Chapter 19 Chanel
Chanel
The key to any successful viral marketing campaign is that you can’t lose momentum.
It doesn’t matter if one of your videos went viral once; if you aren’t quick to follow it up with something else, people will
lose interest. They’ll forget why they saved the video in the first place, they’ll move on with their lives, their attention
will be stolen by another trendy brand or hot influencer with shiny teeth.
The same goes for Ares. I knew I had his attention when we were kissing the other night. I could tell that he desired me, if only for that moment. But it has to last beyond the moment, especially with prom happening in just
over a week.
So the morning after I come back from Ares’s apartment, I text him:
we still need to decide on a place for math tutoring btw
Half an hour later, he texts back.
We can do it at my place?
A ridiculous, triumphant grin bursts over my face, and I have to take a breath and restrain myself from agreeing too fast. This is exactly what I wanted, what I had hoped for. If Ares and I start hanging out regularly in private at his apartment, I’ll be closer to my target than ever.
yeah ok, I text back, after a reasonable amount of time has passed, then stare at our brief text exchange, my stomach already flipping
at the thought of seeing him alone again. I never thought I’d be this giddy over the prospect of math tutoring.
Part of me is almost afraid that it’s too good to be true, that he’ll change his mind and cancel. But he simply sends me his
address again and confirms the time. So the following evening, when the light leaks out of the sky and the moon rises over
the city, my driver drops me off outside his building.
Before I leave the car, I do a careful evaluation of my reflection using my phone’s front camera. Hair is fluffed: check.
Lips are glossy: check. No lipstick on teeth: check. No smudged mascara: check. Skirt is rolled up, shirt collar pulled down:
check, check.
He’s already waiting for me down in the foyer. From the moment I walk in, his gaze sweeps over me, taking me in with the kind
of quiet, scorching intensity that makes me feel zipped open, makes my blood burn like lighter fluid.
“Hey,” he says. “You ready?”
“Yeah, I’m always ready,” I say, in a voice that sounds like it’s fighting a bit too hard to be casual.
Because none of this feels casual at all.
Not when he’s leading me inside by the wrist, his thumb brushing over where my pulse point is, and I wonder if he can detect how my heartbeat changes, how all the cells in my body reorient themselves to him.
It’s only a physical response. A good thing, so I don’t have to fake my attraction to him to carry out my plan.
I don’t even have to think about pretending when he walks me into the living room. I slip my shoes off and lift my head, expectant,
waiting for him to kiss me, for his fingers to find the small of my waist and pull me in—
“Where are your books?” he says.
I blink. “Huh?”
“Your math textbooks.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Why, were you planning on doing something else?”
“No,” I say quickly, ducking my head so he can’t see the flush spreading across my cheeks. I’m usually good at predicting
what guys want, and when, but Ares keeps throwing my rhythm off.
“Let’s study over here.” He helps spread a freshly printed worksheet out on his kitchen table, slides into the seat next to
me, and jumps into the first question without any preamble. To give him credit, Ares isn’t a bad math tutor. He’s surprisingly
patient and to the point, and doesn’t overcomplicate concepts. The one time I’d asked Henry Li to help me with math, he’d
introduced three entirely new theories and referenced so many obscure mathematicians that I’d ended up more confused than
I was in the beginning.
But with Ares, the random numbers and symbols actually start to make sense. He walks me through every step, and works the
questions out with me until we’ve completed half the practice worksheet from our last math class.
“Yes, exactly, like that,” he says approvingly when I solve an equation on my own for the first time, and I feel a surprising rush of pride. “Now, try this one. It’s trickier, but the basic rules are the same.”
I manage to sit through a whole hour of this before I can’t concentrate any longer. All I can focus on is the loud, incessant
ticking of the clock in the kitchen, a reminder of the time running out. There’s been way too much productivity tonight, and not nearly enough physical proximity.
“My neck’s sore,” I grumble, dropping my pen.
Ares casts me a faintly amused look. “You want a break?”
“I think I need one. Like, seriously,” I say. “There’s a huge knot in my muscles.”
“Really?” he says, still with the same amused expression, like he’s humoring me.
“You can feel it.” I grab his arm and, when he doesn’t resist, guide his hand to the base of my neck. “Here.”
“Right here?” He presses down, his fingers finding the exact place where my muscles are bunched too tight, and as he starts
to massage the spot, the soreness melts into a pleasurable ache.
A sigh slips through my lips, and I find myself leaning almost automatically into his touch. “That feels really good.”
“Does it?” His voice is a low murmur, and then he grabs my chin, lifting it up toward him. His gaze is scorching. Pure heat.
Radiant and deadly and impossible to resist. “What about this?”
And then he’s kissing me, and every rational thought burns away.
I rise from my chair, my back against the table, and his hand curls over the corner so it doesn’t dig into me when he presses closer.
It’s perfect. It’s so perfect I can’t believe this is only the second time it’s happened.
I’m used to having to teach guys how I want to be kissed, like offering assembly instructions for furniture: Move this part here, be careful with this, repeat this step.
But somehow, Ares knows exactly what to do.
Knows to tug my hair a little, just firmly enough to make me gasp against his lips. Knows to push me against the table until
there’s nowhere else to go, no possible way to be closer, kissing me the entire time with such urgency it knocks the breath
out of my lungs.
I don’t realize how much control I’ve surrendered, how eagerly I’m kissing him back, until he pulls away without warning.
When I try to close the distance again, he deliberately moves just out of reach, teasing, grinning down at me like the devil
himself. “You didn’t answer me,” he says.
“I—what?” I ask, the words loose as wine on my lips. God, I sound drunk.
His fingers thread back through my hair, holding me there. “Does this feel good to you too?”
I manage to make a vague noise, the most that my pride will allow. “Mmm.”
“What’s that?” He moves his hands down to my neck, and a violent shiver courses through me, terror inseparable from desire,
dread twisted with anticipation. I don’t know if I’m scared of the way he’s touching me, slow and reverent, or if I’m scared
that he’ll stop. “I want to hear you say it again.”
“I hate you,” I mumble, but maybe what I really mean is: I hate the effect you have on me. I hate that my own body won’t listen to me when you’re around. Because I’m still reaching for him, my hands moving over his chest like I’m trying to find an answer, my mouth open and waiting
for him to kiss me again.
His eyes gleam. His lips are swollen, his long, crow-black hair still rumpled from where I’d run my fingers through it. “If
this is how you act when you hate me,” he says, glancing down at my hands on his body, “then I wouldn’t mind if you hated
me more.”
But he stops taunting me and pulls me back to him, and I can’t think of anybody I hate more, just like I can’t think of anything
else I’d rather be doing.
Our study sessions continue over the next few days, each one running longer than the last.
By the time we finish all the practice questions on Wednesday, it’s already midnight. My math textbooks have been left lying
open on the table, and we’ve migrated to the couch, where I’m draped over his chest like a blanket. He’s writing something
on my back with one finger, his touch soporific and so light that it tickles. The living room is warm, peaceful. Through the
sheer curtains, I can see the few scattered squares of orange and pale blue light glowing from the other apartments. How many
of them are staying up to prepare for a presentation, like my father would, or study for a test, like I’m sure Alice is right
this moment? And how many are seeing a bad idea all the way through, like me?
“What are you writing?” I ask him sleepily.
“Guess,” he says, drawing out a horizontal line at the base of my spine.
I close my eyes, which were falling shut anyway, and try to focus on the sensation, the strokes of each character.
But instead I find myself listening to his breathing and wondering when that became such a familiar sound, like the song of sparrows at dawn or the sound of footsteps outside my bedroom.
“Can’t guess,” I mumble. “Just tell me.”
When he speaks, I can feel the reverberations in his throat. “Then it’s a secret.”
“You keep a lot of secrets.”
“So do you.”
I can’t deny it, so I stay quiet. Or I try to, but my stomach chooses to interrupt the silence by growling loudly.
Ares laughs. “Are you hungry?”
I’m starving. Have been for the past day, or the past thirteen-something years, if I’m being honest. I would never usually
admit it, except I’m already on a horrible streak of making exceptions, and it’s as if my brain has lost the ability to think
beyond what I would like right now, in this very moment. Ares has a strange way of rooting me to the present, when all I should really be thinking about is
the future, the vision, the fire. “Yeah. A little,” I say.
“I’ll cook you something.”
“What?” My eyes open again. “Right now?”
“Yeah,” he says, sitting up, the front of his tank top creased from the weight of my head.