Chapter 9: Rule Three

I pulled him through the door by his hoodie.

It shut behind us with a heavy click, and the room went dark except for the crack of city light at the curtains.

"Rule three," Rhett said against my hair.

"Shut up about the rules."

"No sex."

"Then stop me."

He didn't.

He stood very still, breathing hard, with his hands on my hips and not one inch of space between us.

I reached up and pulled the hood off his head.

I touched the bandage on his eyebrow with two fingertips, very gently.

"You covered a kid with your face," I whispered.

"You said that already."

"I'm going to say it again."

I kissed the corner of his mouth, then the other corner, then the full warm center.

He made a sound low in his chest.

It was not a polite sound.

His hands slid up my back, under my shirt, and spread over my bare skin.

They were huge.

I shivered.

"Melina," he said, rough. "Tell me what you want."

"I want you to stop being careful."

"I've been careful for a month."

"I know. It's making me crazy."

That broke something in him.

He walked me backward across the room, mouth on mine, until the backs of my knees hit the bed.

He pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the carpet.

Then he looked at me, in the half dark, in my plain black bra, and his breath went out of him in a rush.

"Jesus," he said.

"I'm not a stat sheet."

"I can see that."

His fingers traced the edge of the bra, along my collarbone, down the soft curve of my stomach.

I am not a small girl.

I am a size fourteen, with a belly and wide hips and thighs that rub together.

I had spent half my life hiding all of it under a team quarter-zip.

He stared at every inch.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said, and his voice cracked in the middle.

My eyes stung.

"Take your shirt off," I said.

He reached over his shoulder and yanked it off in one motion.

I had been to a hundred games.

I had seen him shirtless in the locker room doorway.

I had never been allowed to touch.

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