Devil May Care (Boys of Preston Prep 1)

“See?” I grin, victorious. “I knew you wouldn’t stop until you could fix something about me.”

“Oh my god, how can one person be this insufferable,” she mutters, but walks across the room and retrieves a large pouch. Returning to me, she unzips it and I see a red cross on the front. “Move.” She shoves me aside with her hips and drops next to me on the bed.

“Take off the old bandage,” she demands, rifling through the pouch. I unwind the gauze, wincing when the fabric sticks to the wound, a stinging tug that would probably hurt a lot more, were I sober. I rip it off quick, revealing a raw, crimson scrape wound. “Does it hurt?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.” Actually, it probably hurts a lot, and I don’t even want to think what it’ll feel like in the chlorine at swim practice in two days.

“The gauze stuck because you didn’t put any ointment on it. You need to keep it moist,” she explains, tearing the edge off a little disposable packet of goo. She squeezes a glob of it onto the wound and after a moment of slight hesitation, takes my hand in her own and uses her finger’s delicate touch to smear it around. The cool, greasy medicine brings an instant relief, and I don’t bother fussing as she rewraps it with a smaller strip of gauze. Once she’s secured it with actual tape, I hold it up to inspect it.

“Don’t tell me,” I say, “you learned how to do that by treating the ailing children of some remote third-world village after an earthquake ravaged their community.”

“Actually,” she says, packing back up the supplies, her actions stiff and agitated, “I learned how to do that on myself, back when my mother left me home alone for three days and I sliced my hand open on a can of rancid ravioli.” She levels me with a frosty look. “But of course, the ceiling of knowledge as it pertains to the absolute basics of caring for a scrape is pretty low.”

Her eyes hold mine—daring me to come up with a smart retort. Strangely, what emerges is, “Just because I don’t do a bunch of dumb charity shit doesn’t make me a bad person.”

She blinks at me for a moment, eyebrows pulling together. Slowly, as if speaking to a small and very dumb child, she says, “No. The way you treat people makes you a bad person.”

I hold up a finger. “That’s up for debate. Arguably, I’m morally grey at worst, and at best—”

“What the hell are you doing here, Hamilton?” she bursts. “Because if I have to hear you drunkenly extol your own virtues, so help me god, I will fling myself out that window.”

I look around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

What am I doing here?

Well, I couldn’t tell her the truth, could I? I couldn’t say that I just want to prove that she’s nothing special. That the fact I can’t stop thinking about her all the time is just some stress-induced psychological fluke. That what transpired between us in the locker room was an anomaly. A moment of weakness. My mind playing tricks on me.

Instead, I lift my hand, raising it to slip a finger below her chin, and look at that. She doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t resist at all when I nudge her face upward. Her wide eyes meet mine for only a split second before dropping to my mouth.

The kiss is slow and gentle, entirely void of the rage and intimidation of the first time we were together. There are no jagged edges here. This is all softness, so delicate and careful that even the soft sound of suction as our lips retreat threatens to shatter the moment.

The girl in front of me isn’t fighting b

ack. She’s stunned silent as I sit here exploring the curiosity of it all. The lack of heat and anger should make this kiss different, I think. It should make it vacant, less intense, nothing more than any other mediocre kiss.

But fuck. It’s just as good as I’d remembered. Better, maybe, because here I have the bandwidth to really take it in and feel it. This isn’t going even remotely how I expected. I pull back and see her wide, confused eyes. Before she can form the question, I return to her lips, eager to dive in for more. But this time, I allow my hand to rest on her waist and slide up, rucking her thin tank top as it ascends.

Her hands land on my chest and she pushes me hard enough that I have to shoot out a hand to avoid falling off the bed.

I let out a surly, “Ow,” as I land on my injured hand.

Having already lurched herself from the bed, Gwendolyn gapes down at me. “What are you doing?”

I shrug, feigning casualness even though my heart is racing like a hummingbird’s wings. “Thought I’d try it again. See what all the fuss was about.”

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” She darts a nervous glance out her window, then toward her door, and I don’t even know what she’s expecting to find. A gaggle of Devils standing in the hall with their ears pressed up against the door? A camera capturing the whole thing to share on social media? “You totally are! You need to leave.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Her question comes out shrill, incredulous.

“Why do I need to leave?” I know perfectly well that I’m being an ass, but I just can’t help it now that I’ve reclaimed the upper hand. I really hadn’t been messing with her before, but now? How could I possibly help myself?

“Because, because…” She’s got that pink, flustered sheen all about her, cheeks and neck splotched with red. I’ve seen her flushed with anger before, and the Gwen standing before me doesn’t have nearly enough of the wide, apoplectic eyes to signal anger alone.

She’s so fucking hot for this.

Gwendolyn marches across the small room and throws open the door, but I clear the room in all of two strides, slamming it shut again with the splay of my palm, pinning her in.