Thomas rises from his chair and I fully appreciate his massive height. “It’s called a cut, not a vest.”
Noted. Thomas hooks a thumb in his pocket and stands there as if he’s waiting for me, and after the longest seconds of my life, I comprehend that he is waiting for me. I fumble with my purse and folder and eventually coordinate myself enough to make it to my feet and stumble down the aisle.
Thomas follows. When we breeze past our teacher into the hallway, Thomas’s head swivels between me and our classroom. Then he gives it a slight shake like he’s having an internal conversation about me, and I don’t like that I’m not a part of it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, that wasn’t nothing. That was something.”
Thomas doesn’t answer, and he leaves two feet between us as we walk down the hallway. There’s a large enough gap that people easily stroll through, so it’s then I discover we weren’t really connecting.
My second period class comes into view and I decide to end this weird thing the two of us have going so we can return to our normal lives. “Hey, Thomas, wait a sec. Let me give you the twenty bucks I owe you.”
He studies me as if he’s trying to figure out if he likes the knee-length skirt and sleeveless purple shirt, and then his gaze drops just low enough he may be admiring a part of me no boy has explored before. The thought causes a rush of heat to crash onto my cheeks and it takes everything I have not to pull my hair off the nape of my neck in an attempt to cool down.
Thomas slips closer and I step back, colliding with the locker behind me. My heel throbs from the impact, but I’m so caught by the way his muscles rippled when he moved in my direction that I don’t utter a sound.
“Call me Razor.” This boy is immaculately pretty and he makes it terribly difficult to be coherent.
He told me to call him Razor. Razor sounds mean and menacing and he’s sexy and brooding with his cut on, but I recall the tease in his voice earlier and the way he fixed my phone. “What if I’d rather call you Thomas?”
Those light blue eyes freeze over. “I’d tell you you’re shit out of luck.”
A chill paralyzes me as he flips to dangerous. “Razor it is.”
Razor looks over my hair with intense interest and follows a strand to where it lies on my bare shoulder. “Do you know what I was going to do?”
I inch my head left, then right. My mouth has completely dried out and I couldn’t speak if my life depended on it. Thomas freaking Turner—Razor of the Reign of Terror Motorcycle Club—is so close I can feel the heat of his body. He’s close enough that with every inhale I can smell his delicious dark scent. He’s close enough I’m not thinking of guns or abductions or of any warnings I’ve ever heard, but of how my body is begging to take one step forward and touch that gorgeous face.
“I was never going to take your twenty dollars. I was going to get you on the back of my bike and take you for a ride.”
Dizziness sets in as I’m not sure if he means a ride home or a very consensual ride. And here’s the thing: I’m not the girl guys consider offering rides to—either the way home type or the type that’s making my toes pleasantly curl.
“And now?” I hate how my voice quakes with anticipation.
Razor picks up a lock of my hair and the skin he barely touched while lifting the strands tingles. He allows my hair to slide between his fingers and then he eases entirely too far from me, his warmth retreating with him. “And now I want something else for protecting you.”
The bell rings and I’m thirty seconds from being late to class. Panic rips through me as being late is so not what I do. Razor pivots on the balls of his feet and leaves. It’s like my world is being torn in two as I’m desperate to understand him while I fight this desire to remain the girl who obeys the rules. “Razor!”
He rotates and walks backward for his class. I’m guessing his “what?” expression is the most encouragement I’ll get.
“I don’t need you to protect me anymore.”
He releases that soul-squeezing smile. The one that screams dark nights and perilous bike rides at breakneck speeds. The one that reminds me he’s not a model, but a biker. “Yeah, you do. We’ll discuss payment later.”
I slip into the safety of my class and watch as Thomas Turner, Razor the motorcycle boy, strides into the classroom across from me. My hands tremble as I sit. My senior year just entered the realm of interesting.
RAZOR
WELCOME BACK, SENIORS.
It’s the message our English teacher would have given us a hundred extra credit points for if we deciphered it. I didn’t decode it, Breanna Miller did. Watching her do it in class was one of the most fascinating things I’ve seen and what kicks me in the nuts is that she didn’t turn it in. Didn’t take credit. Didn’t receive her reward for a job well done. She sat there, slightly angled in her chair, with that sexy little smirk on her face as she admired her answer.