Page 116 of Party Favors

There was something charged and sexy about changing with him right there but not able to see anything other than a shadowed outline.

I pulled my clothes on, almost regretting doing it. If I walked out in my underwear, there was no way we would take things slowly. Or be able to have a conversation. I was pretty sure about that.

“I’m dressed,” I said when I finished. And I meant to move the screen myself, but Max lifted it and tossed it to the side, like he’d been waiting for an excuse to do just that.

He reached for me and I eagerly awaited his mouth on mine.

But he didn’t kiss me. Instead he placed his hand on the side of my throat. He moved his hand down, rubbing his thumb across my collarbone, and then he leaned forward to press a hot, delicate kiss to where he’d been touching me.

I grabbed on to his shirt, trying to stay upright. There was a pulling sensation just behind my belly button that grew and blossomed into white-hot heat. I was going to ask him to do it again because of how amazing it had felt, and he did it without me begging. He was excruciatingly tender with me, pressing warm kisses up and down the column of my neck, across my collarbone, on my shoulders. The whisper of his fingertips followed along behind his mouth, touching me everywhere his lips had.

He had turned my entire body into one desperate ache, wanting beating through my blood.

I ran my own fingertips along the planes and contours of his perfect face, then ran my fingers through his dark, silken hair. He was so unbelievably handsome. “I can’t believe you want to be with me.”

It had been meant to stay inside my brain, but the words somehow came out. And they had the negative effect of making him stop kissing me.

“Why?” He truly sounded dumbfounded.

“Look at you. You are annoyingly gorgeous.” As if he didn’t know.

He framed my face with his hands. “And you are so beautiful, so sexy, that I have a hard time keeping my hands to myself.”

“Really?”

“When I came upstairs today and found you, I wanted to talk. But that all went away the second I saw you.”

“Oh.” I breathed the word. “You would think someone else would have noticed by now if that was true.”

He kissed my forehead softly. “You’ve surrounded yourself with some very stupid people. I wish that you could see yourself the way that I do.”

“How do you see me?” I reached up to wrap my fingers around his wrists.

“Desirable, annoyingly attractive, with a smile that doesn’t just light up a room, it illuminates it.”

My heart fluttered up into my throat. “My mom spent a lot of money on braces,” I whispered, and he grinned at me.

“You are beautiful inside and out. And I would have told you that constantly since we first met but I—”

“Was trying not to scare me,” I finished for him. The magnetism of this moment and his otherworldly blue eyes drew me in so completely that I had started to become personally offended by every molecule of air that existed between us.

Max moved his hand so that he could trace the outline of my mouth, the calloused pad gliding along my more-than-ready lips, and my breathing turned shallow. I lifted my face up so that he could finally kiss me, but instead he pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. He ghosted his lips along my skin, over my cheekbones, against one eyelid and then the other. My forehead, my temples. I could feel his warm breath in my hair.

It was almost like he was trying to prove something to himself. That he could be restrained, he could touch me carefully and gently without losing his head.

I didn’t know if this was for his benefit or for mine, but I felt so frantic for him that I wasn’t sure how much more of this particularly exquisite torture I could withstand.

“You said you wanted to talk,” I reminded him.

“Right.” He dropped his hands and moved a step back. “There’s something that I’ve been wanting to—”

I couldn’t have described what possessed me in that moment other than my protesting lady parts were distraught at the loss of his touch and the possibility that I wasn’t going to be properly kissed anytime soon.

I threw myself at him, knocking him back against a wall. He swore in three different languages.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Did I not know my own strength?

“I think I’ve cut myself.” He reached over to his side, just behind his shoulder blade.

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