Chapter 4
Reece
There’s a buzz crawling under my skin the moment she walks in, the kind that makes it hard to sit still.
Chin held high. Shoulders back. That red skirt brushes her thighs with each step, riding just enough to make my teeth grit.
I can’t stop tracking the sway of her hips, the quiet confidence in how she owns the room without asking permission.
Fuck.
My body reacts before my brain catches up. My dick goes hard, standing to attention as if it thinks this is a game it wants in on. I shift in my chair, annoyed at myself for letting her do this to me without even trying.
She doesn’t look at me. Not once. No glance, not even a flicker of irritation.
She walks straight past, eyes ahead, treating me as if I’m nothing more than a desk she has to work around.
That’s the fucking part that gets under my skin.
I’ve made girls lose their shit over me. Cry in bathrooms. Blow up my phone. Show up places they weren’t invited just to see if I’d notice them.
I know how to provoke, to push until they snap. But this… quiet dismissal or being stripped of my presence and reduced to nothing. It fucking burns.
I want her to be mad. I was counting on it, honestly.
After what she overheard at that party—the crap Jace and I were saying—I expected fury.
That quick flash in her eyes tells me I’ve got under her skin.
I know how to handle anger. I thrive on it.
Hate is easy. It shows she’s paying attention and means I still matter enough to make her angry.
But this?
This calm indifference feels wrong.
She moves through the room as if she has already won, as if the power I believed I had over her has slipped away the moment she decided I wasn’t worth the bother.
There’s no tension in her shoulders, no stiffness in her stance.
She isn’t braced for a fight. She isn’t waiting for me to poke the wound again.
She’s already moved on.
And that terrifies me more than her temper ever could.
My fingers curl around the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening as I hold on a second too long.
The grin I wear for everyone else slides into place out of habit, but it doesn’t sit right.
It’s hollow. As if it belongs to the version of me she refuses to see anymore.
I’m not built for this waiting game. I don’t chase reactions.
I get them, provoke them. I own the fallout.
Lola drops into the seat beside her in a rush of movement and noise, already leaning in, already whispering before her bag even hits the floor.
Sam tilts her head, enough to listen, lashes lowering, attention pulled somewhere that isn’t me.
Her mouth twitches, and my focus locks on it like a target.
I remember that mouth. That party all those years ago, and the way the world seemed to shrink to her standing in front of me. Kissing her cracked something open that night. It burned its way straight into my chest. It set a standard I never intended to keep chasing, but here I am.
I remember the feeling of her, the way she froze for half a second before kissing me back. No matter how many mouths I’ve had since, no matter how many chicks I’ve fucked, nothing ever hits the same.
She wasn’t just my first kiss; she was the one who spoiled all the others.
She smiles at something Lola says, small, and private, and it shouldn’t matter.
It shouldn’t hit this hard. But it does.
Because that smile isn’t for me. It’s soft.
Untouched. And the fact that she’s giving it to someone else while pretending I don’t exist makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t recognize.
I act before I think, before I can stop myself.
I cut past her aisle, close enough that she should feel it.
She doesn’t even acknowledge the space I steal as I pass her.
I stop and glance at the jackass slouched in the chair behind her. He’s got his legs stretched out, tapping his pen on the desk as if he didn’t unknowingly sign his own death warrant.
Five fucking seconds.
That’s all I give him. My stare does the talking, the kind that promises violence without a word.
He lasts three.
He mutters something under his breath, scrambles out of the chair, grabs his bag and bails quickly.
Smart fucking choice. I drop into the seat he vacated, spreading my legs and twisting my silver ring around my thumb, again and again, needing something to do with my hands.
She’s pulled her hair back today, and it annoys me more than it should.
I miss the way it curls over her shoulders, soft and loose.
I know it’s stupid. It’s borderline unhinged.
But all I can think about is burying my hands in it, tangling my fingers until she has to tilt her head back for me.
Finding out the sound she makes when I pull.
I lean forward regardless.
“Morning, sweetheart,” I murmur, close enough that my chest brushes the back of her chair, so if I breathe in deep enough, I could work out what conditioner she uses.
She doesn’t reply, and that silence hits harder than her anger ever did.
I know exactly why she’s pissed. What she heard the other night, the laughing, the bet Jace and I never thought would reach her ears. That I would fuck her by the end of the year. Turn the good girl into a prized fuck, to prove a point, as if she was a challenge. A prize.
Now she treats me that way.
It hurts more than I’m happy to admit.
But I notice the way her shoulders stiffen slightly, and there it is. The crack. The proof she’s still listening even when she pretends she isn’t. I grin, because if ignoring me is her weapon, I’ve got no problem playing hardball.
I move my mouth closer to her ear.
“I’d die to get between those thighs,” I say softly. Filthy. “Tell me you haven’t imagined me there, my mouth on you where you pretend you don’t want it.”
Her breath catches. Just once.
Her thighs press together under the desk, muscles tightening, and I feel the shock of it running through me. That’s what I needed. Proof I still affect her. That I’m not invisible.
I smirk and lean back in my seat, letting the chair creak enough to say I’ve finished crowding her space. For now.
My fingers stretch towards my notebook, and I tear out a sheet of paper.
I don’t think. I write.
Messy black ink. Slanted. Rapid. The kind of handwriting that reveals just how wired I am.
You can sit there and pretend you’re not doing dangerous things to me.
I’d ruin that skirt in under a minute if you let me, drag you onto my cock and make you forget why you’re mad.
Tell me your body didn’t give you away long before your mouth ever would.
I fold it once, then flick it forward with just enough force to make it arc over her shoulder and land right on her desk.
It slides to a halt, just inches from her hand.
She sees it. Her spine stiffens, shoulders tense, and her breath becomes shallow in a way she probably thinks no one notices. Her fingers remain perfectly still.
Beside us, Liz groans dramatically and mutters something about forgetting the stupid textbook again.
Lola offers hers without missing a beat, already giggling as she scrolls through her phone, whispering about some TikTok she saw last night.
In the corner, Aiden and Mason are mid-argument about last weekend’s football match, voices overlapping, both convinced they’re right.
The room hums with a dull, half-awake noise that settles in before a teacher arrives. Chairs scrape. Someone yawns too loudly. Pages flip without anyone actually reading. Everyone’s here, bodies present, minds elsewhere. Distracted. Restless. Killing time.
No one’s paying attention at all.
Except me.
I watch the paper sit there, untouched. Watch her pretend it doesn’t exist the same way she’s pretending I don’t exist.
She’s got my blood pumping, my pulse out of sync, my thoughts dirty and loud, and she’s treating me like I’m nothing but dust on the floor. Something to step over.
I turn my ring around my thumb again, more slowly this time, eyes fixed on that folded piece of paper.
I tear another piece of paper from my notebook. This one isn’t thought through. It doesn’t get softened. It comes straight from the ugly, needy part of my mind that’s sick of being ignored.
The pen scratches firmly against the paper.
Bet you taste better than you talk. I’ll eat that pussy until you forget every lie you tell yourself about me. I promise I won’t disappoint.
It’s cocky… just the sort of thing a good girl shouldn’t want and definitely shouldn’t be reading in a classroom.
I don’t bother folding it. I lean forward and let it slip from my fingers, watching it fall onto her desk in plain sight.
That sparks a response.
Not from her hands. She still doesn’t touch it. But her shoulders lock up, stiff as stone.
She reaches out and crushes the note in her fist. Doesn’t even read it, just crumples it up then drops it onto the floor next to her desk, as if it is nothing.
I chuckle loudly and unapologetically. “That’s the game you want to play, Red?”
She turns halfway in her seat towards me. Calm on the surface, but eyes sharp as hell. “Don’t fucking talk to me.”
Fuck me. That voice. I want to hear it crack on my name, breathless and shaking, cursing me while she’s grinding down on my cock and hating herself for how good it feels. I want to show her exactly what being bad does to a girl who thinks she’s above it all.
I smirk, recognising it now. The crack in her control.
“So what do you say, Red,” I murmur, voice pitched low enough to crawl. “You want to sit on my face later and see where I can take you.”
The words hang there. I’m already riding the hit, with the tension snapping tight between us.
And before I get to enjoy it—
She slaps me.
Hard.
Open palm.
Right across the face.
The sound cracks through the room.