Chapter 6: No Cameras

His mouth was hungry and careful at once.

I kissed him back.

The brick scraped my shoulder blades, and I didn't care.

His hand slid into my hair.

The other one found my waist and pulled me in until no air was left between us.

When he finally lifted his head, we were both panting.

"That's not in the rules," I said.

"I know."

"You said no kissing without a camera."

"There were no cameras," he said. "You checked."

"I was checking if you'd lie."

"I didn't."

I looked at his mouth, wet and a little swollen, and at the chipped tooth.

My whole body was humming.

Five years with Corbin, and nobody had ever kissed me like I was a fact.

"Is this the part where you tell me it was a mistake?" I said.

"Is this the part where you tell me?"

"Take me home," I said. "My home."

His eyes went dark.

"Say it again."

"Take me to my apartment, Ashton."

We took the green truck.

He didn't speak the whole way, and his right hand never left my thigh.

My building was a four-story stucco box in Highland Park with a broken buzzer.

He followed me up the stairs, so close that I felt his breath on my neck at every landing.

At my door, my key wouldn't turn.

He put his hand over mine, steadied it, and the lock clicked.

Inside, the apartment looked smaller than it ever had.

The two chairs, the dead plant, the bed I'd made.

"It's not much," I said.

"It's yours," he said, and shut the door behind him.

He didn't turn on the light, and I was glad.

The streetlamp came through the blinds in stripes and laid them across his chest.

I pulled his shirt up and over his head, and he let me.

His chest was lean and warm, with a scatter of freckles across the shoulders and a line of black ink across his ribs.

It was a lyric, in small cramped letters.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fake Boyfriend Is a Global Superstar from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.