Chapter 32
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Maxim
I was unimpressed with Prairie Hill’s campus, or rather how open it was.
Sia was here? What was Val thinking?
Grunting, I sped too quickly through the parking lot and nearly hit a few people. I’d blame that on the fact that it was dark and not that I was zooming through the campus like a madman.
I parked my car in front of a random building, and when I left it there, security rolled up and tried to say something to me.
They thought better of it when I glared at them. They backed off, and I stalked the sidewalks toward the building mentioned on Sia’s class schedule. Val texted it to me.
I stopped in my tracks shortly into my hunt. As it turned out, Sia wasn’t that hard to find. It helped Prairie Hill’s campus was 90 percent white, but Sia just stood out.
She couldn’t help herself.
Her thick curls bounced on her shoulders during her stride, her books to her chest. She appeared like a college student in a sweatshirt and jeans, a flush to her cheeks while she played on her phone. She was distracted by it and strode right past me. I caught a whiff of her then, so soft, sweet.
Seeing her and drinking in her scent quite literally froze me where I stood. I became a man entranced and unable to be moved. I wet my lips. “Sia…”
She hadn’t gotten far away from me. She froze in her tracks too, turning around slowly. I’d been enamored by this girl just walking past me with her attention buried in her phone so the moment she made eye contact and parted those full lips…
Those lips and I had a history, our bodies the same. Mine woke up right away, blood pumping its way through my veins in a charged heat. It settled right between my legs, so much repressed emotion and passion instantly reinvigorated at just the sight of her. I hadn’t let my thoughts of Sia Reynolds come to pass while I’d been on the job. They were dangerous thoughts that would have kept me from my mission. They would have kept me in a place where I hadn’t been able to leave her or worse take her with me. They would have put her in danger and distracted me.
Well, that was all back now upon being in front of her, and when I took a step toward her, she proceeded to take one back. I wasn’t surprised by this reaction. I hadn’t seen her in a while and… “Sia.”
She blinked but not as if she hadn’t heard me. In actuality, her expression read awe. Like she couldn’t believe I was standing there in front of her. She swallowed. “Max?—”
She ended up cutting herself off. She did before she rerouted and walked away from me as if I hadn’t spoken. She didn’t get far of course. I was fast and cut her off.
I got her scowl then, and when I reached for her, she pivoted away. This was to be expected too, but it didn’t stop the lightning rod of fire that ripped through my chest.
“Sia—”
“What are you doing here?”
I blinked, not expecting this question. My jaw moved. “Why are you running from me?”
I got a laugh in response, a loud boisterous laugh that made quite a few of her fellow students stop and take a look at us. I growled at them all, and they eventually kept walking.
I faced Sia. “I don’t believe I said anything funny.”
I got she might be angry. I left her for a while, but she shouldn’t be running from me.
“Oh, you definitely said something funny.” She stepped to walk away again, but she was small and I wasn’t. It took merely a step to cut her off, and she bared her teeth. “Move.”
No one commanded me. I didn’t move, and when she attempted to, I got her arm.
She worked it away. “You’re unbelievable. You know that? You’ve been gone for a month, Maxim Petrov. A month in which I only knew you were alive because Val was telling me you were.”
I had stopped responding to her calls and texts toward the end of my mission. Her contacting me was making it hard to do my duty so I had to disconnect, cut off.
It wasn’t something I was proud of but it’d been necessary. I dampened my mouth. “I told you I was working.”
This got another one of her boisterous laughs, and my eyes narrowed. Sia Reynolds was never one to hold back her sass, be a brat . If we were in the bedroom, I’d punish her. It was our dynamic, and normally, that shit did something for me, but not in this moment.
I was sympathetic to her anger though, or at least, I understood it. I pocketed my hands. “I also told you I’d be back, which I am now. I’m here, and I find out you’ve not only started school, but you’re here by yourself without an escort.”
I was fine with her starting school and even encouraged it in the past. What I didn’t appreciate was her doing so without security. Not to mention, she just didn’t tell me she was enrolling.
You did cut her off.
Whether I had or not, she could have mentioned that detail. I would have seen it in a text or she could have easily had Val relay that information to me.
“Because apparently, I was just supposed to sit around and do nothing while you ghosted me.”
“That’s not what I?—”
“You know what, Maxim? Fuck you.”
Her bite was back and tenfold when she pivoted away from me. I expected a degree of her anger upon coming back. Of course, I did. I did leave her but maybe a part of me thought she’d be better than, well, me. I was an asshole but no matter how frustrated Sia was with me she’d always been a light through my darkness. She’d been a place I could go to and seek solace.
I needed that after so many weeks on the job. Shit had gotten dark while I’d been away and a big reason I’d been able to push myself through it was because I knew she’d be there once it was all said and done. I’d never been one to need a lifeline but after Sia came into my life…
Her presence changed me and her walking away had me grabbing for her again. Oddly enough, I was too slow. Actually, I wasn’t too slow.
She was just quick.
She dodged my grab with the finesse of an assassin and even held onto her books. Their position in her arms didn’t teeter, and after she evaded, she held up her hand as if ready for combat.
What. The. Fuck?
She just stood there in a fighter’s stance. Like she was about to kick my ass, and I blinked again. I tipped my chin at her. “Where did you learn this?
Hell, where had she learned to dodge the way she had?
I pivoted, and she did with me, all while holding the same fighter’s position. This wasn’t amateur. She’d been taught something. Clearly.
Her jaw moved. “Val,” she said, finally easing up, and I did recall my head of security telling me she taught her a thing or two. Sia sighed. “Now, let me pass.”
I pulled out my knife instead. Well, at least one of my knives. I handed it to her. “Can you do something with this?”
I was curious now what Val had taught her, and it turned out to be a lot when Sia not only gripped the blade but threw it. She sent it through the air in a whoosh, and it landed not far away from us.
She sent a Coke can by the trash can flying, and when I strode over to it, I found my blade through the center of the logo.
Damn.
So, I’d been hard when I saw this woman again. Damn hard but now, my shit could split fucking wood . I turned around, and Sia merely shrugged.
“I can do enough,” she said simply, like a badass. I certainly hadn’t left her in a position to defend herself, which was why I’d left a fleet around to protect her.
Apparently, she didn’t need it.
She’d obviously taken her fate into her own hands, and I was so awed I did allow her to move away from me. She mentioned something about Gleb picking her up but that wasn’t happening.
“Actually, I’m taking you home,” I said. I returned my knife to my jacket, and that had been a feat. The urge to take that knife and spill her blood was there after what she did, taste her…
I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed our blood play. I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed a lot of the things we did both inside and outside of the bedroom. This girl had been an enigma to me. I’d found partners on kink apps who weren’t as open as she was.
I hadn’t known what to make of Sia when we first got together and still didn’t. She seemed to surprise me more and more every day, but what wasn’t surprising was her reaction to being told what to do. Her jaw clenched, and she looked like she wanted to take my knife and slit my throat.
“I’ll take the bus,” she started to say, but there were no games when I cut her off this time.
Nor when I had her jaw in my hand.
I didn’t do this forcibly. I could have and something told me she could have maneuvered her way out of such a hold. Neither one of us chose to do something we could have easily done, and I certainly noticed that on her part.
I also noticed the tremble in her delicate mouth and the way her complexion shifted from tan to one with a slight rose tint. I still affected her. I was in her head.
My thumb hovered above her mouth. “You can be mad at me all you want. Fuck, I don’t care if you talk to me at all, but you are coming with me. I’m taking you home, and that’s not negotiable.”
It wasn’t, and I didn’t dare move. I didn’t know what I’d do if she submitted to me or denied me. Either choice might have me bending her over.
She jerked her chin out of my hand, and though she may have done so with a little pout, she didn’t put distance between us. I took that as her answer.
The drive home with Sia Reynolds beside me was a tough one. There were a million things I wanted to both ask and tell her, but I chose to do neither. I kept a brick wall up just like I’d done when we’d been apart. I wanted to know how she spent her time away from me, and why she chose to go to school. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her but opted out of conversation entirely.
She did the same.