Out of My League - Sarah Sutton Page 0,83

it was ruining someone else’s. A wash of horror coasted over me, following in realization’s footsteps, leaving me shivering.

Walsh lifted his leg up on the bed to face me fully, body leaning towards mine. “Sophia Vanessa Wallace, you aren’t like your parents.”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know how I was, not truly.

But I wanted him to. I wanted Walsh to know how I was, how I could be, just in the way I wanted to know him. Every thought, every desire, every dream. I wanted to know it all, and even though it was a terrifying thought, I wanted him to know all of me too.

In that breath of a moment, I realized how close we were, how close his mouth was to mine, and all those other dark thoughts escaped into the corner of my mind.

I touched my fingertip to the scar on his cheek, bumping over the slight pale divot in his skin. I wondered if he could hear my quick beating heart, could see how I barely breathed.

The Fourth of July did me in, and I fell for him, lost in the universe that was—is—Walsh Hunter. Stupid inflatable flamingos and blue-raspberry slushies ruined everything. It ruined the prospects of walking away from this fake dating thing with a written article and my heart intact, with a journalism program and a clean conscience. All of that went down the drain and for the first time ever, I allowed the treacherous thought into my brain.

What if I scrapped the article? What if I made this real?

And then Saturday night, with his mouth so close to mine, his words echoing in my head ever since.

“What’s going through that head of yours?” Walsh’s eyes were dark, darker than they usually were, pupils seeming to swallow the blue. My fingertip traced down from his scar to his jawline, causing him to draw in a shallow breath. “Sophie?”

With my eyes on his jaw, I didn’t even think—not a single thought. “I really want to kiss you.”

I refused to look up and meet Walsh’s gaze—refused. But I watched as his mouth parted ever so slightly at my confession, felt when his hand reached over and touched the side of my knee. A tempting touch, coming as close as he could. “I thought you made a rule.”

I was losing heartbeats, misplacing them in the fog in my mind. Half of my brain was telling me to stop, the other half begging me not to. A mild pain gnawed at my chest—the longer I held back, the worse the pain became. “I know,” I whispered back, all of the butterflies in my stomach taking flight at once.

And when I leaned in to kiss him, his mouth met mine halfway.

Walsh’s lips—oh, his lips were as soft as I’d always imagined, a different kind of thrill running through my veins. Warmth spread through me, starting from where Walsh’s mouth touched mine and moving down to where his hand brushed my knee.

He’s kissing me back. He’s kissing me back. Walsh Hunter is kissing me back.

And then that hand moved. One, two, ten fingers touched my waist with gentle pressure, pulling me flush against him. Not even a centimeter existed between us; the air was absent between our bodies. It made my thoughts even foggier, my own fingers delving into the soft hair at the back of his head.

And it was this ginormous breath of fresh air into my lungs, clean and pure and right. The fog of despair in my head was starting to clear the more his scent and taste infiltrated my senses, filling my brain with a different sort of haze.

Kissing Scott had never been like this, like I was on fire, in the middle of a firework, about to explode. If this was what kissing was like—true kissing, with pure abandon and no hesitation—I knew I’d missed out on this entirely. Those absolutely rare times when Scott kissed me, they were hesitant or domineering, him trying to brand me as his with his mouth. But with Walsh, it was a mutual sort of fire that existed between us, and I loved every moment of it.

My teeth grazed Walsh’s bottom lip, and the low noise he made in his throat had every single thought in my head scattering. His lean body moved over top of me, positioned so he maneuvered his weight off of me. The soft fabric of his pajama pants brushed against my bare legs, the silky sheets embracing my arms. I couldn’t keep up