I break the kiss so I can crane my head around and look at the time on the phone. Ten minutes left. We’ve been kissing for thirty-five, forty minutes, and I haven’t thought. But ten minutes should be long enough, if we need to do something different. Finish West off.

The thought is spiky, uncomfortable.

I ask him, “Are you … ?”

“Mmm.”

He’s mouthing my neck. Paying zero attention to my attempt to question him.

I curl my fingers around the thick leather of his belt. Bring them to the buckle, heavy and threatening.

I pull the leather from the loop.

West’s hand covers mine. “What are you doing?”

“If you’re … you have class, so …”

West rolls away and sits up. He has to duck his head because of the bunked beds. “I have class?”

“I don’t want you to …” I can’t say it. “Forget it.”

He grabs my chin and turns my head and makes me look at him. He won’t let me look away. It’s freaking annoying, and I hate it.

“Trust me,” he says. “I need this to be—need us to do this right. With you talking to me, telling me what you like, nobody trying to just guess or do stuff they don’t necessarily want to. I need it.”

I can’t say no to that. To anything he needs. As much as I hate to, I have to tell him.

“I thought you were maybe uncomfortable. From so much … from kissing me, maybe that was making you … hard, and if we only had a few minutes left before class, I’d better … finish it.”

He sits there, watching me with his eyebrows drawn in. I can’t tell what he’s thinking—if he’s angry or frustrated, confused, or maybe wishing he were somewhere else. With some girl who isn’t such a mixed-up freak.

Then he leans toward me, catches me by the waist, and pulls me into his lap.

He kisses my hair, right by my ear. “He really did a number on you, huh?”

I think about saying, Who? or No, but I’m trembling, and my mouth tastes like battery acid, so, yeah.

Yeah. I guess he did.

“I have to go in a minute,” West says quietly. “I don’t want to. But I have to.”

“I know.”

“I like kissing you, Caro.” He puts his lips to my neck. His arm is wrapped around my back, his hand heavy at my hip. The weight of it—perfect. “You like kissing me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

His mouth moves down to my shoulder, to the sliver of exposed skin at the neckline of my shirt. To the hollow behind my ear, where his breath makes me shiver. He finds my mouth, and then our lips meet again, hot and wet and perfect, perfect.

“You like that?” His voice is a growl, a low thrum, explicit as fingers between my legs.

“Yes.”

“That’s it, then. You like it. I like it. Beginning, middle, end. There’s no finish. This is the whole thing, right now.”

He’s kissing me again, so I can’t think about whether or not what he said is true. I just wrap my arms around his neck, rake through his hair, outline his ear with my fingertip, and kiss him back. Under the Christmas lights, in our cave. Kisses chasing kisses, hands and mouths.

Everything. Everything.

And then we run out of time. It takes me a second to figure out that the beeping I hear is his phone.

“You set an alarm?”

“Knew I’d never stop otherwise.”

Reluctantly, he pushes me off his lap and reaches for the phone, silencing it. Then he’s standing, adjusting his belt, lacing up his boots.

When he lifts his head, his eyes are sleepy and sexy, his lips stained, color high in his cheeks. Looking at him does something crazy to me, a wet hot clench between my legs, heat spreading outward, upward. I wish I’d gotten his shirt unbuttoned while I had the chance. Seen more of him. Pressed up against his bare skin.

Next time.

God, I hope there’s a next time.

“You coming to the bakery tonight?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’ll be back Tuesday. If you want me back.”

“Yeah. I do.”

He retrieves his jacket from the couch and puts it on. When his hand is on the doorknob, he says, “For the record, Caro?”

“Yeah?”

“Hard as a fucking rock.”

He slips out the door, and I’m still smiling at it like an idiot when Bridget comes back from class.

Tuesday.

Fifty minutes.

Outside, the sky is dark. It’s snowing, blowing icy slush sideways, gray and miserable. I’ve put on Bing Crosby just to make West shake his head and pretend to lament my terrible taste in music.

His hair is cold and damp, his nose freezing when he presses it against mine, but his lips are warm. His smile is warmer. We have this dim room, this bed surrounded by color, our feet intertwined, his body pushing down on me.

We have slow, deep kisses that keep getting deeper.

I ruck up his shirt and follow the gully of his spine up. The muscles of his shoulders flex under my hands. I scoot down. My shirt hikes up. We kiss and kiss, and I find a way to wiggle until my bare stomach is touching his.

Do you feel this? Your skin and mine?

Because I feel it everywhere.

I want it. I want you.

I skate my palms up his sides. Over his shoulders, into the inner sleeves of his shirt until I run out of room over his hard biceps. His hips move into my thigh, belt buckle nipping into the top of my leg, and I press my fingernails into his skin and scoot down another fraction, seeking better alignment.

Seeking pressure between my legs.

I want the knowledge of what I do to him, the heat of what we do to each other.

When I get there, he grunts and bites my lip. His eyes are slits, his nostrils flared as he breathes in deep, fast. “Caroline.”

I lift into the ridge of heat in his jeans, loving that I can do this to him. Loving the pressure, the weight, the way his kiss gets darker and more desperate and we move together, synchronized.

It’s not sex. It’s better than sex.

It’s West.

Thursday. I wore this shirt—this joke of a shirt. It’s supposed to fall off at the shoulder. It’s supposed to be layered over another shirt, but I didn’t tell him that, and as soon as we lie down to start kissing, it comes off my shoulder and exposes my bra strap and a little bit of my bra.

Red lace.

Come on, West. Be tempted.

Everything is faster this time. His first kiss is hungry, and I’m glad because I’ve missed him, I’ve missed this, I’ve thought of nothing else for two days. His hands have a desperation in them, sliding up and down, into my hair, back to my arms. Starving.

It’s not enough anymore. These limits he drew on my body, the pencil marks faint. I want more. We both want more.

I don’t have to be sneaky in order to get him between my legs. I tug at his belt, and he’s over me, as hard and hot as I remember him but better. So much better. The way he rears up suddenly to look at me. His eyes in this light, keeping no secrets. My stomach is showing, one bra cup half out, and his hands tremble on my wrists as he pulls them overhead and crosses them on the pillow.

I’ve never felt so desirable. It’s a drug in my veins, a giddy ecstasy that makes me grin at him with well-kissed lips. Makes me powerful.

Do something, I order him with my eyes and the small, restless movements of my hips. Do something, or I will.

He sinks down, hair falling in his face, and kisses me again. He thrusts—really thrusts—and my head tilts back. My whole spine arches up, moving into him. I’m wet, and I want his fingers. I want his whole hand inside my jeans, fumbling into my panties. His mouth on my breasts. I want us to round all the bases, one after another, in the next half an hour.

“Please,” I say.

West breathes against my ear. Licks my earlobe. Bites me. “That is not a shirt.”

I grin at the bunked bed above me. “Please.”

He sits up again. “Take it off.”