Relenting, I drop my bag to the ground, hiding it as well as I can by the bike before jogging to catch up with him.
He walks with a bit of… swagger, if you will. His pants hang low on his waist, and his hair sways in the wind.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, itching to go back to campus so I can put my face into a textbook.
“Soaking in the fresh air, I guess.” Maxwell stops walking, turning to look at me, but I wasn’t ready for him to stop. I slam right into him, just as we did in the hallway.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Let’s get ice cream,” he says.
“I can’t have ice cream.”
“Why? You lactose intolerant or something?”
“I am, actually.”
“Fine. Let’s get fried dough instead,” he offers.
“I can’t have gluten either.”
“Jesus, what do you eat daily? Grass?” He raises an eyebrow at me, mocking my dietary restrictions.
“Screw you,” I spit. There is nothing tolerable about this man. Being in his general vicinity right now has me seething.
People keep walking by and around us, muttering under their breath about us being in the way. Impeding foot traffic, but Maxwell doesn’t seem to care. He proves me wrong when he pulls me onto a side street between buildings and shoves me into a brick wall. My back meets the hard surface, and a loudoofleaves my lips.
His hand snakes right up to my throat, and he holds me there. Anger simmers in his eyes, his fingers gripping as my pulse hammers beneath them. He is so close to me that I can feel the heat of his breath fanning across my face.
“What is your issue with me? I haven’t done a single thing to you, Clayton.” His voice is deep, laced with that rage running through his blood.
My body gets the wrong message, and the heat floods not only to my cock, but my face too. Embarrassment runs through me at the prospect of being turned on by him. It’s sick.Disgusting.I hate him a little more because of it, but myself, too.
He looks down, catching the evidence on full display, but doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even smirk. He waits for an answer to his question.
“I’m not some stupid kid. I’m not whoever the fuck you think I am, but please, tell me who you think the fuck I am.”
“You’re someone who has it handed to you. You don’t have to work for anything because no matter the trouble you get into, you find your daddy to get out of it. You walk around campus like you own the place, not caring about the work. News flash, Maxwell, some people have to work to get to where they are.”
He scoffs at me, shoving me harder into the wall and cutting off the little breath I have.
“I don’t just show up to campus for free because ofDaddy.I pay my way through. I don’t act like I own the place. It isn’t my faultthat people are fans of me and what I do. And it’s funny to me how you assume I don’t do the work. You want to see my portal and look at my grades? I think you’d be disappointed to know you’re wrong.” His words come out harsh, pushed out between clenched teeth. He doesn’t let me answer when he pulls his phone from his pants pocket, tapping on his screen until he shows it to me.
All of his grades are A’s.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Fucking oh. Find out who I am before you go flapping your gums next time, huh, Clayton?”
I lean my head back against the wall when his fingers loosen. My cock is still straining against my jeans, and I hate that my body can’t understand what’s going on. My body doesn’t care what my mind has to say.
“And maybe if you weren’t hard for me right now, I’d believe that you hate me.”
There it is. The mocking.
“I do hate you.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
