When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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There was a thread of fire licking its way along my spine as we came back down from the high of the weekend alone.
Realistically we both knew it couldn't last, but that was what made it so special to begin with.
It was the last night before the others would begin showing back up to campus, and one or two players had already filed into the shared basketball house, I was laying on Kalen's lap reading while he threaded his fingers through my hair as he woke up from his impromptu afternoon nap.
"Mmm, that feels so good."
His chuckle shook the small frame of the bed before he dug his fingernails even deeper into my scalp, my back arching of its own accord as some of the strands got stuck between his fingers and the pull was too enticing to ignore.
"You like that, do you?"
"Maybe a little."
He tugged just a little bit harder and that was when I noticed that I hadn't read a single line of my book the entire time he'd been paying just a bit more attention to my hair.
Abandoning the story altogether, I rose up from my spot on his lap to drape my arms around his neck instead, my legs going in between his as he gave me a little half smile, his eyes still droopy and tired from his nap.
"If I'd known all it took was pulling your hair a little bit to get you to come here I'd have tried that a lot sooner."
"Please. You were literally just passed out two minutes ago."
He rolled his eyes before threading his fingers through my hair again to keep me in place.
"So? I still would've wanted you to come here."
I was smiling when he pressed his lips to mine and sighed into the kiss, wondering just how it had happened that I'd become so comfortable with him.
The real world was a sword handing over our heads, the danger and disaster looming with a clock ticking down to our demise, but it was like none of that mattered here, in his room, with our phones on chargers on the floor that we hadn't touched in hours.
The rest of the world could wait.
And wait, it did.
His tongue prodded against my lips gently as I let him into my mouth, the kiss coaxing warm sighs from my throat while I rocked into him ever so slightly, tempted to see how far he'd let this go on.
Every time previously, he would stop at just the moment of no return—when it wasn't enough to just have his lips on mine, but to have the entirety of his body enclose me in his warmth.
He'd always stop it, though, and the disappointment had started to turn to feelings of rejection, even though I knew exactly why he'd done it.
He'd told me, plain as day, the reason for him holding back, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he didn't want me.
