I wondered if it could possibly be as red as my face.

So yeah, he was still a total punk. Arrogant and sly. But God help me if I didn’t like that about him, too.

He’d told me a month ago he just wanted to mean something to me.

Little did he know he was slowly becoming everything.

I sobered a little, reaching out to brush my fingers through the flop of hair that had fallen on his forehead. Slowly he helped me up to sitting, and he plopped down on a chair in front of where my legs dangled off the side of the table, wedging himself between my knees. He looked up at me, his expression so sweet it twisted something loose inside my heart. A smile pulled at his mouth, and he touched my chin, tilting it, quietly inspecting my face. “I love that blush,” he whispered, fluttering his fingers over it like he wished it were palpable, something tangible he could ball up in his hand and hide away.

I felt so exposed, yet so adored. “Do you know what I love?”

His eyes glimmered. “What?”

I ran my thumb across his bottom lip. “This mouth.” I leaned in and placed a kiss on it, so soft I hoped it spoke a thousand words that I wasn’t ready to say. Or maybe it was just three.

I love you.

It was there, screaming out from my heart. But even as I thought them, all those feelings of vulnerability came barreling in, warning me against feeling something so strong for someone I’d only been dating for a month. But I couldn’t stop my feelings or change them. I couldn’t help the way he made me feel. Couldn’t help that his arms were my favorite place. Couldn’t help that his mouth was my favorite flavor and his voice was my favorite song.

His tongue was all warm when he swept it against my mouth, and tingles spread through me like a wildfire. “Mm,” he moaned, “not as much as I love yours.”

I tilted my head and parted my lips, welcoming the rush of his heat as he took over my mouth, the way his tongue danced and played before he closed his mouth over my lips, before they opened again and the kiss only deepened.

With both hands, he palmed my breasts over my T-shirt, urging a moan from somewhere in the deepest part of my spirit, before his fingers hooked in my collar and pulled my shirt down to expose me.

I gasped.

Sure, I was wearing a bra. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel laid bare.

I could feel the heat emanating from my chest, the burning red I knew was flaming on all that skin Darryn had just brought out into the light.

Darryn looked up at me, wetting his swollen lips with his tongue, hunger and hard-won restraint so vivid in his eyes. “Too much?” he asked as the worry floated into his strained voice, his question guarded as he let his hands wander over the lacy cups of my bra, so slowly, giving me time to react. Time to clamp my hands over his to stop him the way I usually did, when I’d beg him to be patient even though he’d never given me any reason to feel I needed to plea.

He always understood and never pushed me any further than where I wanted to go.

And I knew he probably thought me a blushing virgin, the reason for all these pesky layers of clothing we had to maintain.

Which really wasn’t all that far from the truth. Except for that one monstrous mistake I’d made. As much as I wanted it all swept up and tossed away like forgotten litter from my past, I knew he needed to know, and things couldn’t go much further between us before he did. How deceitful would that be? Me leading this man into thinking I was some kind of unsullied damsel. Pure and clean. What a joke.

Darryn ran his hands up my sides, all those little darts of energy injected directly into my skin.

Oh God.

Did I ever want him to touch me.

Every day Darryn made me trust him more. Showed me why it was okay to give in.

Today, for the first time, I didn’t stop his exploration. I welcomed his hands that touched and caressed. Hands that I thought maybe even loved. Even if it were over the constraints of a flimsy piece of fabric.

But just then, I heard the sound of the front door banging open, and I stiffened. My hands clapped over my chest to cover myself up as one of Darryn’s roommates walked into their house. He was still in the front room, but he was close enough to burst the bubble Darryn and I had been floating in.

Darryn groaned and dropped his head to my chest, the chest that he’d discreetly covered back up. “Maybe we should take this up to my room,” he mumbled.

“I . . . I—I’m s-s-sorry. I can’t go up there.” I fumbled over words I couldn’t seem to form, searching for an explanation for why I was such a freak. “I—I . . .”

It wasn’t like we hadn’t been alone in my room a hundred times.

But when Darryn pulled away, it was like he already understood what was holding me back from making my way up those steps. Anger darkened his eyes, just for a flash, before he raked a hand through his hair and sighed a heavy sound of surrender. “It’s fine, baby. You don’t have to explain anything to me. I get it.”

It left me unsettled, because I knew he really didn’t get it. He had no clue.

I shifted on the hard surface of the table, wanting to be brave and just tell him. Hating myself for being a coward and not saying anything.

But the truth was, I didn’t want to lose him.

Just the thought squeezed my heart.

I reached out and cupped his cheek, my voice soft. “Please be patient with me.”

He took my hand from his face and pressed it to his mouth. “I already told you I’d take whatever came with you being my girl. The only thing I hate is you being afraid of me. Because I promise, I’ll never hurt you.”

But it wasn’t Darryn I was afraid of facing.

I was afraid of facing the humiliation that had been born in that room. Hated that any moment I spent there with Darryn would be tainted by memories of Hunter.

Darryn pulled me to the edge of the table and wrapped his arms around my waist, his head resting just below my breasts. He looked up at me, the gold of his eyes prominent in the rays of sunlight slanting in through the window. “I just want you to trust me.”

I tickled my fingers down the back of his neck, and he released a raspy breath. And I did trust him.

I knew it now. Knew he was different from Hunter. Knew Darryn cared about me, maybe the way I cared about him.

I could feel him slipping deeper into me the way I felt myself falling further into him.

I wanted to show him how much he meant to me.

Tell him.

But would he feel the same about me when he knew?

I let him pull me ever closer, his hot body all pressed up to mine. Flames licked up the walls of my stomach, sending needy waves of heat through my body, a feeling I’d only ever experienced with Darryn.

Indy had definitely been right. Hunter didn’t have anything on Darryn.

Every part of me was begging for more of him.

His hand clutched my side like he couldn’t bear the thought of letting go. “Can’t get enough of you, Misha,” he whispered, his nose making a pass along the underside of my breast. Shock waves jolted through my system.

Soon I would give him all of me.

The truth. My heart. My body.

Because I knew Darryn would never make me a fool.

chapter eleven

Misha


The doorbell rang and I skipped to the door. I swung it open to Darryn. He rested his shoulder up on the doorjamb, this boy-man-god larger than life, the sun swallowing him up from behind in a halo of blazing light as he stood as a silhouette in my doorway.

My pulse stuttered.

Oh God.

So pretty.

Darryn stepped forward, bringing his face into focus. He was biting at his bottom lip with all that mischief playing in his eyes. Damn him. He knew exactly the effect he had on me.

Then everything about him softened, and he wound his fingers through my hair and brought his hand to the back of my neck. He tugged me forward to place a sweet kiss at the corner of my mouth. I shook a little as his nose slipped along the angle of my jaw. He breathed me in, and there was no mistaking the shudder that rolled down his spine.

I felt a little giddy, struck light-headed by this joy. Guess I liked that I had the same kind of effect on him, too.

“You ready to go, baby?” The words came out all low and rough.

Uh, yeah. I’d go anywhere with him.

I beamed up at him, picked my backpack up off the floor, and hoisted it farther on my shoulders. “Yep. All set. Let’s get this day over with. I have two exams and a presentation. I was ready for today to be over before it even started.”

Darryn chuckled as he tossed his arm over my shoulders, guiding me out of the house and closing the door behind us, leading us in the direction of campus. “You’re going to do great.” He glanced down at me. “Don’t think I’ve seen anyone study the way you do. You make all the rest of us look bad.”

“Pshh.” I waved him off, swaying a little into his side as we walked wound up in each other. “My classes are just rough. If I didn’t study this much, I’d for sure fail, and the last thing I want is to have to take any of these classes over again. No, thank you.”

He kissed my temple. “Smart girl.”

I grinned up at him. “I like to think so.” I attempted a wink, but I was pretty sure it was one long blink.

Darryn howled, his laughter so thick I felt it seeping into my chest. “You are too much, Misha Crosse. You know that?”

We walked like this most days, stealing a few moments close together before we both had to go our separate ways to our different classes. We grabbed just a few minutes together, laughing and goofing around. It was the perfect way to start the day, with his face one of the first things I saw every morning, before he tucked me to his side and walked us toward campus, like I was a piece of him and he was a part of me.

I exhaled in contentment, and Darryn pulled me closer. I felt no hesitation snuggling farther into him. It was beginning to get colder, the fall air turning crisp, the leaves beginning to change. I lifted my face to the cool breeze and just relished the turn of the season, and this turn in my life.

I’d been so fearful about coming back to school. And look at the way things had turned out. What if I’d refused Indy’s invitation and instead stayed in the suffocating safety of my parents’ house, attending a community college, giving up my kids, my goals for the future?

Losing all that would be awful. But the most horrifying part of it all would be the fact that I would never have met this man had I not stepped out and been brave.

I made the decision right then and there, that was what I finally needed to be.

Brave.

Darryn seemed to sense my inner turmoil, and he somehow managed to pull me even tighter to his body. “What are you thinking about?”

I chanced peeking up at him. Nerves tumbled through my stomach, a chaotic scramble of fear and insecurities and hope. I smiled, and it felt almost forced. “Just thinking about you,” I said.

He chuckled, and he buried his face in my neck, leaving a little trail of fire where he nibbled his lips along my skin. “You better be thinking of me, since I can’t think of anything else but you.” He squeezed my side. “What do you say we make it a date night? Go grab a bite to eat and maybe catch a movie or something?”

“Yeah, that would be great.” I chewed at my lip, and the rush of redness I felt blossom on my face had nothing to do with the shyness that had plagued me my whole life, but instead was the stark evidence of the true worry I felt at finally telling Darryn. “I actually have been needing to talk to you about something,” I confessed quietly.

He frowned and slowed, stopping fully to turn and face me. His head canted to the side as he studied my expression. “I don’t think I like the sound of that, Misha. You aren’t letting me take you to dinner with the intention of breaking my heart, are you?” He said it causally, playfully, but I didn’t miss the undertone of fear that laced his words. His own insecurities were evident in the unease that sparked in his eyes.

I loved all of Darryn’s confidence, craved it almost, after all the years I’d lacked it myself. But the truth was, I liked the vulnerability he was now wearing, too. It made him seem real. Genuine. This boy-man-god, in all his glory, the one who stole my breath just as easily as he’d stolen my heart, was not just a figment of my overactive imagination.