Page 67 of Raspados & Regret

A gentle push moves me backward a fraction, and he stares at my mouth, licking his own lips, swollen and red from mine. “They’re gonna notice.”

“They notice everything already.” I nudge his nose with mine.

“Yeah, but this time I look⁠—”

“Like you’ve been kissed stupid?”

His lips are swollen, bitten, and glistening. Mine probably are too. His hair is messed up where I touched it. The glasses still hang from my collar and his silver chain is crooked, caught on the collar of his shirt. His shorts are twisted slightly from where my hands grabbed him, yanked him against me, and held him there.

The sight hits me so hard I almost kiss him again, almost shove him back against the trailer and keep going until neither of us can walk, until we’re both shaking and spent and marked.

He follows my gaze and looks down at himself, then at me, and his smile comes back—slow and satisfied.

“You proud of yourself?” he says, rolling his eyes.

“A lil bit.” I pull back, and the look on his face has me contemplating patting myself on the back.

He laughs, and I want to swallow that sound, want to feel it vibrate against my tongue. I reach for him again—can’t even help it anymore—and he steps back, just out of reach, grinning, eyes bright and happy.

“Uh uh,” he teases. “We gotta go back.”

“Come here.”

“Make me.”

“Lalito.” His name comes out warning-low again, desperate and hungry, making him shiver at the sound of it.

He steps closer, bold now that he knows what my mouth feels like, now that he knows I want him back just as badly. “Careful, Salcedo. You keep saying my name like that, and I’m gonna think you like me.”

I fix my shirt slowly, fingers trembling, and then I look at him. “I don’t like you.”

His smile does not falter. “No?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“You just make out with all the men you hate behind trailers?”

“Just you, Cárdenas.” I smirk.

“Special treatment again.” He slaps his chest.

“Don’t get used to it.”

He steps in until his chest nearly touches mine, until I can feel the heat radiating off him, until I can smell him—syrup and sweat and want. His voice drops to a whisper, rough and intimate.

“Too late.”

My pulse kicks, hard and fast, and I hate him.

I also want to throw him over my shoulder and walk past the tent, straight to my truck. Drive back to my apartment and see what he sounds like when he’s underneath me.

A golf cart rolls past the far end of the trailer row, and we both step apart like teenagers caught, like we weren’t just grinding against each other in the dark, like our hands weren’t under each other’s clothes.

The security guy doesn’t look our way. Still, reality rushes back in.

The booth.

Our families.