Page 79 of Distortion
‘Yes, but not any that I’d...’ I put a hand over my eyes. ‘I’m not likeJolie. I don’t know how. It’s a bad deal.’
‘A bad deal?’ his tone is cutting. Dangerous.
‘For you, I mean,’ I clarify.
‘Let me worry about that.’
‘What about Shade?’ I ask, wondering what my stepbrother’s major is. ‘Will he find out I’m here?’
‘Let’s see if you deserve to be here first, shall we?’ He turns away. ‘On the table there. The papers.’
‘Yes?’
‘Sign the NDA. Then the equations need checking. I’m guessing you know how given all thoseclassesyou took.’
He puts ‘classes’ in air quotes and my eyes narrow. ‘I’ll start right away.’
‘Good. Each line needs to be checked thoroughly and corrected tonight.’
I nod and begin to move away from him when he grabs my waist, pulling me back. I tense and, for a second, his face softens.
He’s really quite nice to look at when he isn’t frowning, I realize. His eyes are dark and his black lashes long. The tattoos I glimpse sometimes peek out from his black shirt collar and I think I’d enjoy tracing the straight lines with my fingers.
His fingers caress my cheek and I look down, seeing red on his knuckles. They’re injured and freshly scabbed over, I realize.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
His eyes soften on me. ‘Jesus, the way you talk sometimes. It’s almost like you really care,’ he says quietly. ‘Wrestling.’
‘Oh. Do you like it? Wrestling?’
He shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter if I do, or not. I’m good at it and it’s the only reason I’m here.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Scholarship,’ he murmurs as if he’s not really paying attention to our exchange. ‘We don’t all have a Daddy Novelle to give us money.’
I stare at Blake. He’s right. John is a sonofabitch, but he’s still paying for me to go to school. In true Daisy style, I’ve taken that and the future it’ll give me,if I graduate, for granted. If he hadn’t been so awful to me when I was a kid, Imight even give him a thank you. Though as I think about it now, the truth is, rightly or wrongly, in my mind, he owes me for the way he treated me, for The Heath, for not keeping my mom safe. Cause and effect. Checks and balances. My education is the price he’ll pay for us to be square.
‘Stay still,’ Blake instructs, drawing me back to the present.
I watch him. My heart is beating hard. My palms are hot and clammy. I hide my hands behind my back in case they do anythingweirdwhile I wait to see what he’s doing.
Like grab him and pull him closer.
No, like flail about and accidentally smack him in the balls.
I did that to Crewes once. He was not happy.
Focus.
He smells like peppermint.
Blake’s lips descend to mine slowly. His eyes are open, watching me, and I try to keep my eyes the same, but they drift closed as I feel his warm skin on mine.
I’m transported for a second to when Shade did the same.
Shade was more forceful, his fingers and lips bruising. But Blake’s hands flutter over my skin. He doesn’t hold me in place as his lips begin to caress mine. I open on a small intake of breath and his tongue slips through the gap. It’s cajoling and gently questing. I copy him and the kiss deepens.
