Page 10 of Make Me, Break Me

I pushed back my handwritten assignment—I was a pen and paper draft girl—and shoved my chair across the tiled flooring at the same time as he rose. I froze in place. Dex grinned as he made his way across to my table, resting his perfectly formed ass against the corner, still giving me enough room to breathe, the courteous asshole.

“Are we going?” He walked his fingers across the table top, over my mostly blank page—also courtesy of him—and up my bare arm. Those same rough, inked fingers slipped under the strap of my tank top and tugged lightly.

My body flushed on demand. I hated the reaction he had pre-programmed into me.

“I still have work to do?—”

The library ten minute warning bell for closing time echoed through our floor, the lights flickering twice just to rub the point in.

Okay, so I don’t have thirty minutes left, after all.

“You were saying?” The grin never left his face.

“You knew what time it was,” I grumbled, stacking my books together and shoved them into my postie satchel next to my laptop that he held open for me.

Also, courteous.

“What are you, going for extra brownie points this week? It doesn't count if it doesn’t go in,” I said somewhat pointedly as one page slithered to the floor and ended up beneath the desk I'd been working at.

Dex snorted, bending way too lithely to collect the runaway paper. “Why does this have my name doodled all over it and is decorated with little stabby knives?” he asked idly, onyx eyes glinting as he passed my page up to me from a kneeling position.

One hand rested on the seat I’d been working on, the other, once free of the rogue paper, slid up my thigh to rest just below my hip.

I swallowed. “I was feeling particularly violent.”

“And now?”

“I could employ a different weapon.” I planted my boot between his legs and lifted the toe just enough to graze his balls through his black jeans.

Dex bared his teeth in a feral smile. “I knew I loved you for a reason, Zin. You’ve always got my best interests at heart.” He stayed in that position for a moment longer after dropping a little love bomb of his own while I glared at him.

“Keep testing me, big boy. You already screwed up my study session.” I pushed the words out through clenched teeth and by some grace I didn't know I possessed, managed not to removehis ability to bear children. I mean, being annoying didn’t get him there—quite—but it was a close thing.

“Just keeping an eye on my girl.”

I opened my mouth to object that I was not in fact his girl, or anything else, and that the agreement we had was limited to one night a week alone, when he rose fluidly to tower over me, planting his hands on either side of the desk. One braced behind me. Dex’s breath brushed my lips, and that was the breath I breathed in when mine evicted from between startled lips.

“You—”

“Ready to go?”

His eye hit glitterball territory, the dangerous sort, as he drew back just far enough to let me inhale untainted air.

“I would have been done an hour or more ago,” I snapped, slinging my bag across my chest and stepping around him.

Only the strap never hit my chest. I grabbed for it, and spun on my heel to find Dex adjusting my satchel over his own chest. He patted the bag at his side as I gaped at him.

“Like I said, ready to go? I’ll walk you back.”

“I really don’t need it.” I’d started this conversation with snark and I saw no reason to stop now.

Dex’s turn on sweetness confused the hell out of me. We’d never been these people—or him this person—who waited for me after my silent, solo study sessions into the night avoiding my roommate and her random hookups, the campus social scene, or any sort of human connection at all. And now, he had a hostage.

I eyed my bag and twitched my nose. “You know I’m gonna need that back.”

“As soon as we reach your dorm. After you.” He waved me out of the stacks, his heavy, regular footfalls on the worn tiles an odd comfort at my back.

My stomach flopped over at the concept. Damnit, I liked the fact that he was there way too much.

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