“Oh my Goooooood,” Irina exclaims, practically falling off her chair.
My entire face turns red, and I retract my hand. “Okay, that’s enough.”
“Lana, I did not expect this from you,” Crystal muses.
“Me neither, and there’s nothing to expect,” I say, turning to face them. “There is nothing between us.”
“Excuse me, I beg to differ,” Milo muses behind me.
“Swear to God, Milo, I will smack you into the fucking hospital,” I grit, trying to keep my cool so I don’t blow up in front of everyone in this goddamn library.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he retorts.
“Wow,” Crystal mutters, her eyes widening.
So I whisper to all three of the girls, “Please don’t tell my brother. Or anyone for that matter. They’ve been stalking me.”
“Stalking you?” Milo scoffs. “You’re the one who—”
I smack my hand in front of his lips so he doesn’t blurt out more. “You. Come with me. Now.”
I grasp his arm and drag him out of the library. Everyone’s looking at us, but I don’t care. I’m just taking him for a walk and talk.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“Somewhere private,” I mutter.
The smug grin on his face is insufferable. “Oh, I like the sound of that.”
I drag him all the way to the underground swimming pool that I know no one attends right now because the doors are locked.
“Wait, this is locked.”
“Not for me.” I fish out a key and shove it in to open the door.
“How’d you get that?” he asks.
“My father’s the dean,” I reply.
His eyes narrow, and a wicked smile forms on his face. “You stole it. You’re not so different from us after all.”
“Borrowed. And I’m nothing like you guys.”
“Sure, you keep pretending you’re better than us.”
I push him inside and shut the door behind us, then corner him against the wall. “What were you trying to do there? Out us all?”
He holds up his hands like he wants to make peace. “Nothing. Nathan just asked me to go check on you.”
“Why? Why does he care?”
“You say it like it’s surprising that he could,” he says.
“Of course it is, he’s never once shown interest in my safety or well-being.”
“Just because we use you for sex doesn’t mean we don’t care,” he says.
Grumbling, I push myself off him and pace around near the edge of the water. “I don’t understand. Ever since he paid off those fuckers and saw his sister, something about him has just … changed.”
“His sister is important to him. And now that the load of stress is off him … you’re just seeing him for who he really is,” Milo says.
“Whatever.” I sigh out loud. “Still … that doesn’t mean you can just walk up to me and my friends.”
He pouts. “Why not?”
“Well, you literally just outed me to my friends. What if they tell Felix, huh?”
His brow rises. “Would that be such a bad thing?”
I just stare at him with my jaw dropped. “Felix hates you guys. Like, I’m not kidding. He’d actually cut out your eye and feed it to you for touching me.”
“Oh … fuck, that just made my cock hard.”
I slap him in the face. “Focus!”
“Present!”
“Don’t talk to me in public,” I say, trying to ignore his obvious hard-on. “Not in front of anyone. I don’t want this to get out.”
His eyes narrow, and he tilts his head. “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
My cheeks flush, but I roll my eyes and turn away so he won’t see. “Embarrassed is a strong word.”
There’s a pause. “You like me.”
My eyes widen, and I turn my head to glance at him. Big mistake because that stupid shit-eating grin of his only makes my blush worse.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” He pushes himself off the wall and approaches me, and when I try to move away, he grabs my arm. “Don’t run away from this.”
“I’m not running anywhere.”
“You don’t like to be confronted with the truth,” he says.
He pushes my hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering near my neck, every touch sending delicious shocks up my spine.
Fuck, stop this, Lana.
“Fine, you want the truth? We made a deal. My body for your silence. You’re not being silent right now.”
“I’ll be quiet for my queen whenever she demands …”
Oh, there he goes again.
“Don’t,” I grit.
“Don’t what?” He tips up my chin. “Treat you like you deserve to be treated?”
I gulp at the intensity with which he says those words. “I never asked—”
“You don’t have to ask. Like I said … I’m at your service … I don’t want this to be just about some deal,” he says, pulling me closer.
My eyes narrow. Fine. He wants to play this game? I’ll play. “Then tell me who that guy was you were talking to.”
“A friend.”
“What kind of friend?”
He smiles slyly. “I’ll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours.”
Of course he’s going to play hard to get.
I sigh out loud. “Milo …”
“What? I want to get to know you.” He wraps an arm around my waist. “But you won’t let me.”
“We’re enemies.”
He cups my cheek as he leans in. “What if I don’t want to be?”
When he presses the softest of kisses to my lips, I almost, almost forget he’s supposed to be an enemy. His lips eagerly roam mine, his fingers coiling through my hair like he adores every strand, and it’s a kind of love I haven’t felt before.
No number of kisses Jason ever gave me could come close to the kind of adoration Milo pours into them. He pecks me on each corner of my lips like he’s leaving tiny little trails of infatuation. Each kiss is followed by a glance, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes as he leans in to kiss me again and again, until my mind can’t even tell if I hate him or adore him.
Fuck.
I try to push him away, but instead, I lose my balance and slip. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
I fall backward, clutching his shirt … and we tumble into the pool.
