Chapter 26
ELLE
Sutton’s voice is suddenly in my ear, nearly yanking a scream from my chest. I whirl around, my breath scattering in my throat as he moves in, planting his arm next to me.
He hovers close, our lips centimeters apart, and a flash from the day I begged him to kiss me in his apartment makes my stomach flutter.
With a quick tug, he pulls the door shut and backs up several steps.
I blink, glancing at his arm, which was just by my side and now rests at his. His face isn’t flushed, and his eyes aren’t that liquid green they only seem to become when we’re doing things we shouldn’t.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on girls,” I snap, pointing at him. “It’s creepy.”
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The instant sincerity is disconcerting. My hand falls, and I clear my throat, trying to regain my bearings. “Well, announce yourself next time or something.”
“It’s not my fault you weren’t paying attention.”
“Most people don’t think they’re going to be accosted in the library.”
He clicks his tongue. “Still haven’t read up on your Avernia lore, I see. Am I to assume you don’t have a warding amulet or salt packed in your pockets?”
“Uh…no.”
“Pity. A sweet soul like yours would be candy to the spirits around here.” He steps forward with one foot.
Pressing my back against the door, I try to shrink into myself, just so I can avoid that enticing scent of his. He normally isn’t the one to initiate closeness, so his proximity is unnerving.
“Sweet?” I squeak. “That’s a new one.”
“You disagree with my assessment?”
“Normally you hit the mark pretty easily, but if you think sweet is a word to describe me, I’m afraid you must not be looking close enough,” I reply, my gaze settling on the tendons in his throat, straining against his skin.
For some reason, the urge to bite them is strong.
I resist, even as he draws nearer.
“On the contrary,” he says, dropping his voice. “All I do is look at you. For you. To you. It’s become a real problem.”
He leans in again, bracing his forehead against the door above me. Our bodies are inches apart, our clothes brushing, the heat from our skin mingling.
What is happening here?
My mind swims, the sting of his previous rejection still fresh enough for me not to trust whatever this is. Even if my body is on board with little protest.
“Well, I bet it’s one you can easily take care of.” I push up on my tiptoes, letting my lips graze his ear. “I hope you think of me later when you do.”
His breathing hitches, but he seems to shake from the reverie, moving just out of my reach. It’s almost a respectable distance, probably nothing that would alarm anyone too much if they wandered this way.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“Uh, it’s a campus library. I’m a student. Do the math, Professor.”
“Right, right. Of course.” He blows out a breath, and a part of me wonders if he isn’t sure what to do or why he cornered me in the first place. “Well, what are you studying or reading? What, um, else interests you outside acting?”
My eyes narrow. “Are you trying to flirt again?”
“That you have to ask tells me I’m still not doing it right.”
The glaring discomfort of his is satisfying. “Flirting requires levity. Humor. Shallow waters. Not minute detail.”
“But I’m not interested in the surface when it comes to you.”
Oh. My heart hammers faster in my chest. “Is that a casting tactic ahead of auditions or a personal agenda?”
“Personal.” He presses his mouth into a thin line. “I’d like to figure you out.”
“I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“Never said that.”
“There’s that honesty again, Boy Scout.”
“It seems you bring it out in me.”
“Can I ask what you’re doing?” I jut my chin over my shoulder at the door. “Here, right now… Why are you talking to me? Aren’t you afraid someone might see and get the wrong idea?”
“If I tell you, will you stop answering my questions with more questions?”
“I’ll consider it.”
The corner of his mouth tugs upward. His voice drops to a near-whisper when he speaks again. “I feel bad about the way we ended things in my apartment.”
“When you turned down my offer for sex?”
He glances down the hall, then back at me. “Did that really need clarifying?”
As if we aren’t standing too close for comfort as it is.
“Maybe not, but it was worth seeing you get all flustered.”
His cheeks brighten with a blush. “That excites you?”
“I like that you sometimes don’t seem to know what you want to do with me,” I admit, even though I shouldn’t. This is the opposite of how I wanted to approach things. “It’s cute.”
He huffs, as if that notion displeases him, then shakes his head. “You…challenge me,” he says softly. “In a way no one has before, and I realized I may have been reacting poorly to this entire situation based on my own hang-ups.”
My eyebrows arch. “So you thought you’d correct course in the middle of the Obeliskos?”
“Strike when the iron is hot, right?”
“You really do love clichés, don’t you?” I grin, then chew on my bottom lip, the guilt from before pushing up into my esophagus. “Really, though, I should be the one apologizing—”
“Ah, ah.” He shushes me, holding a finger close to my mouth without actually touching me. “You promised an answer to my question. What are you studying today?”
Again, I feel a strange tugging deep within my chest, but I ignore it. “Astronomy. Outside of the two acting electives I have this semester, it’s probably my favorite. I was working on an assignment before with my sister. Well, she was here. Not helping me though.”
Sutton laughs, which startles me. Have I ever heard him do that before? “Of course you’re interested in the stars. Like calls to like, right?”
“Are you calling me a star?”
“I’m saying you want to be.” He shrugs. “What better element to study than the ones so many look to for answers?”
This Sutton freaks me out. His unabashed interest feels like a major shift, even though I know he’s far from done denying me. But as if he’s also fighting an internal war against desire and logic, here he remains.
“Well, I spent a lot of my childhood camped out with my dad and uncles, trying to find and name different constellations. They’d tell me all the mythologies behind them and how so many people in history have used the stars to map out their explanations of the world or guide them through life.
I like the idea of an ocean of knowledge just sort of existing up there for us to utilize. ”
“I see.” He moves close again, making me dizzy. “That’s why you were at the observatory that day. Have you been back?”
A custodian wheels a trash can past the hall toward a service elevator, their whistling causing both of us to freeze. My heart pounds in my throat, the threat of being caught—even though we’re not actually doing anything—sending goose bumps along my arms.
The custodial worker doesn’t stop or even look in our direction, though, so neither of us moves.
“A few times. I like going when it’s closed. Makes it easier to study,” I tell him. “But mostly I’ve been occupied with transitioning back into school. Turns out a lot changes in seven years.”
“You didn’t take any courses when you were out in LA at all?”
“Nope. I was really hoping I wouldn’t need them. But you know, everyone out there is talented. It’s a hard scene to break into.” My face grows warm, shame coloring my cheeks.
Sutton purses his lips, then nods. “If not for my family connections, I doubt I’d have had much luck scoring professional gigs.”
The mention of his family makes my skin crawl, but I don’t say anything.
Instead, I scoff. “Please, you’re insanely hot. At the very least, you could have modeled.”
He makes a face, glancing at one end of the hall as if checking to make sure no one’s coming. The blush returns to his cheeks, and I wish I could snap a photo of it for later.
“Not my thing,” he replies. “If I’m going to be perceived, I’d like to be wearing someone else’s skin for a bit.”
“How very Ed Gein of you.”
Another laugh, rich and throaty, erupts from him. “I knew as soon as I thought the words that you’d say something to that effect. I’d much rather not be associated with a real-life serial killer though. Can’t we call me Titus Andronicus or something?”
“Are you eating your roles?”
“Hm. I suppose, in a way, there is a degree of consumption when you play someone else. Internalizing their struggles, finding what makes them human, and digesting their flaws so you can present them to the audience… One could argue that’s a simulation of eating.”
My face screws up. “That might be the grossest way anyone’s ever described acting.”
“Innovation, my dear séductrice, is half the battle.” He grins, and it feels so out of place that I get a little dizzy staring at the curve of his mouth. After a moment, he clears his throat, rocking back on his heels. “So you’ve been studying with your sister?”
That familiar pang of jealousy pulses in my heart when he mentions her. “Well, no. I left her to prep for Othello auditions.”
“With your classmates?”
Once more, the air around us changes, turning a bit darker. Headier. I shift in anticipation. “Maybe.”
“Which ones?”
“Is this a conversation you really want to have here?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why does it matter?” I swallow, emotion clogging my throat. “Are you jealous?”
His jaw clenches. “Lexington and Perciville. Are they here with you today?”
“And what if I say yes? That we’ve skipped studying altogether, and I’ve just come from a superhot threesome to get a drink, but I’m heading right back in to start up again. Obviously, you know the rumors, and I’ve thrown myself at you multiple times, so clearly I can’t keep my legs closed at all—”
He covers my mouth with his palm, cutting me off. The water bottle falls from my grasp, tumbling to the floor. “You are incredibly, ridiculously brazen, temptress, but that is not what I said, nor what I implied.”
I roll my eyes, moving to escape, but he grabs my hip with his free hand, keeping me in place.
“It simply agitates me the way they’re able to spend time with you.
And yes, I know that is a line I’ve drawn, but it drives me mad to be relegated to stolen glances, pretending I don’t care…
fucking my fist at night, desperately wishing it was that insolent mouth of yours. All while they can interact freely.”
Warmth spreads through my limbs. He slowly withdraws his other hand from my lips.
“After the incident in my apartment, I know I have no right to be standing here even saying any of this…”
“I don’t mind.”
A smarter, stronger girl wouldn’t let him see her cards so readily, but I’ve never been very good at resistance anyway.
He tucks some hair behind my ear, his gaze softening a little. “What is this spell you’ve cast on me? Why can’t I get you out of my head, no matter how many times I remind myself that you’re poison to my life?”
“Some poison in moderation won’t kill you,” I whisper.
Shaking his head, he makes an irritated noise. “I don’t want just a taste…or a bite…” His nose skims mine as he bends, and my stomach flips violently.
“Doesn’t this go against everything you’ve been saying since I showed up on the first day of classes?” I ask softly.
“It does.”
I squirm, glancing down the hall. If somebody sees… “Sutton, maybe we shouldn’t—”
“Now you care?”
It’s a similar question to what he asked me that evening in the basement of the Apollodorus, and I’m still not sure what exactly has changed. He was just rejecting me in his apartment, wasn’t he?
“Are you finally admitting out loud that you don’t?”
“Don’t pretend you ever bought my excuses in the first place.”
“Verbal confirmation is always a good thing.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he rushes out. “Right now, that’s all I know.”
My heart hammers in my throat, but I force my gaze away. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
“That’s not possible.”
The air around me dries up as he palms the back of my head with one hand. The other gently—so gently—brushes my chin.
He leans in, and I barely have time to process what’s happening before his lips are on mine, damp and soft and lush as they mold against me. Like they were made to connect, to crush, to explore. My heart ricochets around in my chest, making me dizzy as heat races through my veins.
Every nerve ending in my body is on fire as he flicks his tongue against the seam of my mouth, seeking entry.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I let him in. I fold instantly, letting out a ragged breath when his tongue breaches the depths of my mouth, sweeping and tasting as if this could be his very last meal. Or maybe it’s his first. A drop of water after an eternity of thirst.
His kiss obliterates all my concerns from before, shattering my attempts at resolve.
This isn’t the kiss of a man who’s afraid someone might see or who’s really afraid of losing his career.
It’s the kiss of a man who knows what he wants and goes after it.
Who’ll fight for his right to embrace passion.
It’s the kiss of a man asking—no, begging—for more.
Distantly, the sound of a door clicking shut, followed by the clearing of a throat, yanks me from the moment. I jolt back to reality, disentangling myself with more effort than I’ve ever exerted in my entire life.
“Sutton…”
“Christ.” Pulling away, he threads his fingers through his hair, tugging on the roots. “I know.” Blowing out a breath, he spins around in a circle.
I don’t move a muscle.
“I’d better get back,” he mutters, his spine stiff, eyes on my lips.
He wipes his mouth but doesn’t leave. There’s a clear hunger in his gaze. A request for a repeat, damn the consequences.
Swallowing my feelings, I duck my head and go back to the study room where Lexington and Percy are now arm-wrestling on their stomachs on the floor. Still shaky from the entire thing, I walk over and take a seat next to Meg, who lets out an excited shout at my return.
“Thank God. These two have the attention span of hamsters.” She frowns, glancing down. “Did you not have enough money for the vending machines?”
“Aw, poor Elle,” Lexington calls, leaning up to try and leverage his weight against Percy. “We could’ve given you some cash.”
Confusion knits my brows together, and I look at my hands—which are empty.
“Oh.” I force a laugh and press my fingers to my tingling lips, shaking my head. “No, no, I just…wasn’t thirsty anymore.”