Page 44 of The Longest Shot
But my body might already be past the meltdown point.
There's not enough water in the world to cool me down.
Better evacuate the campus and call the hazmat teams.
My hands map the broad expanse of his shoulders, feeling the muscles bunch and shift. The strength contained there, the power he’s holding back. My mouth opens wider, taking himdeeper, our tongues sliding together in a rhythm that mirrors what our bodies are desperate to do.
His hand continues its journey upward, and when his thumb brushes the underside of my breast through my shirt, and?—
The door above us crashes open.
We both freeze.
Footsteps echo down the stairwell—multiple sets, heavy, getting closer.
We spring apart like we've been shocked. My body screams at the loss of contact, while he stumbles back, chest heaving, and for a split second we just stare at each other in the harsh fluorescent light. His pupils are blown wide, his mouth is swollen where I bit him, and there's a mark darkening on his neck.
The footsteps are maybe two flights up.
"Shit," he breathes, then grabs my hand. "Come on."
He yanks open the door to the third floor and pulls me through. We're in another hallway—this one mercifully empty—and he's still holding my hand as we half-run past closed classroom doors. Behind us, the stairwell door bangs open again, and I can hear male voices talking.
“—told Nash to check the equipment room?—”
One of his teammates. Looking for him.
Rook pulls me around a corner, then another, until we're in some administrative wing I've never seen. He knows the campus better than I ever will, but even that has limits, because when he tries a door handle, it’s locked. Another. Also locked. The third opens, revealing a supply closet.
We tumble inside, then he shuts the door and turns on a light, and when he turns to face me, his expression mirrors what I feel—utter horror at what we’ve just done and almost getting caught, mixed with undeniable recognition of what this means.
We’re not rivals anymore, but we’re not partners either.
We’re something else.
Something unnamed and dangerous.
“Morgan,” he says, my name rough and uncertain in his mouth, and it's clear he's fighting the urge to kiss me—toengulfme—all over again.
“Don’t," I say, because I need him to stop looking at me like I’m something precious he’s just rediscovered, and like he’s already planning the next time.
Because there can’t be a next time.
Can there?
My body is a live wire, every nerve ending sparked and singing. And the worst part is that now I know what I’ve been missing. Three years of careful control was just obliterated in seconds by an encounter that was an entire confession written in tongue and teeth and desperate hands.
“We can’t—” I start, not even sure how to finish that sentence.
“I know,” he says immediately, although I can still clearly see his bulge.
“This changes nothing,” I lie.
“Right,” he lies back.
We’re terrible liars, apparently.
Because this changes everything.
