Page 158 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

He chuckles and pinches my thigh. “Shut up. I already like you. Ish. We have a lot of body chemistry. We share a room. Why can’t we just... try it out? Take it on a trial run.”

My body is vibrating with the need to move. To grab him and crash our lips together. To jump to my feet and run as far as they’re willing to take me.

“Take what on a trial run?”

“Us. A relationship.”

And let the whole team, the whole school be privy to the broken heart that follows? No fucking thank you.

“It can be slow. And private. Just you and me. We can start with watching movies in the room, making out in empty classrooms or supply closets.”

I squirm, and he slips a hand under my hoodie to press to my bare skin.

“Makes me sound like a dirty secret.”

“You’re the one who asked if I could see myself in love with you. Maybe I want to find out.”

“And what happens when you decide in a few months that this was just fun? That you had a high school gay experience, and now you’re over it?”

“TK.”

Dash grips my chin firmly between his fingers and turns me to face him. His mouth closes over mine instantly, and I don’t have the will to stop myself from kissing him back. From taking the affection he offers.

“I won’t string you along like that. If I’m not feeling it, we stop. Cut our losses.”

It’s still my heart that has to be on the line. That has to be put up as collateral.

“And what if you do? Feel something? We break up, pretend like it never happened anyway when school ends?”

“You know we have time to figure that out, right?”

His kiss is still sweet, but more forceful this time. He flicks his tongue over the seam of my lips, gently nudging them apart until I open for him with an exhale that forces the heaviness in my chest to recede.

It’s hard to feel anger and sorrow with Dash’s hand gripping the back of my neck. With his fingers forging an iron grip on my thigh that feels like a comforting embrace. That feels secure.

Dash could rock my world in all sorts of ways. He could take me for a spin and leave me crumbled and broken at the bottom of a ravine. He could fill me with so much pleasure and ecstasy that I may never be able to find my way back to pleasant and comfortable.

He could be a steady presence that I have no choice but to fall further and further for because I apparently have a sappy, bleeding heart beating in my chest.

This could be the greatest thing to happen to me in my eighteen years, or it could be the absolute worst.

I won’t know until I give in. Until I fall. Until I give myself over and pray that Dash will handle these newfound feelings with care and not with reckless abandon.

All I know is the moment I let him tip my head back with his fingertips in my hair, the decision is made. His tongue claiming my mouth, and his thumb tracing the outline of my bulge through the sweats.

Dash has me. Irrevocably.

His lips devour me; ravage me. They promise and threaten and own me all in one breath.

“TK?”

The gruff, familiar rasp has me ducking away from Dash’s kiss, hiding my face in his shoulder only long enough to regain composure and the threat of tears as my forgotten frustrations bubble back to the surface.

Standing on the sidewalk a few feet away is Link, his shaggy blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail tucked under the hood of his zipped up sweatshirt. His phone is in his hand, and only now am I noticing the zing in my pocket of the missed call variety.

“What are you doing here?”

Dash’s hand is still up the back of my shirt, retracting only enough that he gives a reassuring squeeze to my shoulder.

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