesn’t move, searching my face, the voices getting closer.

“Connor, go.” I nod towards the other door. “Now.”

He finally takes a step, but his eyes stay on mine, and I can already see it starting again. The hesitation. The questions. Everything we’ve managed not to talk about waiting for one of us to be stupid enough to say it out loud.

We don’t have time.

Maybe I don’t have the balls.

Either way, I give him exactly what he’s been asking for since the lake.

I force a smirk back to my mouth.

“It was just a blowjob, princess.” Somehow, my voice almost sounds like mine. “Didn’t mean anything, right?”

Connor’s jaw clenches as he holds my gaze, and for one long moment I think he might call me on it.

“Right.”

The agreement settles like a pit in my stomach, but I keep the smirk exactly where it is because what the fuck else did I expect? I practically put the answer in his mouth and invited him to use it.

“Right,” I echo, forcing a chuckle as I jerk my chin towards the other door. “So get out of here.”

Connor still doesn’t move. His eyes search mine, hesitation written all over his face, and some stupid part of me waits for him to take it back. To say anything that doesn’t sound like the same lie we’ve already spent days hiding behind.

Another burst of voices carries through the corridor, and Connor finally turns, shoving through the other door without looking back.

I watch it swing shut behind him, the latch clicking into place with a finality that makes my forced smile disappear, the room feeling a hell of a lot emptier than it did before he walked into it.

I drag my tongue over my swollen bottom lip, tasting him. I rake a hand through the mess he made of my hair, fingers catching against the roots where he’d been pulling, and the sting sends the whole thing rushing back through me.

Just a blowjob.

Yeah, because that lie worked so fucking well the first time.