I smile, finding it hard to believe I’m mooning over a girl in class like I’m a thirteen-year-old virgin.
The end of a pencil is in Em’s mouth and when she pulls it free, there are deep dimples in the wood from her teeth. Would they make that same pattern if they were to bite down on her arm while she’s coming? Probably.
And more probably, before we got to that point, they’d make the same marks while she used them to bite through my dick.
She turns far enough to catch me looking from the corner of her eye. She immediately mugs me, then scowls when I continue staring at her.
I love the trace of annoyance that flashes across her face. The crinkle that forms between her eyebrows. The way she wrinkles her nose before she turns to back to stare at the teacher
My phone buzzes with a text.“Need info on LL Straughn. Standard package.”
I fight back a groan.
The info scrapes had been fun at first. Poking my nose into other people’s business has long been a pet hobby. Combine that with my first proper paycheque and I was all over the job like a stubborn rash.
Since then, Stefan’s reliance on me—something that should fill me with pride—has become a drag. I don’t enjoy being at someone’s beck and call. Even worse when it’s someone with so much power he could dispose of me without ever leaving a trace.
An image swamps my mind, overpowering to the point I clamp my hands to the sides of the desk, unable to tell the difference between the memory and my current reality.
The scent of blood, meaty and metallic, floods my nostrils. I breathe through my mouth, but that’s worse. It feels like particles of my dead friend are adhering to my tongue, being swallowed down along with the gush of saliva.
Not that he’d looked like my friend. Not at the end.
Em gives an annoyed laugh, and it’s like a beacon to jerk me back to the present. The visceral image fades as quickly as it arrived, leaving me sweating and breathless.
I reorientate to the here and now. The smell of sweat and hairspray in the classroom, the sun reflecting off the bright white window ledge. The plastic seat underneath my arse.
The ponytail flicking back and forth with indignation as Em discusses her test results with the teacher. Her voice is already loud, and it’s growing in volume. So loud it’s hard to hear the edge of panic buried deep in her voice.
I don’t know what she’s got to be panicky about. It’s not like she’s headed to uni after this year.
Em jerks her chair as she uncrosses and recrosses her ankles and I place the sole of my timberlands against the rear leg, pushing it so she’s angled more towards the window than the teacher.
Her head whips around, eyes so razor sharp they cut me. Thin lines of pain that seep out blood, beading in small, delicious droplets. I blink and the image becomes real, crimson lines streaking my hands and wrists, then I blink again and it’s gone.
I rub the back of my hands and push against her chair again. The squeak of metal against wood draws the glare of the teacher and my smile reappears as he fixes it on Em.
The moment he looks away, she turns to me. “Quit it.”
She stays turned my way. Long enough that I can appreciate the sculpted line of her lower lip, so plump that it’s practically begging someone to bite into it, to see if it tastes as fresh and as ripe as it appears. Her top lip is non-existent, curled inward so all that shows is the vermillion border.
The angled entrance looks purpose built for sucking cock. Every part of her, from the onyx shine of her long hair to the lush curves of her breasts and arse looks like it was built to fuck. Nothing more. Just fuck all day long, every day.
I shove her chair again, harder, and she leans over, holding the pointed lead of her pencil to my throat, eyes glinting with promise. “Fuck off,” she mouths, a few strands of her hair sticking to the corner of her lips until I stroke them aside. Back into place.
I lean forward until I can feel the lead digging into the skin of my neck, piercing right next to the jut of my windpipe. I run my tongue over my lips slowly, watching as her eyes fasten to them, watching her pupils expand.
“You had something to say, Mercer?”
I put my palm in the centre of Em’s face and push her back, smirking. “Not me. But maybe Em had something she wanted to share with the class.”
What she shares with them is her bared teeth before she ducks her head forward, pulling the elastic from her hair so all that magnificence disappears behind the shine of her dark locks.
Hiding behind her hair. I tilt my head to the side as I look past her, catching each movement from my peripheral vision and storing it carefully away.
She’s never struck me as vulnerable before. All that sass, swagger, and bitchiness takes centre stage every time she’s around. It never occurred to me something else could lurk under that thick armour.
When the class mercifully ends, I swipe my textbooks off the desk and carry them in front of my body, hiding the last of my interest.
