Page 98 of Save Me

“I wouldn’t. I’d just have been more careful.”

I put my head back and look up into his face. There’s a crease between his brows—he looks genuinely worried.

“But I didn’t want it gentle and careful.”

One corner of his mouth twitches slightly, and there’s a dark flash in his eyes. It vanishes as fast as it came. “Maybe I should have thought about a change of scene. Nobody should lose their virginity in a college bedroom with a squeaky bed.”

I sit up in outrage. For a split second, James’s gaze lands on mybreasts, then he looks me in the eyes again. “Hello? If I’m going to lose my virginity anyway, then yes please to doing so in Oxford.”

He shakes his head with a laugh. The next moment, he takes hold of my elbows and pulls me down until I land on top of him. He wraps his arms around me and holds me firmly to his warm body. “You’re crazy, Ruby Bell.”

Maybe a little,I admit in my mind.

But it all felt so right. James and me—maybe it will never be simple for us, and maybe James’s father will do everything he can to get me out of his son’s life, but I’m ready to fight for James. This thing between us is something special. As of today, I know that, and the way he looks at me, and touches me, tells me that he feels the same. We’ll do this. I’ve never been this certain of anything.

“How did it go for you?” I ask after a while, not meeting his eyes.

“Hmm?”

I focus on the pattern I’m drawing on his stomach. “I mean…how was your first time?”

He exhales audibly, and his belly sinks under my hand. “Do you really want to know?”

Now I do look at him. “Of course I do.”

“It was OK. I was fourteen, drunk, and I made a mess of it.”

“Fourteen?” Oh God, then he’s had four years’ practice. I don’t want to think about how many girls he must have been with to be this good.

“Wren bet me I wouldn’t, so I did. It took about two minutes and didn’t feel great.”

“Then you’re not exactly entitled to throw opinions about successful first times around the place,” I say quietly.

“If you ever tell anyone your story, I hope this will come out of it better.”

I press a kiss onto his chest. “Definitely. It was perfect.”

I don’t understand why, but it feels entirely normal to be lying here with him like this. As if this is right where I belong. I haven’t felt this good in weeks, and even the slightly painful throbbing between my legs isn’t bothering me. I meant what I said: It was perfect. And I can’t imagine a better time or place for it.

“You seemed really upset this afternoon,” James says out of nowhere, which does damp my mood a bit.

“The interview was shit,” I mumble.

His lips roam over my hairline again and graze my temple. “Those tutors were both dickheads. I think they get off on deliberately unsettling applicants. I’m sure you were great.” He says it with such certainty that I almost believe him. Almost.

“I really wasn’t. I got one question totally wrong. And I could definitely tell that they didn’t think much of what I said.”

“In what way?”

I tell him about the morning’s debacle.

“Like I said, I swear they get off on it. Don’t worry so much. Ifyoudon’t get into Oxford, nobody will.” He sounds more confident than I feel, but it’s good even to talk to anyone about it. Especially because James knows how much it means to me.

“Thank you for saying that.”

He kisses my lips by way of answer. It’s an effort not to just lose myself in him, to pull my head back after a while and ask: “How did yours go?”

He makes a rumbling sound that’s hard to interpret, and suddenly there’s that look on his face, the one that turns up anytime the talk comes around to Beaufort’s, Oxford, or his future. And it makes my heart ache.

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