Page 116 of Corrupt Me

I tilt my head, staring deep into his eyes. “We’ve just planned our house. It’s serious.”

“I know how serious it is, Bailey.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, biting my lip.

“Like I have never been before,” he says resolutely.

He takes my hand, lifts it to his mouth, and kisses each of my fingertips. Swept away by the reality of us feels better than any dream. I can’t stop imagining our life in our house. Home—something I’ve never had and can’t wait to experience.

He parks in front of a diner on campus, and we walk inside hand in hand. Music plays low as students mill around, and I abruptly halt when I see Eric at the bar. I totally forgot about him. He looks at me, but the smirk on his face drops when he sees us holding hands.

I don’t know how to react, but Hunter takes care of it by simply guiding me to a booth.

After we order, I can’t help but squirm when I sense Eric staring at me.

“Maybe I should talk to him,” I say, not sounding sure at all.

Hunter stares him down with such a hard look I expect Eric to be knocked down. “You don’t owe him anything. And I don’t like how the fucker is leering at you. Entirely too sure of himself.”

Me, either, but I don’t say that. Instead, I place my hand on his, and he intertwines our fingers.

He shuts his eyes for a moment. “You give me no reason to be jealous, but fuck…”

“I only see you.”

“Do you, now?”

Loving the playfulness going on, I continue. “Mm-hmm. Since the first moment.”

“You taught me a very important lesson. It’s because of you my ego took a huge dent.”

“Oh, now I want to know all about it,” I say, curious and content with myself.

“We see what we want to see. The confirmation bias really did a thing to me. I prided myself on nothing escaping my attention, but I was so focused on how you made me feel that I wasn’t paying attention to the details. Like why you would vanish to your room and why your head was always stuck in your phone all the damn time. I became opaque and didn’t realize you were the hacker. I felt stupid as fuck once I found out.”

I give his hand a squeeze, trying to comfort him. “I never flaunted my ability, mostly because I was afraid of what the Family would do once they knew. While Celine, Mia, and Dane found out quickly, you were so intent on wanting to believe that I was some damsel. I didn’t like that you thought of me as helpless, but I longed for your attention. In my head, it was like once you figured that out, you would stop watching me.”

He strokes his thumb along my palm. “You own all my attention, Bailey.”

“Good. I hated that you ignored me afterward.”

“I was confused, love, but I needed to protect you, so I sucked it up. I tried. Fuck, how I tried to keep my distance. But I failed every damn time, and then you asked me to take your virginity. I knew right then I was losing my control, but for the first time, I didn’t want to stop.”

My head lowers and I give him an apologetic glance. “I felt terrible once you told me what happened to you. I’d rather die than coerce you…”

He brings my hand to his mouth and places a tender kiss on the inside of my palm. “Please never think of that again. That time I stiffened when you touched me was because I wasn’t used to it, but I craved your hands on me. My body and mind were at war, but once you did, I wanted more, so I kept provoking you.”

Resisting the urge not to jump him, to blanket him in my love and show nothing but pleasure, is a challenge. We’re in public—and just in time, our food arrives to remind us of that.

As he digs into his salad and steak, I say, “Always so disciplined.”

“I like how you stare at my body so much, so I am not risking that.”

Only he would think that, I swear. “Shut up. I’d love you anyway.”

He cocks his head, running his thumb along his bottom lip, and that is so sexual I think he might undo my hard work of keeping it together. “Maybe I just love seeing that hungry look on your face.”

“Yes, mine and everyone else’s. I hate that,” I mumble. Nothing like my jealousy making an appearance. “Sorry, but it makes me mad.”

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