Nothing But Wild (Malibu University 2)

When am I ever going to get another opportunity to openly stare without consequences attached? Like…never. So I do.

Living dangerously, I sit on the edge of the tub and take my time drinking him in. There are silver tears painted on his cheeks. This is curious but I don’t linger too long when there’s so much more to explore.

Asleep, he looks almost angelic. Which is completely false advertising because awake he’s wild. A hell raiser. And most notably a shameless player. Girls are constantly fighting for the right to sit next to him in class. The bookends, I call them.

I can’t judge the girls, though. Not when I’ve been admiring him from afar since the day my parents dropped me off for freshman orientation and he crossed my path on his way to the pool. One smile is all it took to enslave me. Our eyes met, he smiled at me, and bam! Glammed 4life. Three years later I’m still under this wretched spell.

He snorts again. Or snuffles or whatever. And I bite my lips to stop from laughing. If he wakes up now, it will truly be the end of me.

I’m about to pull back and bug out without him being any wiser when his eyes suddenly crack open. Beneath his hooded lids, the striking bright blue eyes that I know becomes a warmer shade of turquoise in sunlight are trained on me. At the most, my face is a measly foot away from his. There’s no plausible explanation for this.

I barely breathe while my mind scrambles for an excuse. Then I recall that the headgear hides most of my face and the tightness around my lungs eases a fraction. Even if he had any clue I existed––which I’m sure he doesn’t––he would never recognize me in this outfit. The Cat Woman costume is a far cry from the button-down shirts and khakis I typically wear to class.

“Kitten?” he says in a scratchy voice, expression sleepy with a side of seductive. Let’s be real though, he could make a fart look sexy.

The guttural purr slides over my skin and a shiver runs up my back. And that isn’t even the half of it. What’s really frustrating is that the rest of my body reacts in a way it seldom does––like he just hit the EASY button.

I go from feeling crippling nervousness to turned-on in the time it takes for the last consonant to fall from his perfectly symmetrical lips. And the worst part––for some incomprehensible reason it only happens with this guy, one that I have less than zero chance of ever getting romantically involved with. I wish I was imagining it but I’ve run a split test.

“Yes?”

What in God’s green Earth possessed me to speak I will never know, but now that I have I wait for him to either call me out or laugh, and neither would surprise me.

“Am I dreaming?” he says, his expression one of genuine befuddlement. Good grief, he even makes confusion look good.

“Yes,” slides out before I even realize I’m moving my lips. No hesitation or stutter.

Dallas’s gaze moves over my face. First, my lips. Then my cheeks. His eyes briefly lock with mine before descending once more to my mouth. Then pain flashes across his face. It’s acute and profound and for a minute I get the feeling he’s on the brink of tears. The real kind, not like the ones painted on his cheeks. But as fast as the pain appeared, it’s gone. His head tips back an inch, his chin comes up, and he pushes it all down and out of sight.

“Why d’you do it?”

My budding excitement takes a sudden downturn. Or is it upturn? Point is, he’s mistaken me for someone else. Not a stranger in a slutty cat costume but an actual other person! And going by the emotion on his face that someone means something to him. Whoever this girl is, she definitely left her mark. The longing in his voice is unmistakable. Also, it occurs to me that he’s high and hallucinating, and here I am feeding the delusion. I’m going to hell for this.

I can’t answer. A silent, tension-filled moment grows between us and I let it. Silence is the one thing I’m great at. Meanwhile, he continues to stare at my lips like he’s one drug-addled, bad decision away from devouring them.

“Kiss me,” he murmurs quietly while his gaze lifts to mine, silently begging me to do it.

I could blame the costume.

I could blame a spell of temporary insanity. I legit could.

I could even blame pure and simple sexual frustration. God knows I feel plenty of that.

But the truth is I have no idea where I get the audacity, where the courage I never knew I possessed comes from. All I know is that I’m at a crossroads in my life. This is my one chance to ever touch him, my one chance to ever feel what it’s like to kiss him, and if I let this one chance slip away, I know I will regret it for the rest of my life. All I can hope for is that he’s a terrible kisser and the spell will be broken, releasing me from this inconvenient crush. Fingers crossed.