Wilder at Heart (Love in London #4)

Prologue 10 Years Earlier

NORA

What do you get when you cross stuffy portraits from the Stuart period with a shit-load of ultra-violet lights?

The Freshers Week Glow in the Dark Paint Party at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of course.

In other words, utter debauchery.

The Old Library, where the party’s being held, dates back even further than these paintings, to the Elizabethan era, but no one in the room gives a flying fuck.

No one feels the judgement radiating from these Stuart men and women looking down their oil-painted noses.

And while the architecture and art are centuries old, no one at tonight’s party has racked up more than a couple of decades on this earth.

The scene before me is the epitome of entitlement: the crème de la crème of the next generation of British society. Industry. Government. Already half-naked and getting down to some serious shenanigans like it’s their birthright.

It’s not my birthright.

But believe me when I say I am there for it.

Because unlike a lot of the people in this room, and against all odds, I’ve worked my arse off to be here.

My brand-new friend Elle is as entitled as everyone else here, but she wears it well.

I’ve only known her a couple of days, but I can tell she’s spent her school years gravitating towards Cambridge as if it were inevitable.

She’s already explained, in a genuinely non-obnoxious way, that she’s ended up at Emmanuel because her aunt and uncle met here, and her three boy cousins came here, and the youngest is still here and helped her out by having her to stay when she was looking around colleges.

It doesn’t help that she’s unnaturally, staggeringly gorgeous and articulate. I really want to hate her. But she’s an utter delight. A ray of sunshine. So when she decides to take me under her wing, I allow myself to be her orphaned duckling. Her pet project.

Because while the machinations of a place like Cambridge are in many ways new and mysterious, they’re also as old as time.

This place is tribal. That much is obvious immediately.

And if I have someone as lovely and knowledgeable and obviously at home here (and by at home I mean she fits right in, immediately, as if she belongs here), my chances of drowning in a place that’s still a lot more blue-blooded than it should be are lessened.

Anyway. Enough of my left-wing musings, because despite myself, I’m already being drawn in. Hooked. By this intoxicating mix of people whose confidence is self-fulfilling. They’re high on their own publicity, and I’m close to fangirling.

It helps that Elle and I have gone matchy-matchy in white t-shirts, knotted high on our stomachs to make crop tops, white hot pants and strappy heels.

And it helps that we shared a bottle of white wine in her room before we came downstairs.

We look good together, and we feel good.

We’ve made a deal that we’re each going to kiss someone tonight.

It’s not ideal that my pulling partner is indecently beautiful, but I already know we won’t get hit on by the same guys. And I’m fine with that.

We necked a couple of shots each at the bar when we arrived, and we’re back on the white wine as we dance with a few other girls from our corridor.

There are glow-in-the-dark pens everywhere, and we’ve graffitied our t-shirts, shorts and most of our limbs in ultra-violet rainbows.

As the music gets worse, our dance moves grow more flamboyant.

We gyrate to Starships and I laugh hysterically as Elle executes the Gangnam Style dance routine in an utterly flawless manner.

How she still manages to look sexy doing it, I have no bloody idea.

The guys are circling around us like moths to a flame, and it’s not hard to see who they’re after.

But Elle doesn’t bite. She ignores them and pulls me in towards her, throwing her arms around me as Guetta’s Titanium comes on.

We scream in unison and we go for it, its insane beat pulsing through us as we lose ourselves in the music.

Until the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen materialises in front of us.

He’s a vision and I am thirsty. He’s not gorgeous in the way that any of the sporty guys back home are.

No, this guy’s a walking Patek Philippe ad.

He has that flawless skin, even tan and glossy, floppy dark hair that says we summer at Daddy’s villa on Como and we winter in St Barths.

Someone has drawn a scrotum on his forehead that’s glowing neon pink, and it doesn’t even detract from his stunning good looks.

Not one jot. Nor does his totally (and predictably) Eurotrash look of fitted white jeans, an equally (and gratifyingly) fitted white t-shirt, and loafers (no socks.

Obvs). His clothes are covered in graffiti, and yet he still manages to look like he’s just stepped off his yacht.

Obviously, on a normal day I’d laugh this guy out of town, because come on.

He has entitled twat written all over him.

But when I’m high as a kite on wine and shots and the buzz of finally being at Cambridge, and when David Guetta’s particular form of magic is running through my veins, I can’t take my eyes off him.

While I mentally undress him (which is in itself ridiculous because (a) I’ve never undressed a guy before IRL and (b) he’s way out of my league), my brain notes that he’s grinning straight at Elle.

Of course he is. Shit shit shit.

Elle screams when she sees him and throws her arms around him, and he lifts her up and spins her round.

Lucky, lucky Elle. They probably summer together.

They probably went to some entitled-kids’ summer camp in Lausanne and rode wild ponies and had their first kiss under the Swiss stars. They probably—

‘Nora!’ Elle extricates herself from The God and drags him towards me. She leans forward and shouts in my ear to make herself heard above Titanium. ‘This is my cousin, Theo! The one I told you about, who let me stay with him! He’s a Third Year here!’

Oh my God. Cousin? Does that mean… the upper classes don’t still think it’s okay to shag their cousins, do they?

Elle steps back and pushes Theo The Divine forward, and before I know it, he’s giving me the full wattage of his grin, which is sublime, and leaning in to me, and kissing me on the cheek, and I miraculously recall that everyone here is posh enough to kiss people on both cheeks, so I manage not to mess up and I offer him my second cheek.

And he smells so good that I could take his smell to my deathbed with me.

Honestly.

‘Hi Nora.’

He stays close, his voice raised above the music. He says my name like it’s a rude word, but like a sexual rude word. How does he do that? He kind of drawls it suggestively. Oh my God.

‘Welcome to Cambridge. How are you enjoying Emma?’

I’m not so far gone with lust and visions of marriage that I can’t remember Emma is Emmanuel, so I squeak out a reply in the vicinity of his ear.

His voice is exactly as I would have imagined.

Entitled, obviously (my most overused word since arriving here), and cultured, and sexy as hell.

I suspect he can hardly hear me. He moves back and begins to dance with us, and I can barely believe my luck.

I stick close to Elle as the music changes, like she’ll keep me safe from this dangerous man with his dangerous face and body and smell and voice and way of annunciating my name. But Theo isn’t deterred. He dances, and damn if the boy doesn’t have rhythm.

Of course he does.

I bet he does everything well.

I bet he does things well that I barely even know exist.

Things that require rhythm.

Although Elle and some of the other girls are dancing right next to us, Theo is moving in on me. I shoot Elle a panicked look and she laughs. She looks tickled pink.

‘Be careful of my cousin,’ she shouts in my ear. ‘He’s gorgeous, but he’s a total player.’

Got it. Got it. A total player. Right. This guy would chew me up and spit me out before I could even—He’s out of my league. Not just in terms of looks, but in terms of the stuff he knows. The stuff he’d expect from me. I can tell.

The music shifts to Rudimental’s Feel the Love, and it’s so impossible not to feel the love with that song that I let go a bit more.

I let my arms drift over my head and I go for it.

And Theo moves closer to me. His forehead is beaded with sweat.

His hair is growing damp. He swipes it off his face with his hand and the neon pink scrotum smudges a bit.

But I don’t laugh, because his eyes are on me, roaming over my bare legs and stomach, and they look hungry.

As our bodies move in time with the music, his leg edges between mine, and those ridiculously preppy white jeans don’t mask the fact that his thigh is muscled and gorgeous.

He puts his mouth to my ear.

‘Nora. I fancy some air. Come outside with me?’

Theo takes me by the hand and gently leans me against the stone wall of Plodge. Plodge is short for the Porter’s Lodge, and I’d be hard-pressed to think of a less sexy word. But suddenly it’s the sexiest word, the sexiest place, ever.

Because I’m hemmed in by one gorgeous forearm, its bicep cuffed to perfection by his white t-shirt. Away from the ultra-violet lights, I can appreciate the view properly. Especially because Theo’s face is inches from mine.

‘You know you have a penis on your forehead, right?’ I ask, to deflect from the fact that my heart is beating in my throat. I have a pretty good idea why we’re out here, and sure, I’ve snogged guys before, but this guy is a different species from the boys I’ve been with.

That heart-stopping, panty-melting grin again. ‘I’m aware. Some people might say it’s appropriate.’

I feign shock. ‘Surely not.’

‘Nora, Nora, Nora.’ His free hand comes up to stroke along my jawline. ‘Has anyone ever told you you have the eyes of a Disney princess?’