SNAPPED (The Slate Brothers 1)

After a moment, he lets me slide back to my feet; the motion means I drag over his cock, which is semi-erect. We walk on, faster now.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we step off campus and toward one of the downtown area’s side streets.

“My car,” he says.

“And then?”

“It’s a surprise. You’re free tonight, right? And tomorrow morning?”

“Are we going to your house?” I ask, and there’s no hiding the eagerness in my voice. Sebastian slides his hand down my back and raps me lightly on the ass.

“No.”

“Wait, really? We’re not?”

“You sound disappointed. But no, we’re not. And like I said: It’s a surprise,” he repeats. “You told me you trusted me, Ashlynn. Or was that only in the context of the bedroom?”

“I trust you,” I say, and I mean it.

“Good. Then come on,” he says, and hurries me along to his car.

15

It isn’t until we’ve been driving for nearly an hour that I start to question both my and Sebastian’s sanity. Where the hell are we going? North— I know that much, but that’s more or less all I know, seeing as how Sebastian isn’t so much as giving the smallest hint about our destination.

“I have a class at noon tomorrow, you know,” I say, shaking my head at this guy’s audacity. “And I’m also pretty sure this constitutes kidnapping.”

“You’ll miss it, unfortunately. And yeah, it probably does,” he answers, shooting me a challenging look as if to dare me to complain. I roll my eyes, but I’m excited and he knows it. I’d never do this sort of thing on my own, and I’m pretty sure I’d never have agreed to this sort of thing had he asked me. I feel alive and rebellious and jittery in the best way. When I text my roommates to let them know what’s happening, they send back nothing but long, elaborate strings of emojis. Maddy sends back nothing but eggplants, thumbs-ups, and winking faces.

I fall asleep around one o’clock in the morning, and am startled awake hours later when I realize the car has stopped moving. I look around frantically, trying to get my bearings— we’re in a well-lit parking lot, and Sebastian is asleep in the driver’s seat, leaned back and stretched out so far that he nearly takes up the entire car. He’s breathing deeply, totally out. I wonder how long he’s been asleep— how long he drove for before falling asleep. Is this our final destination, or did he just get too tired to drive?

I sit up as quietly as possible and take in the scenery. We’re outside an enormous old building, with pillars out front and windowpanes so ornate they look like they belong in a church. There are old rosebushes planted all around, with the last of the season’s flowers on full display. Oak trees, similar to those that dot the Berkfield campus, loom on the lawn in front of the building, but there’s no one in sight— which makes sense, given that according to my phone, it’s four o’clock in the morning.

I quietly open the car door and slink outside into the cool night air, shutting it by pressing lightly on the door’s exterior. Sebastian fidgets, but doesn’t wake up. I straighten and look around for a clue as to where we are. It’s a campus, I realize— another college. It’s not a campus I immediately recognize, but then, I didn’t look at all that many schools. Berkfield offered me a great scholarship, and that sort of made my higher education decisions for me. I creep forward, nervous in the dark, waiting to see a mascot or a sign or a something…

There— the enormous building we’re parked outside of has a beautiful label carved into the marble across the top: Sinclair Law Library. There are massive, heavy doors, and despite large windows on either side I’m unable to see anything in the darkened interior. I’m staring up at the building when I hear a car door open behind me; when I turn, Sebastian is extracting himself from the vehicle, all legs and arms and height.

“Surprised?” he asks.

“Confused,” I answer. “Why are we at the Sinclair Law Library? And where, exactly, is the Sinclair Law Library?”

He walks up to me and puts his arm around me again; I become incredibly aware of the fact that I’m wearing yesterday’s jeans and a t-shirt that I’m pretty sure I’d picked up off my bedroom floor last night— no, wait, earlier tonight— when I had no idea Sebastian Slate was on his way over. “We’re at Coastal State College. I have an old high school football buddy who goes here.”

“So we’re here to…visit your old football buddy?” I ask, feeling a surge of disappointment. Sebastian kisses my forehead swiftly, another one of those moves that tells me he’s confident we’ll be kissing plenty of times in the future.