“Not really.” I took another bite of my almost forgotten sandwich and wished I’d grabbed a milk to wash it down. I took a swig of my water, instead. “I did fall face and eyes into a really cute guy my first day here if that counts.”
Her eyebrows shifted up and down. “Cute boy, huh? What’s his name?”
“Bash Reeves,” I murmured, trying to pitch my voice low so others wouldn’t hear. They were definitely listening in on our conversation, I decided.
“No shit!” Rory’s excitement burst out. We got lots of shushes for that one but she looked unperturbed. “That boy is a hell of a lot more than just “cute” and he just happens to be the single most eligible bachelor on campus. Did he happen to fall face and eyes into you, too?” Her eyes sparkled so brightly it made my cheeks flush.
My first instinct was to deny everything, I wasn’t exactly experienced in this type of thing. Then, I remembered Sara and Bethany sharing the details of their crushes and how that vulnerability had made them all so much closer. I bit the bullet and nodded. “Yeah, he’s definitely interested but his freaking sister…”
“Daniella?” Rory hissed, her eyebrows pulling down in sharp vees. She made a sound of disgust. “I hate that…” she seemed to search for the right word and settled on, “snaggle toothed bitch,” which made me giggle. “What’d she do?”
I huffed out a breath and shook my head. “Well, she broke into the headmistress’s office and stole my confidential file, for one.”
“No fucking way!” Rory’s eyes were as round as saucers. “It’s insane what people like her can get away with. And I bet you didn’t even report it did you? Because you know she’d get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, if that, for breaking, entering, and theft.”
I nodded. “Chances are she got one of her bitch pack to grab it for her. Keep the paws clean and all that.”
“Bitch pack,” Rory repeated slowly as if sampling the words. “I like that.” She took another bite of hummus then choked and motioned with widened eyes toward the main library.
I turned, expecting to see the queen of the bitch pack herself come striding toward us, pack in tow but, instead, I saw Bash moving steadily toward me with a sexy half grin on his face. I nearly choked on my sandwich and prayed I didn’t have peanut butter on my face.
“Hey.” He stopped a few feet away from my chair and just smiled at me. He might as well have climbed into the chair with me for all the punch of pheromones that preceded him, hitting me like a wall of sexy temptation. I lifted the bottle of water to my lips, needing to wet my suddenly bone-dry throat, and saw his eyes flicker to my mouth.
“Hey,” I managed to respond like one of the great orators of history. Nothing more came to mind as I pictured making out with him in the book stacks.
A hand that wasn’t Bash’s touched my arm and I jumped out of sheer surprise that anyone other than the two of us existed in the world right now. I darted my gaze away from his piercing emerald eyes and over to Rory, whose eyes were still huge and filled with glee. “Um,” she whispered under her breath, “I’m going to go check out the stacks. I’ll text you later, cool?” She hopped up, grabbed her bag, and took another bite of hummus covered snap pea.
“Cool,” I murmured, watching her as she passed Bash with a brilliant smile then spun around once she was behind him. Her thumbs shot up and she did a little dance to show how awesome she thought this meeting was. When she’d disappeared into the stacks, I shifted my gaze back to Bash and saw that he was watching me with more than a little amusement. “Hey,” I repeated as a slow heat started at my core and worked its way quickly to my cheeks.
He crossed the distance between us with long strides that brought my attention to his legs. They were fine legs, long and lean. They’d looked good when he was his wolf, too, I remembered.
Bash grabbed the big chair Rory had been curled in and pulled it closer to my chair with what seemed like little to no effort at all. My mouth went dry.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said simply, leaving out small talk, which, oddly, made me feel a little more surefooted. This place was so fancy and filled with rich wolves that I felt like a yokel more often than not. Bash didn’t make me feel like that. His sister, on the other hand, did.
“Yeah?” I tilted my head slightly and watched him watching me.
“Yeah.” He smiled and casually reached out a hand to trace the top of my thigh. I held back a gasp as his fingertips lit fires along my uncovered skin and kept my gaze on his, unwilling to back down from the unspoken challenge flashing in his emerald greens.
“What’d you want to talk about?” I forced my system to slow down and inhale oxygen, knowing I’d keep coming off like a ditz if I didn’t breathe.
He leaned in even closer and all sound in the library stopped. I wasn’t sure if it was happening in my imagination or if literally everyone around us had stopped so much as breathing to listen in on what had to be juicy gossip. My lips curled up in a smirk. Daniella was going to hear about this within minutes and be so pissed.
Fuck her.
I leaned towards him, closing the small distance until we were so close that I could feel the heat of his breath and smell the coffee he’d drank earlier. I pulled his scent in through my nose and held it, savoring it, savoring him. My lips parted.
His gaze flicked from my eyes to my lips for an instant, pausing there long enough to make my heart skip a beat then begin galloping. He inhaled, closing his eyes for a moment, then a knowing smile lifted his lips and he closed the distance between us.
He tasted like dark roast, chocolate, and wolf. My hands reached for his neck without coherent thought and delved into the thick mass of midnight colored hair to pull him nearer. This wasn’t my first kiss, I was inexperienced not innocent, but I might as well have been. None of the boys I’d kissed back home had ever made me feel this longing to nip and bite, to tear and howl. I opened to the gentle pressure of his tongue and deepened the kiss.
I’m not sure how long we were in each other’s arms when a librarian saw us and cleared her throat loud enough to have me jumping back and Bash grinning impishly with a glint of wolf in his eyes. I turned my head, suddenly aware of our audience, but stopped when Bash reached out and brought my face back to look at him. Only him.
He leaned in again and I thought he would kiss me but, instead, he laid his forehead on mine and murmured quietly, “I think you’d better give me your number so we can do this again without all the voyeurs.”
My stomach flipped at the thought of touching him, kissing him, and more, in private without a librarian or peeping Toms to stop us. I took his offered cell phone and programed my number into its memory. I passed it back to him and prayed to the Old Ones he’d use it soon.
Bash stood up, leaving me cold where his body had touched mine, and tucked his cell into a back pocket. “See you soon?”
I nodded without saying a word, unsure I’d be able to speak, and watched him turn and walk away.
When he was out of sight, I collapsed back into my chair and let loose the sigh that had been building inside me since the moment I’d seen him. All around me hushed voices burst into conversation and I heard frantic texting. I should have been upset at the breach of my privacy but I couldn’t manage to feel anything but self-satisfaction. Let them gossip, I thought, smiling at the intricate atrium ceiling.
My phone dinged a moment later, and I grabbed it, thinking it had to be Rory looking for an update. Shock and pleasure surged when I saw a short message from a new contact, one that simple asked, “Be my date to the party tonight?”