All eyes fly toward King in the doorway as his eyes come to mine. “Let’s go,” he grunts as though stealing a student right out of homeroom is completely acceptable.
“What? No,” I say, glancing back at Mr. Bennett, who watches on with a scowl across his face.
“Don’t make me come in there and throw your ass over my shoulder,” he warns me. “You fucking know that I will.”
I let out a loud sigh, hating how he uses that authoritative tone on me, but screw him. If he can use it on me, then I’ll sure as hell use it right back on him. “Why? What is so freaking important that it couldn’t wait until break? Hell, I just stood in the fucking hallway for the past ten minutes. You could have talked to me then.”
King’s eyes narrow. “Now, Winter.”
I groan and stare at him a second longer, but it’s clear as day that he has absolutely no intention of walking away. I quickly glance at Mr. Bennett who instantly drops his gaze in dismissal, and just like that, I push my chair back, letting it scrape across the classroom floor.
I make a show of my irritation by slowly getting up and grabbing my things off the desk in front of me, more than aware of Ember’s curious gaze burning into the side of my face.
I make my way toward King and hold his stare, and with every step I take, I see him trying to get inside my head. “What?” I demand, stepping right in front of him.
King rolls his eyes and grabs my wrist before pulling me out of the classroom and closing the door behind him. He walks down the hall and I have to jog a few steps to keep up with his long strides. “What do you want?” I ask. “You can’t just drag me out of homeroom whenever the hell you like, you know. You may be bigger and stronger than me, but I’ll tear your ass up, Hunter King.”
We storm down the empty hallway until we finally reach my locker and only then does he stop. King takes my waist and pushes me up against my locker. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“The fuck are you talking about? You know exactly what’s going on with me.”
“No,” he says, leaning into me and narrowing his gaze on mine. “It’s something more. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve been different this morning. What happened?”
My heart races as I bite down on my bottom lip and glance away, not ready to discuss it, yet my hands come to his shirt and I pull him in closer, desperately needing his comfort. “It’s nothing,” I tell him, sinking into the feel of his arm curling around my body. “Just bullshit with Carver.”
“What happened?” he urges, his tone deep and demanding.
I let out a sigh. “Nothing that I shouldn’t have expected,” I tell him, feeling the weight of Carver’s rejection sitting heavily against my chest. “After you guys left my place yesterday, I went to see Carver to talk and he just … he wanted nothing to do with me. It’s as though he couldn’t even stand to look at my face, and I don’t know it just—”
“It hurt,” he finishes for me.
I nod into his chest and he lets out a deep sigh, almost as though my pain hurts him just as much. We stand together for a long moment with nothing but silence between us as he allows me to soak up every little bit of his comfort. When I finally feel strong enough, I push him back just a step so that I can see his face. “Did you really drag me out of homeroom just to see how I was doing?”
A guilty smirk cuts across his face as his eyes shine with a devilish sparkle that has everything inside me clenching. “Well, to be perfectly honest,” he says, quickly glancing up and down the hallway, “I pulled you out here so I could fuck you up against your locker.”
I suck in a gasp, my eyes wide as I quickly glance around, making sure we’re still alone. “Are you insane? You can’t fuck me here in the middle of the hallway. Someone could see. Not to mention, that sounds like an indecent exposure to minors charge heading right your way.”
“Who’s going to see? We’re all alone. Everyone is in homeroom. Besides, I bet it’ll get your mind off Carver pretty damn fast.”
“But—”
King raises a brow, his lips pulling up at the corners with his cocky confidence. “Wow, you’re surprising me, Winter. I never took you for the chick to be scared of a challenge.”
My jaw drops at his audacity. “That’s a low blow,” I tell him. “You know I’m not scared, but there’s only five minutes left in homeroom and then this hallway will be packed with bodies, and I don’t know about you, but this whole school has already seen me sucking a dick, they don’t need to watch me riding one too.”