Page 153 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

TK is still as I thread my fingers through the hair creeping down his neck. I scratch along his scalp in gentle, soothing motions, stroking fingertips over the shell of his ear and down the curve of his jaw. Back up and around. Whatever I can touch without him shying away.

A puff of air cascades down my arm, and TK lifts his head enough to prop his chin on my shoulder. “Make me feel better, huh? Aren’t you chivalrous?”

The tiniest smile touches his words, and I can hardly stop myself from brushing my thumb across it.

“Watch your mouth before I bite it, Kingsley.”

His lips part, tongue swiping across them, and I don’t think he realizes how his eyelids flutter, how I can see the shudder by the wobble of his lip. He pulls back, tilts his head, and tugs at the collar of his jersey.

“That a threat or a promise, Holden?”

I roll my eyes and yank him forward, suppressing my smile as he only barely catches himself from falling over top of me by gripping onto my thighs. His chest is up against mine, and our faces are inches apart, but he asked me not to kiss him anymore, so I don’t.

Instead I grin and duck down, burying my face in the crook of his neck. When his fingers dig into me, I use the moment to place a playful nip on his shoulder. He gasps, but the way his hands start kneading up and down my thighs urges me to do it again.

I pinch his skin between my teeth gently, then rest my lips around the bite and suck with a low, steady pressure.

His body trembles. Fingers bite into the exposed skin of my thighs.

Again. Up the column of his throat.

His breath hitches.

Again. Just beneath his jawline.

“Dash.” He rips away, wet, pleading eyes boring into mine.

My marks litter his neck.

“Dash,” he says again with a quiver in his voice. “I need you to forget what I said before. About stopping this.” His words drop to a whisper. “Kiss me. Can you do that?”

Lightning shoots through my veins, heart pounding like imaginary thunder. It’s only been a few days, but TK’s mouth is something like an addiction. Every morning I stop myself from stealing a kiss as he walks out the door, always out and ready before I even feel like a living, breathing person.

At night it’s hard not to pull him into my bed before he climbs up to his own and just kiss and touch all over.

He can’t look at me with eyes like those and expect me to resist.

“I can totally do that.” I cup my hand over his cheek and watch the last of the tension drain from his shoulders. “Something really hurt you.”

Pain flickers across his eyes, but he shakes his head and slips his fingers under the bottom of my shirt to press his hands to my sides.

“Not right now. Please.”

I don’t know what happened. What made him so angry. So upset. I don’t know what caused an aggression from him I’ve never seen.

But he’s asking me for help.

To take it away.

Make it better.

If I’m good for anything, this is it.

TK’s soft, relieved breath passes over my lips just as I hover them over his.

“Please,” he whispers one last time, closing the miniscule distance and dragging my body to meet his.

Greedy isn’t a word I’d often use for TK. Plenty of other choice ones, but greedy to the point of straddling the bench, nearly straddling me in a desire to get closer isn’t one of them.

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