Page 62 of Raspados & Regret

His chin lifts. “I never said I didn’t.”

“No. You just act cute and mouthy until someone else has to make the move.”

His eyes flash. “Cute?”

“Yeah, you heard me.”

“I’m not cute.” He smiles, top teeth digging into his perfect lower lip.

I lean closer. “You’re right⁠—”

His breath catches, and I bring my mouth near his ear and say, “You’re a pain in my ass.”

He laughs, but it shakes, and I feel it more than hear it. “You always this romantic?”

“I’m not trying to be romantic.”

We stare at each other, and his chest moves fast. So does mine. The air between our mouths feels alive as I pull back, and we’re only a breath away from touching. I could still stop. That thought appears, weak and tired, holding a little white flag.

Fuck it.

My hand leaves his wrist and catches his jaw. Elías goes very still, and my thumb presses near the corner of his mouth, right where I wiped syrup last week.

His lips part, and my entire body turns into a lit match.

“Last chance,” I growl.

His eyes search mine, and for the first time all night, the joke leaves his face. Just enough to show me the heat underneath. The nerves too. The same jumpy, sharp, hungry thing that has been crawling under my skin all week.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, his voice low. “I’m not running.”

That does it.

I kiss him.

It’s not careful and most definitely not soft. It is two days of back-and-forth texts firing like gunshots, two weekends of staring like starvation has set in, and years of stupid beef collapsing into one catastrophic moment behind a row of trailers while the market keeps glowing on without us.

Elías makes a sound into my mouth, small, shocked, and completely wrecked. Then his hands slam into my chest—not to push me away, but to grab fistfuls of my crop top and haul me closer until there’s no space left between us, only heat and friction and the hard lines of his body against mine.

My hips hit his, and we both feel it—that jolt of contact that goes through fabric and straight into the spine. He opens for me like he’s been waiting, mouth hot and sweet from syrup, but underneath there’s something sharper, something that tastes like want and recklessness and mine. The little ball of steel brushes my tongue, sliding cool and slick for one impossible second before everything goes volcanic, before my brain whites out completely.

No thoughts or lingering questions.

No worries about being straight, bisexual, or gay.

No labels.

Just Elías against me, his fingers twisted in my shirt tight enough to tear, his mouth fighting mine like kissing is another argument he refuses to lose, and God—God—he kisses like he hates me too, like he’s been dreaming about this specifically, about my mouth and his and the way our teeth clash when I shove him harder into the trailer.

The metal rattles behind him, and he groans into my mouth, the sound vibrating against my tongue, and I feel it everywhere. In my scalp, in my stomach, my dick straining against my zipper like it’s trying to reach him through the fabric.

“Fuck,” I mutter against his swollen mouth, and my voice sounds wrecked.

His fingers grip the collar of my shirt, pulling me toward him just to feel me react. “You came already?”

I bite his bottom lip—hard—and he jerks against me, his hips bucking forward involuntarily, and I feel him too now. Feel how hard he is and how desperate, and it makes me dizzy.

“Cabrón.”