Page 34 of The Encore’s Crown

His forehead drops to mine, eyes closed, chest rising hard against me, each breath dragging him against my body in a way that makes both of us go still. Finally, his eyes open.

For one long moment, neither of us moves. His mouth is swollen and his hair wrecked from my hands. He looks destroyed. Furious and starving, like he just discovered the one thing he absolutely cannot have and now knows exactly how fucking good it tastes.

“We have to stop,” he whispers against my mouth.

He doesn’t let go when he says it. His hand stays on my hip, his body still pins me to the wall. His lips are still close enough to undo both of us.

“Natalia,” he says, rougher this time. “We are literally in a hallway. This is exactly why we’re a problem.”

His voice is practically begging me to take control, to put him out of his misery. Because he's one second away from proving exactly how little friendship has to do with any of this, all over again.

That steadies something inside me. He's not cold or unaffected anymore. He's absolutely wrecked, for me.

Slowly, I uncurl my fingers from his hair, then I smooth my dress in an attempt to regain my lost sanity. I try to settle my breathing like I didn’t just let him kiss me stupid in a bathroom hallway. When I meet his eyes, he looks flushed, devastated, more undone than even I feel. The sight of him sends one last searing flash through my entire body and lingers in the parts pleading to be touched until I'd moan his name at the contact, right here, right now. I exhale and try to push the thoughts aside before I cup his cheek lightly. He freezes.

“Kiri,” I say softly. His eyes flick to my mouth “They’ll start to wonder where we are. You have to let me go.”

His hand tightens one last time on my hip before he releases me, reluctantly.

I smile. “You better go.” His expression darkens, knowing before I even say it. I step out from between him and the wall, brushing past him with just enough contact to make his breath hitch.

“Friend.”

Chapter 16

Let It Hurt

Kiri

The rush inside me has nowhere to go, so it gathers hot and hard in my throat as the bathroom door shuts behind her. I stand there like a complete fucking idiot, staring at the closed door, one hand still braced against the wall where I had her pinned. The wall feels warm beneath my palm.

That isn’t possible.

It’s plaster and paint, but my body is too confused to register the difference between reality and her memory. All it seems to want to do is remind me of the impact when I pushed her against it, how she arched toward me instead of away. The small, breathless sound she made when I grabbed her waist and dragged her against me. My body reacts all over again.

Fuck.

I snatch my hand off the wall.

What the hell did I just do?

My mouth is swollen and still tastes like her lip gloss. My neck is still alive where she found that spot—the one I’d been stupid enough to tell her about, back when there were screens and oceans between us and using any of those secrets had felt like pure fantasy.

She remembered.

I drag both hands through my hair, trying to fix it, then realize she had her fingers tangled in it and the thought makes heat travel through me. I smooth it down, then mess it up again. Tug my shirt away from my chest because her perfume is trapped in the fabric, rubbed in so aggressively that I could close my eyes and believe she was still pressed against me. I shouldn’t, but I do, I let myself replay it.

Her finger against my chest, the challenge in her eyes. The moment she lifted off the wall toward me and whatever remained of my self-control simply ceased to exist.

I kissed her.

No, I fucking attacked her mouth like I’d been starving for it since the first message she ever sent me.

She kissed me back.

That's the part my brain really can’t get around. Natalia didn’t freeze or shove me away like I deserve. She didn’t laugh in my face and ask what the hell I thought I was doing. She grabbed me, pulled my hair.

Opened for me.