Chapter 10
10
U nlike that time during Seven Minutes In Heaven, where his friends had lied and told him it was Clara in the closet, his lips don’t meet mine in a hesitant brush. They come down on mine like a branding iron.
Like he means to own every inch of me.
His kiss is so rough, I taste blood for a moment before his tongue sweeps into my mouth and I’m lost.
This is what I remember. This is what our kiss so quickly morphed into, that night four years ago. When he discovered I wasn’t Clara. That’s all he’d said after he pulled back after a first tentative brush. “You aren’t Clara.” I thought he’d leave the closet, but he didn’t. I’d just said “No,” and he’d kissed me like this. Zero to sixty. A dying man, grasping for a lifeline. I am the oxygen, the freedom, the illicit pleasure.
He kisses me with abandon, like this is the only moment in all of eternity that he’ll get to do this, and it’s sexy as hell . His lips punish mine. Anger. Want. Ownership. Reverence. Hatred.
He pushes me with his mouth and his tongue, insisting on surrender. But there is none. My body fights back as anger floods my system. I catch fire and burn for this—anger, hatred, and lust rolling through me. It’s all true. I hate him. I want him.
My arms wrap around his back, pulling him closer. He bites my lower lip, and I feel it like a zip line in my core. Everything is sensation. I’m swimming in a raging ocean without a lifeboat, my only companion a shark that likely means to eat me instead of saving me.
Breath hisses through my lips as his knee slides up between my legs and rocks against me. I balance on his leg, horrified and elated by what the contact of his knee on my clit does. I never even truly understood what romance novels meant, but I do now. Apparently, I just need a secluded English garden and a man who hates me.
“We should stop,” He growls into my ear. “I will be in so much trouble if my father finds out. This belongs to someone else.” But even as he says this, his hands dip to my collarbone. And then lower, dragging his thumbs over my nipples.
“Oh my God,” he groans, as he dips his head to kiss my cleavage. “This. This is why I hate you. You made me want what I cannot have.”
His hands slide lower, gripping my hips and rocking into me. I can feel how very much he doesn’t hate what is happening. A hard length presses into my hip and up my side.
“See what you do to me? Every day for four years I had to know what this was like and pretend I didn’t want it.”
“You…. Bastard.” I say between quick breaths. Something is building inside me, and I want to tear off my clothes and his. I want to take his tie off with my teeth. “You didn’t have to ignore it.” We could have saved ourselves so much time.
“I did. I do. None of this ever happened. This cannot happen again, not with you.”
Anger spikes into my bloodstream, clearing my head. “What, still not good enough for you? Even at fucking Oxford? You are a first class asshole pretending like you’re dallying with the help.” I shove him back as hard as I can. “I said I hate you. Get your hands off me.” But don’t , my body says. I tell it to go to hell.
Above our heads, I hear Clara calling for him. And… is that Dominic?
Now I’m freezing. The heat, everything…everything rushes out of me. I’m pressed up against a stone wall, my hair is a mess, breathing like I ran a marathon. And I’m no longer sandwiched by Kendall’s frame.
He’s ten paces away, straightening his tie. His shirt. Wiping every little piece of evidence of me from his body. And then Clara is there, peering into the darkness. I see Li and Dominic over his shoulder. Only I can see the fever bright burn of Kendall’s eyes as he reaches for me. “Congratulations,” he says as he grasps my elbow to lead me forward.
I rip my elbow out of his hands. “Don’t touch me,” I hiss. His condescension is the cherry on the pie. Congratulations , my ass. As if that kiss was a prize I’m lucky for winning.
“She’s had too much to drink, you should take her home,” he’s telling Li. “I worry someone put something in her drink.” I shouldn’t be staring at how his suit coat stretches over his lean shoulders, and avert my eyes.
“Oh my God,” Clara says, putting a hand to her mouth. Suspicion drops from her eyes, replaced by pity.
Bastard . I only had the drink from him, so if my drink was spiked, it was his doing.
Kendall reaches out for Clara’s arm. “Do you want to go back in? You look cold. I just wanted her to find her friends before leaving.”
Li wraps her coat around me, loudly proclaiming what a group of wankers college men are. I suck in a breath. “Bastard,” I say out loud, just loud enough for him to hear. “You did this.”
The smile he gives me is wolfish and it doesn’t reach his eyes. He chews on his words enough that I gather he’s pondering saying something he shouldn’t. Something about what just passed between us. But he doesn’t. He just leans in under the guise of straightening my under the coat collar.
“Go home, Helena.”
“Go to Hell, Kendall.”
“I probably will. And now you’re joining me since you just passed your first test. Welcome to All Saints.”