had just snapped my fingers and inverted all the colors of the world.
Then he moved so fast I barely tracked the motion, pressing off the wall and pivoting toward me so we were face-to-face, our bodies almost touching. His palms landed on the white-painted wall on either side of my head, and I had a sudden memory of the day he’d trapped me in the locker room downstairs.
Just like that day, his eyes blazed and his body shook with barely suppressed anger.
Just like that day, his ginger and pine scent surrounded me, creeping into my nostrils like a drug.
But unlike that day, none of his anger was directed at me.
The muscles in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth, and when he repeated his question, his voice was like sandpaper.
“He. Hit. You?”
I nodded, my gaze trapped by the ice-blue of his. When he lifted one hand away from the wall to run his fingertips down the side of my face, I grabbed a fistful of his blazer, like I was falling off a cliff and that would save me.
“I know, Cole,” I whispered. “I know what it’s like. I know.”
Maybe it was stupid. I was giving away another piece of myself that the Princes could use against me if they turned on me. Handing over a piece of my heart for him to crush under his boot if he chose.
But in that moment, I didn’t care. In that moment, it was more important to me to make sure Cole knew he wasn’t alone than to hide behind the barriers I’d erected around myself.
His nostrils flared as he breathed hard and fast like a wounded animal in a cage.
Then he pressed his body against mine, pinning me to the wall—
And kissed me.
My hand flattened against his chest, and his heart crashed against my palm as his mouth moved against mine.
It was fierce, protective, and possessive, and like everything he did, there was a harsh roughness to it, reminding me once again how infused with violence this boy was.
But this violence wasn’t dangerous. It wouldn’t hurt me.
It would just consume me.
I gasped into his mouth, trying to catch my breath as he kissed me like the ocean buffeting a rocky shore over and over again. Slick wetness gathered in my core, and I wrapped my free arm around his back, trying to bring us closer together, to put out the fire burning inside me.
This wasn’t what I’d come up here for.
But maybe it was what we had both needed.
I could feel his hips pressing against me, the hardness growing there, and I made a plaintive noise that he swallowed up with his next kiss.
He rocked against me, an answering sound rumbling in his chest, even as his desperate kisses slowed and deepened. His tongue swept through my mouth, and his large hands clasped the sides of my face as he finally stepped back, tugging me away from the wall.
A fraction of space opened up between our bodies, and I could tell he was trying to slow this down, to stop it—even though neither of us wanted to.
He broke away from me after a while, taking another small step back. But before I could mourn the loss, he kissed me again.
And again.
Every time he tried to stop, I watched him cave. Like he kept trying to convince himself it was enough, but he never believed that lie.
I didn’t either.
Because every time his lips were on mine, it felt like I could breathe, and when he pulled away, oxygen seemed to vanish.
Finally, the space between our kisses drew out, like he was teaching himself to live without my touch. We hadn’t spoken since he first pressed his lips to mine, and he still didn’t say anything. He just gazed at me with burning blue eyes before dipping his head again, taking one last kiss. His hands slipped from my face, fingertips trailing down my jaw before finally dropping away, as if that too took effort.
When we stood a foot apart, no longer touching at all, he nodded slowly.
“You know.”
Then he ripped his gaze away from mine and walked back down the hall, turning and disappearing down the stairs.
My hand reached up to ghost over my lips, which felt tingly and swollen and… desolate without his.
I had recognized myself in Cole from the minute I’d heard the crack of his dad’s knuckles against his face while I hid under the couch in his dorm, and in a million other ways since then.
And in this