“And you really, really like the things I do with my mouth.”
Oxygen. I need it. Stat. And he has some. So I kiss him. It’s a soft, quick, chaste kiss that has my heart hammering against my chest. It doesn’t alleviate even when I pull away. I’m well aware of how dangerous it is to be kissing a boy—no, a man—when we have so much history, and so much of that history determines our future. I panic. Because of course I do. “I should go.”
He doesn’t skip a beat. “No.”
I almost laugh. “Excuse me?”
He smirks. “You can’t just keep kissing me and walking away, Mia. Three strikes and you’re out.”
Fair. He has a point. But also: I’m stubborn, and still panicking. My eyes narrow, playfully. “Oh yeah? What are you going to do? Punish me?” I regret my response the second I see his eyes flash with heat. Oh, no.
“I would love to punish the fuck out of you.” His smirk gets smirkier. “But you like that, don’t you?”
“Shut up!” I shove his shoulder and turn away, trying to hide the crimson I’m positive is staining my cheeks.
“Stay,” he says. “I’ll even let you keep kissing me, since it’s so obvious you can’t control yourself around me.”
“Oh my god,” I murmur.
“Just stay,” he repeats, turning me to him. The smirk is gone. The heat in his eyes, too. “I promise I won’t touch you.”
I chew my lip, hesitant. There’s no possible way this will end well.
“Stay,” he says again, his eyes pleading.
And so I do.
When I get out of the shower, dressed in the most unflattering pajamas in the history of the world, Leo is sitting up in bed with the bedside light on.
Shirtless.
Reading.
Glasses.
That’s the order I notice things.
His eyes flick to mine quickly when I scoot toward the bed, and then he goes back to his book, not looking twice. Which is fine, because it gives me the opportunity to stare at him. The frames of his glasses are thick and black and holy hell… “When did you get glasses?”
He chuckles, closing his book and setting it on the nightstand. “Senior year,” he says. “Which, by the way, is an awesome time for people to start calling you four-eyes.” He snorts. “I don’t need them. They just help with reading.”
He watches me pull out lotion from my overnight bag and start smearing it all over my arms and legs, one eyebrow cocked the entire time. When I’m done, I crawl into bed, as far away from him as possible. He switches off the light, and it doesn’t take long for fatigue to set in. Just as I’m about to fall asleep, I hear him whisper, unsure if he realizes I’m still awake, “You’ve always been mine, Mia Kovács. In my head and in my heart.”
A moment later, he’s snoring, and I’m wide awake, my eyes on the ceiling, letting tear after tear soak into my skin.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Mia
The cold air hits my back when Leo’s alarm goes off the next morning. It takes me a second to comprehend that it’s because his chest had been pressed against me, and now he’s rolling over, turning the alarm off on his phone. He gets up a moment later, pulling his arm from under my pillow, mumbling something about stupid training and stupid laws and stupid criminals. I barely open my eyes just in time for him to close the bathroom door. The shower turns on, and I fall back asleep.
The next time I wake, it’s to Leo’s wet, warm mouth pressing against my forehead. “What time’s your flight?” he asks, his voice low.
I pull the covers up to my mouth to hide my morning breath and keep my eyes closed as I murmur, “Midday.”
“Do you have an alarm set?”
“Uh-huh.” I peel my eyes open and am rewarded with the blue-blue of his irises right on mine.
He’s squatting down by the side of the bed, and he smiles, gently shifting my hair away from my eyes. “So you’ll stay here until it’s time to go?”
“Is that okay?”
He nods. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.” My eyelids are too heavy, and his bed is so warm.
“Can you send me another picture?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe one of the both of you?”
I smile against the pillow and force my eyes open again. “I can do that.”
Another alarm goes off on his phone. “Shit,” he says. “I have to go.” But he doesn’t make a move to stand up.
After a few seconds of him studying me, and me doing the