I’m still smiling about it the next morning.
Even though I didn’t want to leave his side and that hot little cocoon of his dull gray room and rumpled sheets, I had to come back. So Arrow, after helping me shower, where he proceeded to lick me to another orgasm while soothing my sore pussy, and dressing me up in his t-shirt, dropped me off at the spot in the woods where I could sneak back in.
I didn’t go to sleep though. Not right away.
Not until dawn broke in the sky, but still, I woke up at the designated time, got ready for classes, went to breakfast, and chatted with my friends, all of whom gave me knowing looks because I left with him in the middle of my dance with a smile on my face.
That’s how I spend my entire day, smiling.
Even when Miller gives me extra homework – because I was smiling too much and daydreaming in her class – that I have to finish before next week, I still have a smile and that’s how I enter the library, too.
Smiling.
I even greet the girl behind the reception desk with a friendly wave, which she obviously does not return but it’s okay.
I’m happy.
I’m perfect. For him.
That’s what he said, right? That I’m perfect.
I mean, yes it was only for sex but still. It was something.
I never had much interest in being perfect but ever since I was ten, I wanted to be perfect for him. I wanted to somehow bridge the gap between us and match him.
Turns out, I do.
I do match him and oh my God, I can’t stop smiling.
And I thought this was the extent of my happiness, what I’m feeling right now. The bubbly, floaty sensation in my limbs and my stomach.
But I was wrong.
My happiness can be doubled. My happiness can be red hot. It can be bursting and pulsing and seeping out of my skin.
Because as soon as I turn around from the reception desk, my books against my chest, looking for an empty table where I can park myself and solve all the goddamn equations, I find him.
He’s here and he’s looking at me.
Like he was expecting me.
He’s at a table in the corner, directly beneath the overhead light that brings out the gold in his hair. It brings out the gold in his skin too, especially in the curve of his bulging bicep when he raises his arm to rake his fingers through his strands.
My own fingers twitch when I see him do that, comb back the fallen strands, and my throat dries out at the sight of his beautiful face. At the hollows of his cheeks and the seam of his lips.
The blazing blue of his eyes.
It’s wrong what they say. That when you die, your body turns cold and blue. No, blue doesn’t mean winter and death.
Blue for me will always mean warm summer and life. Fire.
Blue for me will always mean him.
My Arrow.
He’s sitting back in his chair, wearing his usual V-neck gray t-shirt, and when I simply keep standing in my spot, he folds his arms across his chest and raises his eyebrows, making him look all kinds of arrogant and sexy.
Then he does something even sexier, something that causes flutters to explode in my belly.
With his eyes on me, he nudges the chair by his side out with his foot. In a silent invitation to sit by him.
And I have to smile at that as well. I have to.
There’s no way that I can’t.
There’s no way that I can’t walk up to him now, my breaths and heartbeats a mess. My thighs a mess too. Of pulses and my wetness.
When I reach him and press the aching juncture between my legs against the table he’s chosen, his gaze drops to it.
He licks his lips as if he knows that I’m wet down there and he’s reliving my taste.
“You’re here,” I whisper.
He lifts his eyes. “I ran into your friends out in the courtyard. They told me you’d be here.”
“So you came to see me?” I ask, breathless.
Resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, he commands, “Sit.”
“What?”
“I heard you got extra homework.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So I’m here to help you.”
I press my books to my chest. “You’re here to help me with my trig homework?”
Without answering me, he repeats, “Take a seat, Salem.”
Confused and so totally floored because he came here to help me, I sit and put my books on the table. He straightens up and goes for them when I say, “Where were you all day? I was looking for you.”
He pauses then, his hand in the process of opening my notebook. With his head bowed, I hear him sigh.
I’m not sure what that sigh means but I keep going, nonetheless. “I even came by your office but you weren’t there.”