“When this happened,” I asked carefully, “did you get mad?”
“Ha,” he said. “Yeah.”
“As mad as you got at Addison last week?”
He colored in the faint glow of the streetlight. “There were a lot of things going on that night, and then what Addison said caught me off guard. I would never lose it like that in front of the team.”
“Good,” I said. “Sometimes the way a guy reacts can just feed the fire, you know? He gets so upset that other guys just want to come after him more.” That’s what Robert and his friends did to freshman boys in the band. The more upset the boys got, the more fun they were to torture.
“I know better,” Max said. “I have experience with being bullied.”
“So after you got hit, you looked like you do now,” I guessed. “Half smiling with your jaw locked, like you’re very angry and holding your breath and waiting for it all to be over.”
“Probably.” His jaw locked again.
“That’s how you looked in the car when you drove me home last Friday, right after you kissed Addison.”
I flushed hot with embarrassment the instant the words left my mouth. I had hoped he’d kissed her only to make me jealous, because he was angry after watching me kiss Carter. But I was way out on a limb, voicing this suspicion.
Max’s brows were down, and his dark eyes held mine.
My heart sped up. It knew what was about to happen, even if I didn’t.
Max reached his good hand behind my head. His fingers slid across the nape of my neck and interlaced themselves in my hair.
He set his forehead against mine, resting there for a moment, making sure I wouldn’t pull away and I wanted this as much as he did.
I cradled his jaw in my hand.
And then he kissed me.
13
This kiss was not tentative like my first kiss with Carter. It was deep immediately. I kissed Max back with the same passion. I had never felt so good in my life.
We leaned against the trunk, with his casted arm sandwiched awkwardly between us. He moved it behind my back. Now we were not only face-to-face but chest-to-chest, thigh-to-thigh. I put both arms around his neck and pulled him even closer. He groaned and slid his good hand out of my hair and down my back.
We kissed that way for a long time. It still felt awkward, standing against the back of the car. But I was afraid that if we stopped, Max would remember Addison, and that would be the end of this. I was going to feel terribly guilty about making out with my best friend’s boyfriend, later. But not right now. Not when my blood sparkled in my veins like this.
It was Max who finally broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine again, panting a little against my lips. “Let’s make better use of this car.”
Heat flashed through me. Obediently I let him go and backed around the car, putting my hand on the passenger door.
He looked across the roof at me from the driver’s side, but he didn’t have his hand on the front door like I did. He had his hand on the back door. He growled, “That is not what I meant, Gemma.”
My hand was trembling as I reached for the other door handle. We closed ourselves into the backseat and met in the middle of all that white leather.
We kissed for a long time, slowly learning each other. Max spent some quality time experimenting with my ear, chuckling every time he found a new way to make me shudder. Chill bumps broke out all over my skin.
Then he slid his hand down to my waistband. Still kissing me, he gently tugged the tail of my shirt out of my shorts. One-handed, he fumbled with opening the lowest button of my shirt, then the next, then the next. Though it was warm in the car, the air felt strangely cold breezing against my stomach. He warmed my bare skin with his hand.
I was not the least bit self-conscious about him touching my waist. I liked being close to Max. But as his hands traveled upward, toward my bra, I kissed him less and shuddered more. Addison had let a guy touch her there last year. I should be ready to let Max feel me up, but I wasn’t. He was the second boy I’d kissed in my whole life.
“No?” Max’s hand stopped on my skin. He pulled away and whispered, “We don’t have to.” But his expression was serious, and he did not take his hand off me. He would stop if I told him to stop, but he didn’t want to stop.
I didn’t want to either. I just wanted more time. Next time, maybe, or the time after that. And I wished that I could tell him this. But as I looked into his eyes, I remembered this would probably be the last time I saw Max.
Our relationship was very, very complicated.
“Let me instead,” I suggested.
He nodded and smoothed his hand down my belly, out from under my shirt. His hand was shaking.
I placed my hands between his T-shirt and his hot skin. He jumped at my touch. As he watched me with his black hair hanging in his dark eyes, he had never looked more sexy, and I had never been more in love with him.
Slowly I worked his T-shirt over his head and off him. I straddled his lap with his strong, bare arms encircling me and kissed him again. I trailed my kisses down his neck and dragged my lips across his chest. My adrenaline spiked every time he gasped. I began to have second thoughts about not letting him put his hands where he wanted.
But time was up. Glancing at my watch, I said sadly, “I have to go. My curfew is early on school nights.”
“Damn it.” Max tightened his hard arms around me and rubbed his cheek against mine. “I don’t want you to go.”
I didn’t want to talk about leaving, because it would lead to a talk about not seeing each other anymore. My head filled with what we would say. Maybe one of us would suggest meeting again behind Addison’s back. Which reminded me of what my dad must have said once upon a time to his girlfriend, when he was still married to my mom.
Instead, I said lightly, “Why’d you shave your goatee?”
“It was itchy when I put my helmet on.”
I ran my thumb along his stubbly chin, where the goatee had been. “Why’d you grow it in the first place?”
“I thought you might like it.”
I giggled. “You thought right. I did like it. I like you without it too. Why don’t you grow it back sometime? We can test which way I like better.”
I stopped stroking his chin. That was exactly what I was trying not to do, hint at what came next for us. Or not.
“That sounds like a plan.” He kissed my cheek, then my lips, seemingly oblivious to the problem that stood in front of us like a roadblock.