Page 103 of And Now, Back to You

Kiss me, Delilah. Please.

Kiss me, Delilah. Please.

Please, please, please.

Jackson groans into my neck while I fight with my phone, desperately trying to turn it off.

“What are you doing?” he mumbles. He raises his head and blinks blearily. “What the hell is that noise?”

“I don’t know!” I cry, trying to close out of the app. But I only turn the volume higher. Whoever made this audio used the hitch in my breath right before I kissed Jackson as some sort of percussion echo. It’s creative, if not wildly mortifying. I didn’t think anything would be more embarrassing than all of Baltimore hearing me kiss Jackson, but here we are.

Jackson reaches up with a grunt and grabs my phone, muting it. The ensuing silence is the loudest thing I’ve ever had to endure. My cheeks are on fire.

He drops his face back to my neck.

“Did someone remix our leaked audio into a dance track?” he asks.

I shift, tossing my phone back onto the nightstand. I debate lying. I debate rolling out from under him and locking myself in the bathroom. I debate walking directly into the lake. But he’s warm and I’m comfortable and my grandpa always said honesty is the best policy, so—“Yes,” I say. I pause. “Do you want to know how many likes it has?”

His sigh is long-suffering. “Am I going to be baffled or humiliated?”

“Probably a combination of both.”

“Then, no. I’m good.”

He shifts again and his hips slot in between my splayed thighs, his head turning so his cheek is flat against my breasts. His body is deliciously heavy, pressing me down into the mattress. Smooth lines and warm skin. He settles with a little groan, and something thick and hard presses against my inner thigh. My face feels like it’s about to melt off.

It’s morning, I try to rationalize. This is normal.

But I just listened to him panting into a microphone, begging me to kiss him set to a Phil Collins drumbeat, and rationalization has no hope against my desire to jump his bones.

I relax beneath him. His hand shifts, his thumb tracing down the line of my neck. He makes a small, bitten-off sound when I arch slightly. I doubt I’d have heard it if we weren’t tucked together.

“Good morning,” he slurs, and I laugh, scratching my nails against the back of his neck. It’s unfair that I’m enjoying this so much. A handful of lazy seconds in a sleep-warmed bed, thin light filtering in through the window.

I like that I get to hear the first words out of his mouth. I like the way he’s holding me. I like the way his hips keep rolling against me, my nipples pebbling beneath my shirt, the space between my legs wanting to shift and roll and grind.

His warm breath tickles the spot beneath my ear. I squirm.

“What time is it?” he asks, his voice like sandpaper.

“Around eight.”

I can practically feel the way his brain and body come back online, a tension rippling from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The easy, soft motion he was moving against me with is replaced by an unnatural stillness, his hips shifting away.

I sigh.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did.”

“I was led to believe that was unintentional.” He settles his palm against my hip, squeezing. “How bad is it?” he asks.

“What? The social stuff?”

He nods. “I haven’t looked. Aiden has alluded to it and the girls said something about DECKSON, but—”

I laugh. “DECKSON?”