Blackout ✓

10 | breaking the rule

JAMIE KISSED ME AS SOON as the elevator doors closed on us.

I tiptoed to reach him, and he curled his shoulder down to claim my lips in a searing kiss. I stumbled when the elevator jolted into its ascent, but Jamie pressed me back into the wall and steadied us with a hand on the metal.

His other hand raked through my shoulder-length hair and pulled gently, tilting my jaw up to him. My mouth slowly opened with a blissful sigh. His tongue swept in, exploring and inquisitive and tempting. It was all I could do to fist my hands in his shirt, pulling him closer, closer, closer.

In my defence, I had tried to stop thinking about Jamie in this way.

Clearly, it hadn't been successful. After the night Jamie and Krista ferried me home, the night Jamie and I talked about our childhood, I'd woken up in my bed—probably after he carried me back to my bedroom before Jake returned from town. That he maintained his gentlemanly control only added fuel to the fire, which imploded each time I drank.

I guessed my desire had been coming on slowly, unstoppably, ever since I woke up in his arms with no memory of our first tryst. The fact that I couldn't remember it was almost more effective in making me want him. All I thought about was what he might have been like. How it would feel to have those full lips capture mine, those powerful arms hold me against him, those long fingers wrapped around my hips. He was a fantasy I wanted to make real.

I didn't expect it would have been the same for him.

Tonight, I'd gone out with a group of girls from the WISA executive committee. At Topaz—where Krista had tried to no avail to cut me off, the nerve of her—we'd bumped into a group of boys that exactly matched our numbers, so things had been looking promising. Just as I was cozying up to a tall, bookish-looking man, someone had pulled me through the crowd away from him.

It was Jamie.

Never once seeing who he had arrived with, nor considering the dude I'd left hanging, I'd turned my back to him and resumed my dancing. I remembered how his hand kept brushing against my spine, then my side, and finally curling around my front and pressing me to him. I'd noticed instantly how hard he was.

An understanding had passed between us, silently. Then I left the group, claiming to get a drink of water. The desire raging in his eyes must have reflected my own. Two minutes later we were outside the bar waiting for an Uber. In the Uber I'd sat in the passenger seat, him in the back. No words were exchanged.

Even till now, after we'd practically raced to get inside the elevator, we hadn't spoken about what was about to take place. Instinctive. I wondered if this was how it had happened. The first time. The time that I didn't remember.

When the elevator doors slid open on the eighth floor, Jamie bent to wrap his hands around my thighs. I let him sweep me into the air and hooked my heels around his back. Most of my weight was held under the tensing of my legs, and the rest was held in Jamie's arms.

Relying on spatial memory, Jamie walked us through the common room, down the corridor and pressed me into my door. When he pulled my bottom lip into his mouth and sucked on it, a breathy moan tore out of my throat. Fuck. What had I been missing out on?

Jamie retracted his mouth to say, "Give me your key." Then we were joined again, my hands twisting in his hair and pulling his mouth closer. Ever since the first time I saw him, I'd wondered what it was like to run my hands through his curls. Now, I knew.

I pulled my key out of my bra and pushed it into Jamie's waiting hand. He was strong enough to keep me lifted with just one hand around me, which sent a thrill straight to my core. He fiddled the key into my lock and twisted, holding me securely against his chest when the wood behind me swung away.