I’m going to have my head on that pillow. West is going to kiss me, and then he’s going to look past me to the desk and see how many minutes we have left.

Fifty minutes seemed like a reasonable amount of time before. Not too long, not too short. Now it seems like an eternity. All I’ve done is kiss him, but no one kisses for fifty minutes.

This is insane.

I glance at West for reassurance, but he isn’t helping. His eyes have found the same magic spot on my floor he stared at last time he was here.

Me, I think. Look at me.

He doesn’t. So I walk to where he’s trained his gaze, find the spot, and step on it.

I step on it because, insane or not, I prepared for this hour. Plugged in the Christmas lights. Put on my favorite dark jeans, a white shirt that’s a little tighter than I’m comfortable with outside the room, a pretty bra. I brushed my hair out, left it down.

I didn’t put shoes on, though. My feet are bare, toenails painted pink, and I want West to see my feet and think about the rest of me naked. I want him to own up to his desire again, although, seriously, how many times does he have to say it before I’ll believe it? The way he grabbed me two days ago, dragged me up his thigh … I get hot flashes just thinking about it.

I get another one now, watching West’s eyes travel up from the floor spot that I’ve obliterated, over my legs, lingering at my hips, my breasts, my lips. That look is back in his eyes, covetous.

He wants to touch me.

It’s just that neither of us seems to know how.

You would think we were both virgins, rather than an Internet naked-picture sensation and … whatever West is. Not a virgin. I’m pretty sure.

Ninety percent sure.

He sits down on the mattress. “Come here.”

I do.

I sit right next to him, thigh touching thigh, and I want to look at his face.

I do look. For fifty minutes, I’m allowed to look. I’m not sure what else I’m allowed to do, but looking is okay.

His face is beautiful. The Christmas lights cast a glow over his skin, blue across his cheekbone, red behind his ear. His eyes, slightly narrowed, seem to glow. The word I think of is avid. Like whatever I’m about to do, he’s going to observe it, lean into it, take it and run with it.

I like being the thing he’s avid for, because that same feeling is inside my skin. The strain of not touching him, a low hum that’s always there, always something I’m pushing down, ignoring.

Only now I don’t have to.

As soon as I think it, my fingertips drift up to touch his neck. I turn my hand over and feel the rasp of his stubble against the backs of my fingers, the bumpy texture that smooths out lower down, until I find a spot where his skin is like hot satin.

“Can I do this?”

What I’m really asking is, How greedy can I be? How much will you give me?

He smiles, a little huff of breath that isn’t a laugh or a judgment, just a pleased noise. “Yeah.”

He draws a line across my chest, above the swell of my breasts. “Above here.”

I inhale and feel the line rise. The wake of his touch.

He strokes down my arm to my wrist. “And here.” He rubs his thumb over my wristbone.

“There?”

“That’s where I’ll touch you.”

“That’s it?”

He looks hard and long at my body. Every part of me that was sleeping comes awake and puts out its arms and says, Come in, come in, come in.

He taps my knee. “From here down.”

I hide my eyes against his shoulder, wanting to grumble. He’s going to skip all the best parts. “Is there a weird, kinky reason for this that I’m not understanding?”

He puts his hand in my hair and lifts my face so I have to look at him. “It’s just … what I want.”

His eyes are cautious, saying this. As if telling me what he wants is the scariest thing he’s done since he opened the door. It makes me certain that he hasn’t always been able to draw lines, hasn’t always set the terms.

It makes me wonder who he’s been with before, and how.

“Do you want me to do the same thing?” I drag my finger across his chest. “Above here.” Down his arm to his wrist, catching on his bracelet. “All along here.” A lingering tap north of his knee. “From here down?”

“You could.” His thigh shifts under my fingers, which have given up tapping in favor of fanning out over the muscle they’ve found. I want to stroke upward, filling the full width of my palm with soft denim and firm warmth until I reach the crease of his hip and have to decide where to go. Map him with my hands. “Or you could just go with the flow and trust me.”

I try to think of something smart to say, or something funny. But those words—trust me—crumple up my confidence and toss it away.

I think, all in a rush, of the reasons I can’t trust. Bad breath and body smells, stuck zippers, biting. The words on the birth-control chart that hangs on the inside door of the bathroom stalls that I’ve meant to look up but never gotten around to. Frottage. Rimming. I don’t know what they mean. I don’t know how many girls West has had sex with, and it seems vitally necessary that I find out so I can compare myself to them unfavorably.

There are condoms in my desk drawer, but they could be the wrong size.

Trust me, he says, and I can’t shut off my brain. Last time we kissed, I was stoned, so it was different. This time I have no defense, no way to hide from how close his eyes are, how much he sees.

It was like this with Nate. Over time I got better about it, but mental flailing was pretty much my constant make-out companion until I figured out that it worked better if I had a few drinks first. Then I tried to plan as many of our sexual encounters as possible for parties.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been kissed at ten in the morning, in the daylight.

I don’t trust it. I don’t trust myself.

“We should have some music,” I blurt.

West sighs.

Then he shoves me.

I’m on my back with West above me, those eyes like smoke, that smart-ass mouth so sure of itself. “Trust me,” he says again, and kisses me.

Then it’s okay.

Way better than okay.

Kissing West is nothing like kissing Nate. His mouth is warm and sure of itself, and it says, Shut up, Caro. Close your eyes. Stop thinking.

Feel.

I do. I can’t not. With West’s mouth on mine, feeling is the only thing I’m capable of.

We kiss. Time passes, and we kiss.

I wish I had words, if only so I could press them into memory. This hot, wet slide of tongue against tongue, soft lips and angled mouths, fitting and refitting. This beautiful pulse, this damp haze, this foggy, hot, yearning ache.

There are more ways to kiss than anyone ever told me, and I want them all.

I get them. I get West, his mouth, his weight, his smell.

We kiss.

The lines we’ve drawn on our bodies aren’t important. They’re just pencil marks we need to put around this thing that’s so big, it could get scary if we let it.

Kissing West is my hands in his hair, on his neck, spanning his shoulders. It’s clutching his back when he plunges his tongue into my mouth, finding his waist, sneaking my hands under his shirt to steal the heat and smoothness of his skin.

It’s his body above me, his chest on me, a heavy crush I can’t get enough of because he’s always been so far away and now he’s here. His palm cradling my head, his fingers curled around my shirt at the shoulder, fisted in a tight grip because they want to wander and he won’t let them.

It’s his pale eyes, a rim of bluish color around huge dark pupils, his eyelashes long and his eyelids sleepy.

It’s the sighing weight of his forehead on mine when he has to breathe.

Lazy heat. Connection. Safety and quiet in a place where I’ve been alone and afraid and the voices in my head have been loud for weeks now. Months. He casts a spell on me, throws me into a gorgeous daze where I could kiss him forever and be perfectly content.

We have fifty minutes.

The thought is fingers snapping in my consciousness. Fifty minutes. How many are left? My lips feel full, bruised, tender and slick. I can’t remember ever kissing this much. Surely I must have, with Nate, in the early months we were dating? But when I think that far back, I mostly remember arguments. We would kiss, and then he would want more and I’d stop him, and he would get distant, huffy, pained.

You don’t know what it’s like, Caroline.

West is carrying his weight on one elbow, his legs and hips off to the side. I don’t know if he’s hard. I haven’t cared, haven’t thought. I’ve been too busy kissing, and I don’t know what it’s like.

Cocktease, the Internet Asshats say, but this time they’re right. I just forgot. I forgot about him.

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?”