Xavier cages me against the parked car, propping his hand flat against the hood behind me, and I stiffen up, my heaving chest robbing me of any pretense of indifference.
There’s no escaping him, heart.
I’m sorry, I tried.
“I don’t fucking want her,” he hisses. “What’s it going to take for you to get that?”
“Why?” I blurt. “Why wouldn’t you want her? Or Lacey? Or any of the million girls who’d sell an organ for five minutes alone with you?”
Why should I believe he ever cared about Love?
About me?
Why should I believe anything he says?
“I don’t want them because they don’t have a caterpillar tattoo on their shoulder.” Xav clutches my face with both hands. “I don’t want them because they’re not the only ones who get me in a world of fucking idiots.” He gives a breathy laugh, the garage’s fluorescent lights shimmering in his eyes. “They don’t drive me completely insane, keep me on my toes with everything they do. So, yes, I ended it with Brie. And yes, I figured out Lacey wasn’t you.”
Then he sets my expectations for any future guy way too high.
“Because none of them are, Vee. Fucking none of them.”
That’s what does it.
I might’ve taken a major risk answering the troll who corrected my grammar all these weeks ago, but the move I make next will either go down as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made…
Or the worst.
I suck in a breath, trap Xavier’s varsity jacket’s collar into my fists, and smash our lips together. That’s right, I,Aveena Chicken Harper, take the plunge for once in my life.
A guttural noise of satisfaction rips from Xavier’s throat as soon as our mouths connect. He immediately tilts my chin forward, kissing me back with an intensity you’d go to the end of the world to experience once.
His lips are soft, but nothing about his kiss is gentle. Nothing about the way he claims me is sweet. Xavier kisses me with a need, a hunger I’m afraid even the best of me can’t satisfy. I feel clumsy, inexperienced as my fingers slide into his hair, and I arch my back off the Tesla to slam our bodies together.
Am I doing this wrong?
Am I making a fool of myself?
Who does she think she is?
Kissing the captain of the basketball team?
I have no idea what I’m doing. My first contact with a man was with Logan—actually, I doubt he qualifies as a man. More like a human dumpster—and our kiss was nothing like this.
It was rushed.
Sloppy.
But Xav… he tastes like desperation, like I just found the last drop of water in a worldwide drought. And I might not know jack shit about anything, but I know this.
I’m not sharing this oasis.
I turn full control over to my body and press my hips flush to his, never once disrupting our rough, heated kiss. My cheeks blaze when I feel his rock-hard erection pressing against my thigh.
I take it I’m not so ridiculous after all?
His fingers travel to the nape of my neck, and he traps a handful of my pink hair into his fist, inching my head backward to deepen our connection. His tongue pries my teeth apart, and all the text messages in the world, all the nights I spent dreaming about what it would be like…
None of it could’ve everprepared me for the real thing.