Page 51 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
Malcolm simply flipped it back over and asked, “Did the Pinnacle send you here?”
“What?” My jaw dropped in shock.
He evaluated me for a minute, his eyes drifting over my lips and back up. “I’ll take that as an honest no.”
“Why would the Pinnacle send me here?”
He shrugged. “They’ve done it before. They like to keep tabs on me.”
Hmm. Not in his file. But I supposed, if the Pinnacle had covert operators spying here, it wouldn’t be marked down anywhere easy to find. “That sucks,” I finally said. Then I felt like an idiot, because it was such an obvious, dumb thing to say. No wonder Malcolm was playing Bullshit with me. No wonder he wanted the truth. My cheeks heated as I realized the reasons that I’d thought he wanted me to tell him the truth were clearly very different from the reasons he wanted the truth.
A flash of heat across my thighs made me raise my eyes to his.
“Tell me what you’re thinking right now,” he demanded.
“That I’m an idiot,” I said.
He studied me before giving a small nod. “Truth. That’s progress. Two in a row.”
“Tell me why you thought I was here for the Pinnacle,” I glared at him.
He leaned his chair back so that it balanced on the rear feet and closed his fanned-out cards. “You have no real criminal history, yet you were sent here—”
“Half the kids here don’t have rap sheets.”
“I wasn’t done.”
I shut up. Malcolm’s solemn face told me that was the only way I was gonna hear the remainder of his list of reasons.
“Your stepfather is on the Pinnacle board—”
“Don’t call him that.”
Malcolm raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask. For that I was grateful. I didn’t want to have to explain the Clod or our messed-up relationship. Instead, Malcolm said, “Finally, I went into MAD’s system once I was pinged as a tutor. I removed you as my student. Yet, somehow you managed to get reassigned.”
My eyes fell to the table.
Malcolm dropped his chair and leaned forward. “That part you do know something about.”
I gave a single shoulder shrug. “I hack a little here and there.” I glanced up at him.
“So, you chose me before you came here.”
Nervous energy gnawed at my bones.Do I use the crush explanation? He seems to know when I lie.Instead of saying anything, I just nodded. My cheeks flared red from the nerves, which shot off like fireworks in my stomach.
Malcolm’s face lit up with surprise, and possibly a little bit of delight. “Oh. Well then.” He fanned his cards back out.
“Well then, what?” I asked.
Heat flared across my panties, this time lingering longer, burning hotter, moving faster. My breath leapt like a ballerina and a tiny gasp escaped. The heat slowly receded. It took me a second, but when my eyes were able to refocus, I looked at Malcolm.
That self-satisfied smirk I’d expected to see earlier was present in full force as he leaned forward and said, “Well then, that changes the nature of our little game.”
Chapter 21
Tuesday,I woke up with soaked panties after tossing and turning and dreaming of Malcolm sending hot flames over my panties while Grayson played with my breasts and Zavier kissed me. After such a good dream, I should have been in a decent mood. But I wasn’t. And I didn’t quite know why. The weather wasn’t overcast or windy for once. The sunshine should have perked me up. But I felt down and melancholy. I felt like a snake pit had formed in my stomach and the slithering, twisting reptiles were hissing at me.
Even Emelia noticed at lunch. “Lady, what’s eating you?” She bumped my shoulder in a friendly way.
