Very Wicked Beginnings (Briarwood Academy 1.5)

I straightened up. “I’ll meet you after dance. I want to see you again before I go home.”

She sputtered. “No. I just gave you a list of reasons why we can’t go out.”

“Yeah, I may have missed some of it. I was watching your mouth move,” I murmured. “Got distracted by your lips.”

“Is this a joke?” she asked.

“I don’t play pranks.” I waved at the space between us. “We have a connection. I knew it the moment I sat down with you. You want to resist me, that’s fine. I like it. It’s like foreplay.”

I slid off my leather varsity jacket and wrapped it over her shoulders. “Meet me outside your building so you can give me my jacket back. That’s all. No more songs.”

I tweaked her nose. “And my dream was real.”

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, making me chuckle. I gave her one last lingering look and turned and sauntered away. Totally pretending that I wasn’t a bundle of nerves.

“Gypsies? Oh, he was good. Very good.”

–Dovey

HOLY SHIZZLE. CUBA Hudson asked me out. What was the world coming to?

He slowly disappeared down the hall, headed to his own class. I watched until the other students swallowed him up and he was gone.

Why me?

“Bad juju,” I murmured to no one is particular, stroking the supple texture of his coat. I made sure no one was looking and buried my face in the collar, inhaling his scent, sandalwood and musk. I wanted to wrap my whole body in it and roll around on the ground. I wanted to wave it around like a matador in front of all the snooty girls in my class. I wanted to take it home and sleep with it, maybe cuddle up to it like a teddy bear. Then I burst out laughing. Craazzzy.

Because a guy like him would never want a girl like me.

At the end of classes, I hurried to the studio, changed, and lost myself in dance for the next three hours. I exercised and tried to forget about the sizzling way he’d looked at me. I tried to forget about how drop-dead gorgeous he was with those powerful arms and broad shoulders. I sure didn’t think about his soft dark hair with red highlights from the sun or his intense yellow eyes. Or his hot as hell tattoo that I wanted to lick from beginning to end. Or the way he strolled around BA with his confident swagger, like what was between his legs was big and…

Stop!

Instead, I focused on his bad points and came up with two: his cockiness, which was off the charts insane, and then his reputation as a ladies’ man. The gossip was he’d never had a serious girlfriend. He was a serial dater who tended to drop a girl when a better one came along. And even though these girls were often broken-hearted, they still considered him a friend. That takes skill and cunning, proving he was no dumb jock. A freaking genius was more like it, if you considered how he’d played me, how he’d seemed to know exactly what to say to reel me in.

He wasn’t called the Heartbreaker of BA for nothing.

At five, I jerked a sweatshirt over my leotard and tights, not bothering to put my pants back on. There wasn’t time. I stuck my feet in a pair of wooly boots and took off. He was probably out there right now, his eyes leveled at the door, waiting for me to exit. So, I avoided the front entrance and slipped out the side door and ran all the way to the parking lot, lugging my books, my dance bag, and his jacket. Several students gawked at me darting across the quad in my dance tights, but I didn’t care.

His silver Porsche gleamed in the sunlight—of course everyone knew his car—its sleek lines screaming money and power. Just like Cuba. I stood there, pacing around, debating and thinking and berating myself for not immediately leaving. But it was hard because he’d sucked me in with his sweet talk and goofy song.

But, he had no idea who I really was.

And if he ever found out who my parents were, he’d drive out of here so fast all I’d have would be skid tracks on my heart.

And that thought sealed the deal.

I rose and draped his jacket over the driver’s side mirror, somewhere he wouldn’t miss it. And because I was tempted to linger there and wait for him, I ran all the way to my car.

I had ballet. That was enough.

“It ain’t over till I say it’s over.”

–Cuba

I WAITED FOR her for thirty minutes, until finally the dance instructor exited the building. I watched him lock up.

Apparently Dovey had slipped past me, probably leaving from a side door. Yeah, a girl dissing me was a first. And it sucked ass.

I shook my head as I walked back to my car. Maybe I’d come on too strong? Had the dream freaked her out? Should I have treated her like Marissa?

I reached my car and came to an abrupt halt, my eyes taking in the leather varsity jacket spread out on top of the driver’s side mirror.

And I got it. She had liked me. That much had been obvious from the way she’d laughed at my song. But something was holding her back.

Maybe it was because we came from different worlds like she said.

Maybe it was because of my bad rep with girls.

Maybe it was because she could see through my pretty exterior to the ugliness underneath.

But we weren’t over. Hell no.

I drove home, and by the time I pulled up in my drive, I had the perfect plan to make her mine. To get her under me.

She’d have no idea what hit her.

Because this was just the beginning.

A very wicked beginning.

The End