Chapter 10 #2
We hit the stairs. I take them down with care disguised as irritation. He notices. He notices everything, which is one of the many reasons I dislike him.
When we reach the ground floor, I cut toward the side exit, wanting air and space and fewer witnesses. He stays with me.
“Are you surgically attached to my day now?” I ask.
“For the next ten minutes, yes.”
“I don’t remember consenting to that.”
“You don’t have to.”
I stop so abruptly that he nearly walks into me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Quite a lot, apparently.” His mouth shifts. “Walk.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I stare at him, seriously considering kneeing him this time, bad leg be damned. Students drift through the corridor behind him, half-watching, half-pretending not to. St. Augustine’s runs on spectatorship. Everyone wants to witness the moment someone loses face.
I refuse to give them mine.
So I start walking again, shoving through the side exit into the courtyard. Cold air hits my face. Better. Less boxed in. More room to stab people if required.
Aidan comes with me, uninvited as ever.
“Ten minutes for what?” I ask.
“To stop you doing something stupid.”
I bark out a laugh. “You’ll need to narrow it down.”
“You’ve just been told you’re Apex, that the Board seat challenge opens in four weeks, and that half the campus is about to start circling you.” He glances at me. “Your expression when you left that room suggested murder.”
“My face often suggests murder. It’s one of my better features.”
“It suggested immediate murder.”
I cut across the courtyard toward a narrow path between two old stone buildings. I stop to face him. “Yes. Yours.”
That wicked smile curves up the left side of his mouth.
“Oh, pixie. You’re fucking turning me on now.
” He moves closer, pressing me against the wall.
I lift my chin to glare at him, this time contemplating murder for real.
He boxes me in, hands on either side of my head.
He is staring down at me with those blue eyes, and I remember the dream from my nap yesterday.
It makes something pulse between my thighs.
Without thinking, I reach out and press my hand over his cock. It’s rock-hard, and I let out a small rasp that I will deny later.
His smirk widens. “That’s what these interactions do to me, pixie.”
“You’re incapable of controlling your cock around women.”
“Just one and you’re the one touching me, so you’re one to talk about control.”
My cheeks heat up, but I don’t move my hand. I can’t. Instead, I squeeze him, and my breath hitches when he closes his eyes, bites his bottom lip, and groans softly. “You are not my friend,” I murmur.
“No,” he replies, opening his eyes. He leans down, his lips close to my ear. “You have taken something from me, and I want it back.”
“Come and get it then.”
His hands move quickly, pressing on my hips as he takes a step closer, trapping my hand between us. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then comes back up to my eyes. For one second, neither of us moves.
Then he laughs once, low and filthy, and my entire body goes tighter instead of easing.
“Dangerous girl,” he murmurs.
“Says the man pinning me to a wall in broad daylight.”
“You started this.”
“I finished it. There’s a difference.”
His fingers dig into my hips just enough to make me aware of every point of contact. My hand is still trapped between us, heat and hard muscle and the thick weight of him under my palm. I should move it. I don’t want to.
His mouth hovers close to mine. “Do you do this with everyone who threatens you?”
“You were threatening me?”
He chuckles.
“Fuck off.”
“No.”
Of course not.
I tighten my fingers again, just to see what happens. His eyes shut for half a beat. When they open, the blue has gone darker, sharper, and something in my stomach flips in a way that annoys the hell out of me.
“You’re playing with fire,” he says.
“I’m Irish. We know how to handle it.”
“Cute.”
“Don’t call me cute.”
His voice drops. “Cruel,” he corrects, and his thumb drags once over the curve of my hip through my jeans. “Greedy. Bad for my concentration.”
“Good,” I say, because I am not giving him an inch of soft.
He looks at my mouth again, and this time I know exactly what he is thinking because I am thinking it too, which is mortifying. My hand flexes over him once more before I finally pull it free and shove at his chest.
“Move.”
He doesn’t.
I shove harder. “Aidan.”
That gets his attention. His eyes lift fully to mine at the sound of his name in my mouth, and something changes in his face. It is small, but it is there.
“Again,” he says quietly.
I blink. “What?”
“Say my name again.”
“No.” See how you like it.
“I could make you scream it.”
“You could try.”
Several loaded seconds pass where I think he might, but then he steps back, and the sudden absence of his body is a rush of cold air and temper.
My palm tingles, the ghost of his hardness still imprinted on my skin.
I flex my fingers, trying to shake the sensation away, but it clings like a stubborn memory.
My jaw clenches so tight I can hear my teeth grinding.
“Don’t do anything stupid, pixie. I’m watching,” he says and saunters off, leaving me with a throbbing ache between my thighs and rage burning through my veins like wildfire.
I want to scream. I want to chase after him and finish what we started just to prove I could destroy him.
Instead, I stand there, my breath ragged, my body betraying me in ways I’ll never forgive either of us for.