The Kiss

looked down.
    “Come.” She took a couple of steps before she realized he wasn’t following. “Well? You coming?”
    “Where?”
    “My room. You got all messed up defending my honor.” She grabbed a fist-full of his short sleeve and pulled him after her. “I’m not sending you home until you’re cleaned up and in a fresh tee.”
    He said nothing, letting her drag him along.

Chapter Eight

    Eliza opened her dorm room door just a sliver and stuck her head in. “Krista? You here?”
    There was no answer, not even after the third time she called out, and Eliza smiled to herself. Krista must have decided to spend the night with Bill. “All’s clear.” She threw the door open the rest of the way and went straight for her closet. “You go wash your face, while I find a shirt for you to wear. There’s alcohol under the sink—”
    “A drink would be—”
    She turned to face him, hands firmly planted on her hips. “Not that kind of alcohol. The putting on wounds type.”
    “I’m not dabbing alcohol on my eye.” Still, when she tapped her foot and arched an eyebrow, he peeled his shirt off and bunched it up. After a moment’s hesitation, he threw it on the floor, before disappearing into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.
    He came back as Eliza was taking off her own top. Her back was strategically turned toward the bathroom door, so he wouldn’t see anything. “No funny business, or I’ll have to kill you. New shirt’s on the back of my desk chair.”
    “I’m not dry yet. And I’m not looking. Although one has to wonder why you couldn’t wait until I was gone to do that, if you were so worried about your virtue.”
    “If one hadn’t sprayed blood on my favorite shirt, one wouldn’t have to wonder that.” She leaned to the side to get her pajama top that was all stretched out on her bed. “Besides, we’re mutually-hating adults. Not like I have something to fear.” She was such a liar. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt all kinds of stupid for not having waited until he left—mostly because hearing his voice made her nipples hard. She shouldn’t have such reactions around the jerk, no matter that he’d behaved like a human being earlier.
    “I don’t get why you sell yourself short the way you do. Why you go out with men like Greg, like Mr. Muscle. I don’t even get why you put up with me —why I’m here right now. You’re above all this, Eliza.” His voice was even, if slightly choked.
    Eliza froze; no way he’d just said what she’d heard. She tried hard not to turn and look at him, not daring to break whatever spell made him sound like he didn’t hate her. She needed to hear what came next.
    “I—you’re just too good to be wasting yourself, is all I’m saying.”
    She didn’t know where his words had come from, any more than why all she could think at the moment was that she owed him a kiss. If not for butting in to save her from the verbal abuse Cal was subjecting her to, then because they’d never gotten their turn during the game of Spin-the-Bottle .
    She turned on her heel, pajama top held firmly in front of her breasts. He sat there, on her floor, shirtless; arms straight, holding his body up; legs spread in front of him. His body was even more perfect than what the glimpse of him going to the bathroom had allowed her to see, but it wasn’t his body she focused on. He kept his head down, as if it weighed him to be nice to her, and it only made it mean more somehow that he chose to be nice despite it.
    She knelt between his legs, sought his gaze, and—when he looked at her questioningly—touched her lips to his.
    She’d meant it to be nothing more than a peck, but the moment his tongue slipped between her lips, a familiar scent flooded her senses.
    Her top slid to the floor, and Eliza gave in to the kiss the way she had that first time, mindlessly surrendering to sensation as Nate seemed to devour almost all logic.
    Almost .
    If Nate was her mystery kisser, he had to have an agenda. He’d hated her for too long to have just kissed her when the opportunity arose. She pushed him away and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “It was you! Why—”
    Before she could finish asking what the hell he’d been thinking—what twisted game he was playing—he sprang to his feet, grabbed his shirt, and stormed out.
    ***
    It took Eliza a few long moments to get over the shock of discovering Nate was the man she’d built up so much in her