Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I hate you.
And God, I fucking need this.
His tongue slid out a moment later, slick and warm and so fucking inviting, another thing I didn’t want to resist. His hands settled at my hips and he gave me a squeeze as he kissed me, slowly and deliberately.
Maybe I really was a slut for attention. Or maybe I just lost my mind when someone was this good of a kisser, and I didn’t stand a chance at refusing something that felt like this.
After a night of feeling so scatterbrained and lost, his touch felt like an anchor back to myself.
When I was overthinking everything, I felt airheaded. But when I just let myself feel something this good… everything seemed to make sense.
Even though it fucking didn’t make sense.
He pulled away right as Luke and Carter’s voices came from the front doors of Student Hall.
I blinked and looked at Gray’s face, his lips still slicked, and his gaze half-lidded and fucking irresistible.
He put his finger on my throat for a moment, dragging his knuckle along the exposed front curve of my neck.
All he did was trace a little line there, with barely any pressure at all. But it felt like he may as well have had me collared. Hypnotized by any little touch he would give me.
He dropped his hand away right as Luke stepped out.
“Peachel, it’s poker time,” Luke said, coming up behind me and clapping me on the back, like he was knocking me back into reality. “Gray, are you out here hounding our boy for information? Here’s something you can write in your article. Andrew Peachel is going to get his ass beat in a poker game, the night after the bake off, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
“Have fun,” Gray said, giving us an upward nod before heading off across the quad.
CHAPTER 6
GRAY
“Going to make me late, yellow card.”
An old emotion settled in my veins the moment I heard the stranger’s voice, coming from a couple of spots behind me in the cafeteria line.
It wasn’t quite anger. Maybe something close.
A bitter little pit in my stomach.
The cafeteria lady was standing there with my school-issued meal card in one hand, lips pursed as she stared down at the machine and swiped the plastic through the reader for the fifth time.
“System’s acting up with these cards today,” she muttered, tapping her nails on the countertop and pausing to glance over at her phone in the meantime.
My spine felt hot.
I could feel the line of students waiting there behind me, could feel their eyes landing on the fact that my card was one of the bright yellow ones instead of the usual white with TNU green print.
The yellow card was for students who were on the discounted meal program.
Only available to students who were poor enough to be eligible for it.
There were restrictions to how much I could use it, but the food was a fraction of the price. I knew I’d only used it four times this week, and there was no shot that I was up to my limit yet. But the lady kept swiping and swiping, and nothing was happening.
Something tightened in my stomach.
“Listen, bro, I’ll just pay for his lunch,” one of the guys behind me said. “Not wasting my time like this. How much could a sandwich even be?”
I heard his friends laughing under their breath at his comment.
I stamped out the growing blaze in my chest like I was trying to contain a wildfire. When I was younger, I would have snapped.
Whenever people used to try to fuck with me when I was a teenager, I didn’t have any ability to hold back.
I’d have punched him. Punched his giggling friends, too.
It always hurt the worst when it came out of nowhere.
I was able to go through most days now feeling something like normal. I could blend in among trust fund kids. I could handle college students who had no experience with how cold the world could really be.
And then that dark snake inside me would coil around my heart all over again, gripping tight, reminding me.
Nope.
You’re not like them.
You never have been, and you never could be.
The cafeteria lady sighed, tapping a few times on her screen, shaking her head.
“I just don’t know what it’s doing—oh. There we go. The transaction went through.”
She handed me my card and it felt like finally coming up for air after drowning.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“Halle-fuckin-lujah,” one of the guys said behind me. “Next time I’ll just bring a soup can for the guy or something.”
Just leave.
Just get out of here.
I gripped my wrapped sandwich and walked out of the cafeteria before I did something stupid.
Like turning around and killing him.
Like ripping his fucking head off.
I crossed the quad, the wind blowing across my hot skin. The wind rustled the leaves of the trees, which were just starting to get edged with gold and red. I was wearing a sweater but I almost wished I had a scarf when the wind blew.