I can do this.

I took his hand and pulled him out of the chair. I didn’t have to pull very hard—it was more an issue of guiding him where I wanted him. Onto the bed. With me. “I wanna do some of them, before it’s too late.”

I scooted backward and he crawled over my legs and up my torso as I lay back on the pillows, and my heart beat so hard I could hear it echo in my ears.

“This is why you closed the door?” he whispered, dropping a series of tiny kisses at the back of my jaw.

“It wasn’t premeditated….” I breathed, running my hands over the front of his shirt, feeling the planes beneath. Was his heart beating as hard as mine? Was that even possible?

“Coulda fooled me.”

“Shut up.” I slid one hand behind his neck and pulled him down until his mouth met mine. His lips were warm and soft, and the taste of him brought back nothing but good memories—the only advantage to having been possessed by a hellion is that you don’t actually remember what happened while you were away from your body. Which made it just a little easier for me to push aside the knowledge that he’d been less than trustworthy in the past and just decide to trust Nash now.

I’d been unable to do that completely so far, but knowing I was going to die soon—knowing I was about to lose my chance—made me bold. Not quite fearless, like Sabine, but definitely brave. And more than a little eager.

My mouth opened beneath his, and Nash kissed me deeper. His weight settled onto me, heavy and warm, and very, very real. A nervous tingling started in the pit of my stomach and spread like pins and needles everywhere Nash touched me. I’d never felt more alive, and the irony in that thought did not escape me.

This is going to happen. I was ready, mostly because there was no more time to not be ready—not unless I wanted to die a virgin. And of all the things I still wanted to do before I died, this was the only one within reach.

Nash’s mouth trailed down my throat, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the electric feel of his hands, the scalding heat from his lips. Letting it all overwhelm the sharp edge of fear holding steady like the eye of the storm raging around me. I had a lot of things to be scared of—real things—but this wasn’t one of them. And slowly, I let my hands trail down from his chest to the waist of his jeans.

I gave the top flap of denim one sharp tug, and the button slid through the hole.

“Whoa…!” Nash rolled onto his side, staring down at me in confusion. “What are you doing?”

“I think you’re pretty familiar with the concept….”

His gaze searched mine. “Is this a test? Should I ask what color your first bike was?”

I laughed. Six weeks earlier, I’d used that question as a sort of password, to make sure I wasn’ttalking to a hellion who’d hijacked my friend Alec’s body. “I’m not possessed.” I looked up at him from the pillow, letting him see the truth on my face. “I’m just ready.”

“You weren’t ready last week.” Nash sat up, frowning down at me from the edge of my bed now. “And the only thing that’s changed is…”

“The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m dying. I’m out of time, Nash, and I want to do this. Now.” Before I got nervous, or scared, or started to feel really, really embarrassed by the fact that I was having to convince him.

“Your dad’s in the other room.”

“So let’s go to your house.”

He shook his head slowly. “My mom’s home.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go to the lake.”

“Kaylee…” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands, then looked at me with the most conflicted regret I’d ever seen. “You know I want to, but…”

I sat up, and I could feel my cheeks flaming. Was he turning me down? After all the times he’d hinted, and asked, and outright pushed? “But what?” I demanded, and I could hear the bite in my own voice.

“Not like this. You don’t really want this. You’re just trying to avoid thinking about next Thursday. Or maybe you’re trying to cross things off some kind of morbid checklist. Either way, this isn’t really what you want, and—”

“Don’t tell me what I want!” I snapped, but he only put his hand over mine and leaned closer, so that I had to see the depth of the regret swirling in his eyes.

“—and I swore to you once that I knew you well enough to know when you want to stop, even if you can’t tell me. Don’t make a liar out of me, Kaylee. Not again.”

He was right. Damn it.

“Okay, I get it. But things have changed.” I sucked in a deep breath and looked right into his eyes, begging him silently to understand. “Everything’s changed, Nash. I do want you. And you want me. You’ve wanted this for months, and now we’ve only got six days to make it happen before we both lose our chance.”

He closed his eyes, and I realized that was to prevent me from seeing whatever he couldn’t stop them from showing. When he finally opened his eyes, they shined with good humor, and only the lines in his forehead told me it was forced. “How did this turn into you begging me for sex?” He grinned, and I laughed out loud.

“You’re not gonna let me live it down, are you?”

Nash’s smile faltered. “No more life and death jokes, Kaylee. This is hard enough as it is.”

“They say humor is the best defense.”