He knew what would happen when he teased one stiff nipple with his tongue, as he rubbed over her aching bud. He seemed well aware of the connection between those two things, and how good it felt to have them toyed with at the same time. Then when she moaned and bucked, he went one further. He slid two fingers inside her, thumb still on her clit, mouth still at her breasts. Sometimes licking now and sometimes sucking and always, always making her lose her mind.
She barely knew where she was by the time her orgasm swelled through her. All she could think or see or feel was her clit swelling against his thumb and her cunt clenching around his fingers, every part of her completely present and unself-conscious in the moment. Abandoned to it, she would later think, so eager that she didn’t hesitate when she saw the shadow over his shoulder.
It was only in the aftermath, still glowing with pleasure and lax in his arms, that she realized.
There was someone there, over by the ladder. Chad, her mind informed her.
About a second before the flash of a camera phone lit up the darkness to make his intentions perfectly clear.
Chapter 20
She tried not to think about it too hard. Thinking hard over something like this was her enemy. It made her want to not look at him when he started up the steps that bisected the lecture hall, and maybe pull her hand away the moment he took hold of it. It was resting on her desk and he just casually dropped his over the top, as though nothing had really happened.
Which was kind of true.
It was just her brain that kept telling her otherwise.
It kept whispering that his reaction hadn’t been good enough. He’d immediately bellowed at his friend to get the fuck out of there, but he had said very little about the picture he might have taken. And though he’d told her he had nothing to do with it, she couldn’t help wondering. Maybe it was all part of some elaborate prank—even though the wordelaboratecould never possibly cover something like this. To pretend to like her, to gradually wear her down, to seduce her in the strangest and most unintentional seeming way…it was all way too much effort for a nude picture he could make a joke of. Even Lydia had deemed the idea ridiculous, and she had spent the half hour prior to being told shaking her head over them dating.
He tried to murder you,she had said, which put her firmly in the not-on-his-side column.
If he did something wrong, Lydia would definitely tell her. She would know.
There was just no way.
“Are you okay honey?”
He leaned very close to whisper the words. So close his breath brought up goosebumps in places they didn’t usually occur, like the side of her throat and the curve of her jaw. And then there was the expression on his face—so anxious and vulnerable.
It made any anger or doubt very hard to maintain.
Harder yet when she saw Chad slink into his seat about five rows down. Then he turned just a little, and she saw the reason for his bowed head. He had a black eye the size of a small grapefruit. The lids had swollen to such an extent that seeing was completely impossible, and there were only a couple of explanations. Fewer than a couple, if you factored in Tate’s fist. She hadn’t noticed at first because it was his left, not his right, and he’d kept it out of her line of sight.
But when he reached down for his textbooks and piled them onto his desk…
There it was. A nice, livid corresponding bruise all across his bulky knuckles.
One of his knuckles was almost as black as Chad’s eye, and twice as swollen. Broken, she thought, then got a hot shock of something through her body. Annoyance, she wanted to call it, but annoyance rarely made your heart thump like this. It didn’t make your palms sweaty.
And it definitely didn’t give your voice an awestruck tone when you whispered a question.
“Did you punch him in the face for taking a picture of me?”
“I literally have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Just saying the wordliterallyreally strongly doesn’t make it sound more true.”
“I didn’t say it strongly. I said it in a totally normal way.”
“Even having it in there at all is kind of dubious.”
“Dubious in what way?”
“The lady doth protest way too much.”
He snorted at that, loud enough to almost interrupt Professor Harrison midflow. He was saying something about the grade criteria for the joint projects, and his attention flicked upward. Only briefly though, and not enough to stop their conversation.
They just had to do it more quietly, leaning close enough to feel each other’s breath on their lips and cheeks. To see each other’s eyes in color-streaked snatches.
