it is. It’s a plan that now includes you. You’re coming with me.”
I’d only met War yesterday. How could he say these things?
“You can’t say that.” I shook my head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I’d had way too many of those. Broken promises were worse than ones that were never made at all.
“I’ll keep it.” War’s resolve was as solid as the concrete beneath our feet. “I’m keeping you. This shit between us is happening for real.”
Lace
“I don’t know.” I frowned at the equation on the notebook paper first, then glanced at Chad.
“What don’t you know?” he asked. “You got it right this time.”
“Yeah, but it took me fifteen minutes. I’m not going to have that much time during the actual SAT.”
He tugged on my ponytail. “Math’s not your strongest subject.”
“That’s a nice way of saying I suck at it,” I grumbled.
“What can I say?” A smile spread across his handsome face. “I’m a nice guy.”
“Take the test for me.” I took his hand, the one not twirling my hair, and held it in both of mine. He was a basketball player and had grown inches taller over the past year. My hands looked ridiculously small compared to his. “Please,” I said as I batted my eyes at him.
A growl behind me drowned out my plea.
“Hands off my woman,” War said.
Immediately, I dropped Chad’s hands, and he released my hair. My boyfriend’s silver-ringed fingers, leather-cuffed wrists, then his sculpted biceps appeared in my peripheral vision as he slid his arms around me from behind.
“I was just begging Chad to take the test for me.” I made the explanation quickly, though War was less prone to beat up any guy who slighted me or gave me an interested look than he’d been at the beginning of our relationship.
Over the past year, I’d discovered that Bryan had been right about War. With me, he was loyal, protective, and even tender sometimes, but he was also extremely jealous and possessive. His reputation kept all the other guys away, except Chad.
“You’ll do fine on your own, babe.” War kissed my cheek, unthreaded his arms from around my neck, and grabbed a chair from the study table behind ours. Turning the chair around, he wedged it between Chad and me. Straddling it, he draped his arms over the back.
“I hope so.” My brows drew together. I needed to do better than just fine to get a scholarship that would cover college tuition, room, and board.
Things were even more tense these days at my uncle’s house. He had a girlfriend now. One with kids. He wanted Dizzy and me out of his house, so he could move them in.
“You worry too much.” War smoothed the crease between my brows with the pad of his ringed thumb. His earthy scent swirled around me.
My skin prickled with awareness. My mind filled with images, and my body filled with heat associated with those images.
War with his shirt off, and me with mine off too. He’d been patient and careful, waiting for me to turn seventeen, which would happen soon. But that didn’t mean things didn’t get hot and heavy, and that we both didn’t reach satisfying conclusions. It was just that so far, those satisfying conclusions occurred while leaving my virginity intact.
“You’re pretty, even when you’re worried.” War’s intense brown gaze dipped to my mouth, and my lips tingled from his regard.
My heart raced as he lowered his head. My lips burned, and so did the rest of me when he stamped his to mine and drove his tongue inside my mouth.
War’s mind-scrambling kisses had grown more insistent the closer I got to my seventeenth birthday. I’d let him know right from the beginning that seventeen was the earliest I would consider going all the way. In my head and my heart, that age felt like a dividing point between a girl and a woman. Plus, I had my goals, and accidentally getting pregnant and having those plans derailed wasn’t something I was willing to risk.
I didn’t mind his insistence. His kisses made me hot. They had from the beginning. I wanted what he wanted—us to go all the way when I turned seventeen—or so I told myself repeatedly, especially whenever Bryan was around.
“Ahem.” A throat cleared.
My palms on War’s solid chest, I pulled my lips from his and glanced up. A white-haired librarian frowned disapprovingly at us.
“No kissing in the library.” She wagged her finger at me.
“Sorry,” I said, and she shuffled away.
“I’m not.” War grinned.
He