“West,” I whisper.

It’s supposed to sound calm and businesslike, but instead it sounds like I’m begging him for something, and I guess he takes that as a cue. He drops his head toward my shoulder. His lips … I can’t be sure, but I think his lips are really close to my skin. I feel his breath near my ear, and my nipples harden.

“West, what the hell?”

“Why’d you come here, huh?” he murmurs.

And then—this is the worst-best part, by far—he turns his head and kisses my jaw, openmouthed.

It’s like satin. Like lightning.

I don’t know what it’s like.

I do know that it’s not what’s supposed to be happening at all.

Except that the atmosphere West is creating makes me feel like this is what’s supposed to be happening. Exactly this. The West menace is, like, sex in aerosol form. He’s making it with his body, and then he’s putting it all over me.

My body is into it, too. My body is on board.

My body is such a traitor.

“Why’d you have to come?” His voice is low and husky. Languid. His voice is a hook, catching on me. Reeling me in.

The music from his earbuds is a faraway drumbeat, and West doesn’t move his hands. I do, though. Mine have slid up to his neck, tangling in his hair, pulling his head down.

Okay, no, they haven’t. But they want to. They are positively itching to go rogue, and maybe he can see that in my eyes, because he makes this sound that’s not even a sound. It’s just an explosion of breath that does incendiary things to my panties.

“Tell me,” he insists.

Tell him what? I have no idea what he’s talking about. The only thing I know is if he doesn’t kiss me soon, I’m going to die. He’s so hot, and it’s not just that his skin is warm, although it is. It’s that I can feel all the energy from the fight coursing through him. He’s still jacked up and high on adrenaline and chemicals. He’s not himself. I’m not sure how I know this, but I do. West isn’t West, and I’m not Caroline. Not with him so close. Braced over me, heating me up, breathing against my neck, he feels like a guy who’s barely keeping it together. A guy who would beat the living shit out of the wrong someone if the wrong someone happened by, but who’d rather spend the rest of the afternoon and half the night fucking the right someone raw.

The right someone could be you.

I can’t believe I just thought that.

“Tell me,” he says again.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re here.”

I look away, to the side and up, because I want him to kiss me and I shouldn’t. I don’t know him. I’m not sure I like him. He scares me. His knuckles are split where they grip the metal shelving—gripping it so hard, they’ve turned white. West is holding himself back from what he wants to do to me, and I wonder, what happens if he lets go?

Do I let him turn me around, bend me over this shelf, sink inside me?

I try to be disgusted by the idea, but, God, I can feel a ghost of what it would be like. It would be electric. Hot and slick, full and fast, the most erotic thing that’s ever happened to me. I know it. I know.

But then it would be over, and I think I know what that would be like, too. West silent and stiff-jawed. A closed door.

I’ve never even had a conversation with him.

I push at his chest, trying to break the spell. “West. We have to talk.”

“We’re talking.”

But I don’t have his attention. His attention’s lower, as it should be, because when did his knee get between my thighs? And am I really … ? Oh. I am. I’m kind of almost riding him.

“Get off,” I say.

I’m whispering, nervous again about being overheard and despised by studying students—though I haven’t actually seen any—or, worse, being seen here, doing this. They would talk about me. They would never stop talking about me riding West’s thigh in the library barely an hour after he punched Nate in the mouth.

This is the worst possible thing I could be doing right now.

“West, get off.”

He lifts his head. His dark hair is falling in his face, and his eyes look like chips of sky.

He eases back. “What is it?”

“I have to talk to you.”

“I’m not in a talking mood right now, Caro.”

My head is clearing. Nobody’s getting bent over anything.

This is all just hormones. Adrenaline. It’s got to be. West is biologically driven to want to rut with something after his testosterone-fueled display of masculinity, and I’m … I guess I’m biologically driven to be rutted on.

But I’m strong. I can rise above my biology.

I think.

“Too bad,” I say, “because that’s why I was looking for you. So we could converse like civilized beings.”

West just levels that stare at me.

“Not rutting beasts,” I add.

“I’m a beast,” he says slowly. “And we’re rutting?”

He doesn’t like the word rutting. He spits it out like he’s disgusted with it.

“What would you call it?”

“I don’t know what to call it. Maybe you should tell me what you’re chasing me around for.”

“I’m not chasing you. I just—”

A pissed-off male voice says, “Shh.”

Fourth floor. Shit.

When I open my mouth again, my thoughts have scattered like marbles, and I can hardly even look at West. He’s crossed his arms. His split knuckles are wrapped around his biceps. It looks hard.

Everything about West is hard.

Talk, Caroline, my brain urges. Words. Sentences. Go.

“I wanted to, um … About earlier. See, I heard from Bridget that—”

“Shhhhh.”

The same irritated voice again. I lose my words, flustered and ready to bail on this whole thing.

West says, very calmly, “There’s three other floors, buddy. Pick one or shut the fuck up.”

“This is the quiet floor,” the invisible guy complains.

“Show me where it says that.”

“Everybody knows.”

West shakes his head. “I’m not everybody.”

There’s silence for a moment, then the resonant sound of a chair being pushed back. A backpack zipper. Footsteps announce the approach—a student glares at West with angry eyes—but he keeps going, and I hear the stairwell door opening.

A beat later, just before the door slams shut, the words stupid slut drift through it.

The ugliness of those words cuts into my hurt place, deep.

He’s not the first person to call me a slut, but he’s the first one to say it so I can hear him. And honestly? It doesn’t help that he says it right after I let West push me against the stacks and stick his knee between my thighs.

It doesn’t help that my panties are wet. I feel like a slut. I feel like I’m rattling apart, unable to stick to a direct line for more than five minutes.

Stupid cunt would spread for anyone, the men inside my head say.

I’d like to see him fuck her. I’d pay good money to watch that.

I look up at West. I feel despised and powerless, and it’s so frustrating that he’s seeing me this way—that he’s watching so intently and really seeing what I try not to let anyone see, ever.

That I am right on the verge of falling apart. All the time.

His eyes soften, gentle with pity, and that makes it a hundred times worse.

Stupid, pitiful slut.

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ve heard it before.”

“It’s not fine.”

I wave my hand in the air, pointlessly, because I have no response. It isn’t fine. But it’s my life now.

“Caroline, it’s not fine.” West puts his hands on my shoulders.

I shrug him off and step sideways to get out from under him. “I know, okay? You don’t have to yell at me. I know. He’s going to tell everyone, and then the whole campus is going to be whispering about how we were practically screwing on the fourth floor of Hamilton. I get it. I’m sorry, all right?”