Page 21 of Study Buddies

She looked down, momentarily defeated. But then her head snapped up, making that glossy hair bounce again. “Can’t you just come to the study group because you want to improve your grade?”

“Nope.”

“How about because I asked you to? Because I want you to?”

Now that was borderline begging, and I wasn’t immune to it, but I had something better in mind. “A date. With me. That’s the deal.”

Her shoulders slumped, and she rested her forehead in her hands. The column of her ponytail fell over her shoulder. She was definitely going to have to wear it like that when she was on all fours in front of me. It would give me something to pull on when I pounded into her. “All right,” she finally said.

Hot damn. Now we were getting somewhere.

Tori was waitingnear the front desk at the library. I was only a few minutes late, but she looked nervous until she spotted me. I strode toward her, and the air grew more stale and lifeless the further I got inside. Had I ever been in this library before? I couldn’t remember. “Good evening, Victoria.”

She wrinkled her nose at the formal name, and it was cute as fuck. She was wearing an oversized pink sweatshirt and black leggings. Presumably, girls wore big shirts like that to hide their curves from male eyes, but if so, leggings that tight defeated the purpose. Didn’t they know how closely the fabric hugged their curves? Not to mention their creases and crevices. When a girl moved around, her shirt shifting, the flash of a firm ass under the stretchy fabric was almost hotter than if she’d worn nothing at all.

So yeah, I was a big fan of leggings. Especially on someone as gorgeous as Tori.

“What?” she asked, somewhat nervously. As if she knew what I’d been thinking. Which was pretty much what I was always thinking.

“I’m just waiting for you to lead the way, sweetheart. This is your show.”

She turned and led me past a row of computers. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry, Victoria.”

“That either.”

“It’s so hot when you boss me around,” I said, letting some of my dirty thoughts seep into my tone.

We were moving past huge rows of bookshelves higher than my head, but she paused when we reached the back wall. She turned to me. “Um, we can take that elevator over there or the stairwell.” She pointed them both out, leaving it up to me, but I knew what she was really thinking.

She was wondering whether it would be better to be alone with me for a few seconds in the elevator or for longer in the stairwell. But I didn’t bite. It was more fun to turn a woman on so much that she threw herself at me.

But not tonight. “Let’s take the stairs. Better exercise.”

Tori looked relieved, despite my mocking tone. Did she really think an empty stairwell would stop me if there was something I wanted? Then again, this place was a dump. Maybe she actually was afraid of the no doubt ancient elevator’s safety.

Our footsteps echoed as I followed her down the stairwell. We’d have to come back this way, too—the view would be much better when she was climbing the stairs ahead of me. That thought distracted me so much that by the time I arrived in the basement, Tori had already disappeared around a row of bookshelves.

I heard her ahead of me, her voice muffled as it was absorbed by books older than Ceasar. “It’s just you guys tonight?”

“Amanda said she might come later. Where’s your little student?” a smug male voice answered.

The voice was a faint, as if drifting through a hundred years of dust in the air. But whoever this guy was, he wasn’t going to be smug for long.

“Sorry, I meant, where’s your hotshot jock?”

“Right here.” I rounded the corner, prepared to make sure the brains knew who was in charge, but then I stopped dead, staring at the two guys sitting at the table. As they stared right back at me.

Fuck.

This was going to be a long night.

11

TORI

Kyle strodetoward the table looking both tall and confident. I wished there were a few more people here for his first session… it might have made our arrival less of a big deal. Instead, Jayden and Lucas were staring up at him as if he were from Mars.

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