His hand slid up, tangling in her loose hair. Then he pivoted their bodies, and they moved backward until the edge of the table was poking into her butt. He heaved her up, propping her on the side of the table.

She parted her legs and pulled up her skirt enough to let his body fit between her thighs. Their mouths had disconnected, both of them gasping for breath, and now his mouth started trailing along her face and down her throat, the stubble on his jaw scraping her sensitive skin.

She liked how concrete and natural it felt. Normal. Like the rest of the world. Not like her and Caleb.

“Kelly,” he muttered, still mouthing the pulsing in her throat. “Kelly, what’s going on? I thought you didn’t…”

Her head had fallen backward, giving him better access to her neck. “I changed my mind,” she murmured, her arms twining once more around his broad shoulders. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Hell, no,” he huffed out, one of his hands sliding up to cup one of her breasts over her top. “Just…surprised.”

Kelly arched into his touch. Her body was responding just a little, but something else was driving her on, was compelling her to do this. Something hard and brutal and blinding.

Fuck Caleb, anyway. He wasn’t the only man who could turn her on, who could make her body feel good.

Tweaking her tightening nipple, Jack raised his head to stare down at her. “Damn, Kelly. You’re gorgeous.” His other hand was holding the back of her head, keeping her from falling backward on the table. “Breathtaking.”

She wished he wouldn’t talk. Wished he wouldn’t look at her that way. All she wanted to do was fuck him senseless.

She pulled him down to kiss him again, mostly just to keep him from talking. But after he pulled his mouth away once more, he buried his face in her hair. “You’re blazing,” he said in a thick mutter, “like…like…”

He either couldn’t think of a good analogy or had distracted himself by sliding a hand up her bare thigh.

Kelly adjusted herself on the table until her thighs were settled snugly around him. “Like what?” she demanded, her hands stroking over the hard, solid planes of his body.

He didn’t feel like Caleb. He was broader. Warm and strong, but not as intensely hot.

Jack gave a gruff exhale and pushed his pelvis into her. There was a hard bulge at the front of his pants, and Kelly could feel the substance of it pressing into her. Gathering her more tightly into his arms, Jack finally was able to finish his comparison. “Like a diamond,” he concluded hoarsely.

Kelly’s head had fallen back again, and now she shifted until Jack’s arousal was rubbing against her own, nothing between them but a few layers of fabric. Squirming to get some friction against her flesh, she whispered, “How fitting.”

It was. The perfect analogy. She was hard and glittering and cutting. Like a diamond.

Jack was rubbing his rough cheek against hers, the scraping an erotic kind of discomfort. And he was making little thrusts with his hips, pushing his clothed erection into her center. “No,” he muttered. “That’s not right. Diamonds are hard and cold.”

Kelly was only half listening. She was growing aroused now and was still driven by that desperate need to prove to herself that she hadn’t really fallen for Caleb.

If Caleb could fuck her and be such a ruthless, merciless bastard, then she could fuck him without feeling anything. She could fuck Jack if she wanted. Or even if she didn’t.

Jack must have been fully erect now, to judge by the tight bulge in his pants. His body was tense, and he couldn’t seem to stop pushing into her. But he pulled his head back. Stared at her, his gaze smoldering in a way she’d never seen before. He pressed a few surprisingly gentle kisses into the side of her mouth. “Blazing like…”

Kelly was panting a little, and she fisted one of her hands in his thick hair. “It’s usually fires that blaze.”

He released a stifled moan and rubbed his arousal against hers with more purpose.

Gasping in astonished pleasure, Kelly arched back again. Managed to murmur, only slightly bitterly, “Also appropriate. Fires destroy everything in their path.”

Jack actually scowled, his hands tightening on her hips. “Stop it,” he grumbled in a voice still thick with desire. “You’re not like that.”

He seemed to genuinely believe it, which surprised and unnerved Kelly so much that she lost some of her angry momentum.

In fact, she was starting to feel kind of dizzy and overwhelmed. Starting to see herself, in the study room of a university library, propped on a table with her skirt bunched up around her waist, with a man between her legs.

A man who didn’t deserve this.

Jack didn’t deserve to be fucked because she was trying to fuck away someone else.

He lowered his face to her neck again and mouthed her skin with ardent heat. Murmured, his voice almost like gravel, “You’re blazing, like…”

Then his hand slipped between her legs. Cupped her groin, over the damp lace of her panties. His touch was hungry but at the same time strangely…intimate.

And it was wrong. All of it was wrong.

Jack actually wanted this. Actually thought this was intimate. He actually wanted her. Her. Kelly.

Kelly suddenly started to choke, strangling on the realization that swept over her in a rush of bitter knowledge.

She didn’t want to do this. She liked Jack. Didn’t want to use him.

And she didn’t even want to use herself—her own body—no matter how many countless, empty times she’d used it this way before.

She had no idea how or why the strange, crushing transformation had occurred. But even hatred of Caleb couldn’t drive her into fucking Jack in this way.

She had no idea what was left for her to do now, about Caleb, about her own life. She didn’t even know what she wanted to do.

But she knew she didn’t want to do this.

Jack’s fingertips were rubbing skillfully over the damp spot on her panties. It felt kind of good, but the force of her realization had left her sick.

“No,” she mumbled, her mouth somehow having ended up against Jack’s shoulder. He didn’t smell expensive like Caleb. He smelled faintly fresh, like some kind of laundry detergent. Her body stiffened against him. “Jack, no.”

Jack was pretty far gone, and he didn’t react immediately. Just kind of grunted, as if he didn’t understand what she was saying.

Pulling back and pushing against him gently, Kelly repeated hoarsely, “Jack, no. I don’t want to.”

His whole body froze for an agonizingly long moment.

Then he jerked back a few steps and stared at her, dazed and hot and strangely aching.

Kelly choked on a few random sobs, scrambling off the table and trying to pull her skirt back down over her legs. She felt horrible. Cheap and dirty and guilty and incredibly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, barely able to even look at his bewildered face. “I’m so sorry, Jack. I should never have…I was just…I wasn’t being fair to you.”

Jack rubbed his hands over his face, as if he were trying to clear his muddled mind. “What just happened?”

Too horrified and shell-shocked even to cry, Kelly finished straightening her clothing and picked her hair clip up from the table, mostly for something to do. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t do this. It’s totally my fault. I’m so sorry, Jack. I don’t know what else to say.”

Jack turned away from her, his back tense and unnaturally stiff. “I should have known it was too good to be true,” he mumbled.

The icy block that had hardened in her chest when she’d learned the truth about Caleb suddenly started to crack. “Jack,” she choked out, “I told you before I’m not worth the trouble. It’s like I said, I destroy everything in my path.” When he didn’t do anything but shake his head, she continued, “I’ll understand if you don’t want to have anything more to do with me. I want to work on a way to make this public, and we need to let my mom know what we found out. But I can do that on my own. You don’t have to—”