Page 7 of Study Games

3

WAVERLY

I’d never seen anyone sit as still as Jax Palmer in stalker mode. He just perched on his chair, his back to the walk sitting perpendicular to me across the small walkway in my dimly lit section of the library –maybe not the best choice of seating after all in hindsight–and watched me.

Not that I understood what I’d done recently to earn his attention, but how was I to know he would stalk me for three whole hours without so much as flinching?

It was unnerving. Unnatural.

Rather like him.

And the longer he sat still, the more I twitched.

I couldn’t even concentrate, and I sure didn’t understand why he was so dead set on watching me. I’d sneaked enough sideways glances at him to make sure he wasn’t asleep–unless, of course, he slept with both eyes open.

But hey, this was Jax Palmer, artiste extraordinaire.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

Finally, I couldn’t concentrate on my books any longer. My feet were all tapped out, my pen jittered on the page more than my cruddy bee sketches had any right to allow, and I was past the point of frazzled. Well past.

Slapping my pen on the table I pushed my chair back and stalked across the small aisle dividing me from his darker patch of library space. Here, the lights seemed dimmer, like the shadows preferred his company to mine. I shivered for no logical reason at all and wrapped my arms around myself.

“What do you want, Jax?” I snapped, nudging his knee with mine.

Black jeans contacted brown tights and the electric shock that resulted shouldn’t have been possible through several layers of clothing and denier thick enough to ward off a deluge of wasp stings, the heaviest I could find.

Not that it was cold out. I just wanted protection from life. People.

Like Jax.

He huffed out a breath. “Did you come all the way over here just to fight with me, little bee girl?” He mimed walking two fingers across his opposite palm all the way up his arm and stopped, then looked up at me.

I got the full blast of Jax Palmer’s attention up close.

He was right. I made a grave error leaving my table. I should have stayed put, and never left the safety of my chair and my books and my bee drawings. Heading back there right now seemed the only feasible escape route.

“No.” I backed up, or tried to, but his knees trapped me in, his ankles closing around the backs of my calves and drawing me closer to his crotch. I closed my eyes and refused to look at his smirking face, shaking my head. “Jax, stop it.”

A plea if I ever heard one, but if I tried to back out of his odd embrace I’d end up on my ass with my head at hip height, and that brought memories of a different night surging back….

“No!” I whisper-shouted, shoving my hands to his shoulders and pushing.

My eyes flew open as, like I predicted, his legs didn’t let go. I flew backwards, ready to land butt-first in the worst position a girl could land with a boy like him.

Only Jax Palmer was so far from being a boy it wasn’t funny. No part of this was funny and I’d put myself into a whole lot of trouble. I knew he wouldn’t easily let me free myself, if he let me go at all.

Should have stayed at your table, Alloway.

I was still berating myself when I realized my butt didn’t hurt, nor that it hadn’t hit the ground.

I glanced around, but the library floor was still the same distance as it had been before from my ass cheeks. I twisted back to face forward and found Jax right. There.

Right in front of me, standing so my head reached his chest level. His legs dropped to frame my sides where he stood on the outside of mine in a different sort of embrace, and those long, leather encased arms wrapped around me.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

Completely out of place and countenance with his stalker self who stared at me for the last three hours.

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