2. Tate #2
I don’t know what it would take to get a reaction out of him, and now I want to find out.
Does he ever speak in more than short sentences?
Is he immune to whatever I throw at him?
Roman slides one palm down my forearm. “Going to stay put?”
“I don’t know. Let go of me and find out.”
His grip suddenly gets much stronger again, like he’s jailing me with his strength.
“I am in complete control of you right now,” he says, giving me a look that conveys pure, undisturbed certainty. “Are you aware of that? If I do not want you to move, you will not move. If I want to keep you right here for the rest of the night, I can do that. Do you want to make this difficult?”
“So you can say more than three words in a row.”
He narrows his eyes. “Are you always this annoying?”
I hum. “Two… three… yeah, I guess that one was five words now, huh? Proud of you.”
His eyes flick lower, looking from my lips to my eyes. “Are you finished?”
“Get the fuck off of me if you want to have a conversation.”
His look is still cold. “I don’t want to talk. I want you to do what I tell you.”
I’m shocked when he suddenly lets my arm go, all at once.
He backs away a step, releasing my other arm, too, and I can feel blood rush to the area where his grip was on me.
He’s giving me a moment of full trust.
“The paper towels, please.”
I exhale, reaching forward and opening my hand for him.
“See? All you had to do was ask nicely.”
He takes the bloody wad away without ceremony. I notice that his body still takes up as much space in front of me as possible.
He takes my wrist very gently, and my hand looks small in his big mitt.
Fucking manhandle me, then you act all tender?
Something sharply cold presses onto my cuts that stings like hell.
“Ow,” I protest.
“Just relax.”
“Are you trying to help me now?”
He frowns as he cleans my wounds, turning my hand over to see the fresher gashes from when I wailed on the wall.
“Yes, Tate,” he murmurs.
So he does know my name already.
I peer at his dark rows of lashes as he looks down at my hand, working dutifully. I wonder if he knows me through the shit they say about me in the media, or because he’s a fan of my brother’s, or if everyone in this weird secret society frat just knows every newbie who comes to this school.
“You should have let me hold the glass on that prick’s throat a little longer, if you really wanted to help me.”
“Mm,” he hums, “I let you hold it on him for long enough.”
He pockets the sanitizing wipe and brings out cotton and a spool of bandage tape. He starts to pull some out, nodding at my hand. He works silently, and I can tell he’s experienced in first aid, too.
There’s a quiet confidence radiating from him.
The kind that usually attracts me, no matter the gender of who it’s coming from.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to get fucked by someone his size.
The tallest guy I’ve ever been with was six-foot-one on a good day. Roman is much taller than that, and…
Straight.
He’s fucking straight, Landrey, guaranteed, and doesn’t seem to like you very much.
As far as I can tell, the guy might lack the capacity for human emotion.
He regards everything with a cold look or a frown, and I don’t think there’s anything else beyond that wall.
There’s no more blood soaking through my wounds now that he’s wrapped them in cotton and gauze. The real bandaging works a whole lot better than the paper towels did, and Roman cleans off his own hands with a wipe after finishing.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “Don’t know why you bothered helping me.”
“Because it’s my job,” he says without looking at me. “Give me your phone.”
I glare at him. “You going to shake me down now? Sell my phone on the college black market?”
He just holds out his hand. “You need to be able to contact me.”
I dig my phone out of my pocket and put it on his palm. He enters his number and hands the phone back to me.
He added himself under the contact name “Your Guardian Fucking Angel.”
“Damn. Okay. I’ll be sure to send you good morning texts every day,” I tell him dryly, though I’m not even sure he’s capable of understanding a joke. “Better yet, you send them to me. I’ll text you so you have my number.”
“I already have your number.”
I pause for a moment. “Uh, what the fuck?”
His eyes scan the edge of the yard. “Have you felt safe since you arrived on campus? No threats, correct?”
I narrow my eyes for a moment, searching his face. “How do you know I’ve been receiving threats?”
“There are many articles about you online.”
“Not that many about the death threats, though.”
His gaze travels upward suddenly, looking up at me instead of at the ground.
His eyes are like a storm at dusk. A blue that’s darker than any I’ve seen.
What the hell does he mean when he says it’s his job to help me? He’s acting like a police officer questioning a crime scene now, too, in an oddly specific way that sets my spidey-senses on edge.
I don’t like it.
“Tate,” he says. “Your brother…”
No.
“He paid you, didn’t he,” I say, puzzle pieces finally falling together in my mind. “Luke already paid someone to keep tabs on me here. My brother doesn’t trust me for a goddamn minute.”
Roman glares at me. “He wants you to be protected.”
“Holy shit, it’s real,” I breathe, turning away. “He thinks I need a fucking babysitter—”
“A bodyguard is not a babysitter.”
Fuck him.
Fuck this.
Fuck everything that led me here.