“Alex, I know how smart you are. You know I don’t want to be your friend. I can avoid you, I can try and pretend like you never existed, but no part of me wants to be your friend.”

She could feel her every defense slipping, the rigorous indifference she had spent a decade trying to build up against him crumbling in a matter of seconds, all because of a silly dare.

“And why is that?” she asked, looking directly into his eyes and challenging him to answer sincerely, “Why don’t you want to be my friend?”

There was another silence, and his eyes briefly shot behind her at laughter rising in the distance.

“You want to hear it?”

“Yes,” she answered, motionless, back still pressed to the door. “Why?”

He moved to meet her, his chest ragged with the intensity of his breathing as his hand shook slightly at his side. He stopped only a few inches from her face, bearing down on her.

“Because I don’t want to do this to my friends,” he said, wrapping a hand behind her back and pulling her tight against his body. He drew her closer, until their noses were nearly touching. “I don’t spend every waking second thinking about my friends, imagining how they taste, biting the inside of my cheek until it bleeds to stop myself from saying something.”

She felt weightless with ecstasy, never wanting it to end.

“Every minute on this godforsaken boat has been torture,” he whispered. “I get hard every morning just thinking about what you’re going to wear that day.”

“Yeah?”

“Like,” he ran a finger under the neckline of her top, “What the hell is this?”

“A blouse.” She smiled, bringing her lips dangerously close to his.

“When we fought on the deck, and you took off your dress?” His eyes rolled back in his head with the thought of it, biting his lip.

“You remember that?”

“I told you,” he said. “I remember everything.”

His lips met hers, hands gripping her wrists and pinning them over her head against the door. His body felt exquisite against her own, strong and lean and full of repressed energy. He moaned into her, the low vibration of it moving from his lips into her own. And she felt an exquisite confidence overcome her as he gave her the affirmation she had waited over ten years for, blooming in its warmth.

He transferred her wrists to a single hand, gripping them more tightly as he skimmed her bare stomach with his free hand before grabbing the bottom of her skirt. Freeing himself momentarily from her kiss, he spoke again:

“I could have killed that man last night,” he said through gritted teeth, eyes still closed, lifting her hem and gliding his hand up the inside of her thigh. “I hate what he said about you.” He paused, lips brushing hers with every word. “I hate that he got to touch you.”