“Annoying,” I muttered.
His lips curved into a smirk as he shut down his laptop and clicked the lid shut. This was why my best friends growing up had been boys. They were easy to get, emotions didn’t run high, and yeah, they’d protect me if I picked a fight with someone I shouldn’t have. Or if one of my mom’s boyfriends got a little too handsy. Not that I couldn’t hold my own when shit went down, but my size put serious limitations on the pack of my punch.
I shouldn’t have worried anyway. At the end of class, Theo tore out of the room without a backward glance. Which was good. It was what I wanted. The game we’d been playing was getting old. It was high time it was over.
That was why I did my studying in my room on Thursday. Shakespeare didn’t have the same feeling when it was inside my head and not read aloud while cradled in the lap of a guy who smelled delicious and felt even better. But it was safer for everyone. I was at Savage U for a purpose—and it didn’t include wasting time and energy on things and people that didn’t matter.
* * *
By Friday, I was dragging. I’d worked three nights in an attempt to recoup the money I’d lost from trusting asshole Deacon, not to mention the boost of income I got through selling for Amir. I’d never been a big dealer or anything, but that extra couple hundred every week or two had sometimes meant whether I had food on the table, especially back in high school.
Since I was dragging, my patience was thin, which meant when I saw Theo lurking around the door at the end of Davis’s class, he took the brunt when I snapped.
“I’m not sucking your dick, Theodore. Why won’t you take a hint?” My voice...wasn’t quiet. Classmates behind me released a collective gasp. Beside me, Lock clucked his tongue. But I was done, you know? Ignoring their judgment, Lock’s “not cool, girl,” and Theo’s expression of pure shock, I strode from the building, needing my bed more than anything.
Theo fell into step beside me. Hands tucked in his pockets, fury emanated from his taut muscles. Any second, I expected to be shoved into a brick wall and shown that yeah, I was going to be sucking his dick.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened to you that led you to believe a guy paying you some attention and kindness is only out for getting his cock sucked, but that’s not me.”
His hard, furious tone had me stumbling more than his words. And when I stumbled, he reached out and caught me, steadying me. Theo stepped backward, off the path cutting through a courtyard between buildings, pulling me into the grass and under the shade of an ancient tree.
“Life happened,” I said simply, even though it was anything but simple. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t take it if I offered. Or take it if you thought you could get away with it.”
The tendons at the side of his neck swelled. His face flushed. “Tell me you don’t believe that about me, Hells. Tell me you don’t believe I’d take something from you you didn’t freely give me. Tell me you know I wouldn’t do that.”
I met his eyes. His angry, sparking with rage, blue eyes. “Any man is capable of getting to the place where he’ll take what he isn’t given.”
He released me to drag his fingers through the sides of his black hair. “Helen...no.”
I lifted a shoulder. My guts were a writhing mess, but I didn’t let it play out on the surface.
“Was there a reason you were waiting for me?”
Exhaling heavily, Theo paced like a caged lion right in front of me. I waited him out when I could have been escaping because maybe guilt was seeping in a little. I didn’t know Theo, but from what he’d shown me, he wasn’t deserving of my wrath. Not yet, at least.
“Theo—”
He stopped abruptly, swinging his fury onto me. Even then, barely more than strangers, I could read him, and I knew that fury wasn’t mine. If the men who’d shaped me, turned me wary and skittish, were standing here with us, Theo would’ve unleashed on them. It was only us, though. There was nowhere for it to go. So he paced, tugged his hair, grunted for me to go on.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” I dragged my teeth along my lip. “I don’t know if it makes you feel better, but I think what I said reflects more poorly on me than you. I made myself look like a crazy bitch, and you, my poor, hapless victim.”
“Is that an apology?” he groused.
“Yeah.” I wasn’t much for saying sorry, but right was right, and I wasn’t that. “Sorry, Theodore.”
Theo stopped pacing and stared at me. He did it for so long, he made me twitchy. My fingers brushed over my hair, under my bottom lip, smoothed my shirt, and finally tucked away in my pockets when I couldn’t keep still.
Then he burst out laughing and grabbed me by the nape, pulling me into him. “I didn’t expect that, Little Tiger. Not in a million years.”
My hands were trapped in my pockets, otherwise, I definitely would have pushed him away. “Don’t kiss me.”
His head lowered. “Why do you think I’m going to kiss you?”
My eyes narrowed. “You’re getting closer and your eyes are twinkling at me.”
He chuckled, his warm breath ghosting over my lips. “You were just a complete dick to me. What makes you think I’d even want to kiss you?”
“Because you’re obviously obsessed with—”
His mouth came down hard on mine, his playful mood vanishing. Wet, deep, he kissed me like we were naked in bed, not the middle of campus where anyone and everyone could see. And I participated, because along with his playful mood, my brain function ceased. My hands magically came untucked from my pockets and wound up beneath the back of his T-shirt, exploring the smooth, hard planes of his back and hips.
We were so close, pressed together so tight, when Theo's phone vibrated in his front pocket, I felt it too. It might as well have been a strike with a Taser zapping me back to reality. Except Theo didn’t let me jump back from him when I tore my mouth away. He kept his hand buried in my hair, the other claiming the small of my back.
“Don’t run,” he warned.
“You’re a liar. You said you didn’t want to kiss me.”
“Never said that.”
Maybe he hadn’t. I couldn’t think straight—and that was a problem. I needed my wits around this man.
His phone vibrated again.
“Someone wants to talk to you.”
He lowered his chin. “I’m talking to the only person I want to talk to right now. Whoever is texting can wait.”
I couldn’t handle the underlying sweetness of that. Not in a million years could I take that in and make it mine.
“So talk, Theodore.”
His kiss-swollen lips twitched. “I need your phone number.”
“Why?”
“So I can text when I’m out front of your dorm tomorrow.”
My forehead fell into his chin. “Oh. I forgot.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
“I’m an asshole.”
“You are an asshole, no argument.”
I raised my face, laughing in spite of myself. “Give me your phone.”