Chapter 4
Above Average
Edge
I wasn’t in the mood for chateaubriand or coq au vin. All I wanted was a greasy slice of pizza or a juicy cheeseburger and a handful of fries, but the chefs at Castle Pines would keel over dead before serving food they considered pedestrian. Sighing for the lack of regular options, I grabbed an apple and a bottle of water, told myself I would drag Cutter into town this weekend so we could hit the closest fast food restaurant. My fitness-obsessed best friend would have a fit and drag me to the gym morning and night, instead of once a day like he did now, but the indulgence would be worth it.
Speaking of Cutter, he’d disappeared before lunch started, mumbling something about needing to hit up his Spanish teacher for extra credit. It had been a while since I’d been left to my own devices for an extended period of time, and I found myself slightly adrift.
Jared waved at me from across the dining hall, indicating the empty spot next to him like an overeager puppy. I didn’t have the patience to deal with all that adoration right now. He was clingy and insistent after our interrupted rendezvous in the bathroom. I didn’t like it.
A couple of guys I knew from the gym gave me obligatory chin lifts, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk about how much we lifted or discuss who looked the best in the shower after a workout. My lab partner from my chemistry class also gave me a head tilt to indicate I could sit with him. Before the new kid showed up, I was curious to find out how set in his heterosexual ways my chemistry partner was. He was shit at chemistry, but pretty to look at. I’d learned a long time ago there were a lot of different levels of curious, and when you were trapped with a bunch of bored boys for an extended period, those boundaries could shift and expand. They could also retract so fast you had to be careful of whiplash.
I gave my chem partner a wink to acknowledge him, but veered to the back of the room when I caught sight of my current prey. He was sitting alone, ever-present headphones in place, head lowered, eyes locked on the book in his hand. He’d been avoiding me and doing a damn good job at it.
I’d never had to chase anyone before.
I’d never had someone purposefully walk the other way when they saw me coming.
I’d also never encountered anyone so private or closed-off. The guy was a vault, and even his crazy roommate hadn’t been able to get him to open up.
I knew from firsthand experience how Malachi ‘Mac’ O’Shea was as adept at getting his way as I was. I turned the wild Irishman down no less than ten times before he wore me down. I didn’t like to fuck anyone as unpredictable as Mac was, but there was something about that accent and his rough charm that was impossible to resist. Luckily, the cute redhead was as easily distracted and as quickly bored as I was. We both lost interest before we could do any serious damage to each other.
Usually, Cutter would be the voice of reason telling me not to push and to play it cool. He was the one who kept me from practically stalking the new kid. Hunting was only fun when you moved in for the kill, and so far, this exotic, unusual creature refused to let me close enough to even graze him.
I skirted around tables, nodding and smiling as people called my name and offered me a place to sit. The student body was taking advantage of this rare occurrence and trying to get closer than they were normally allowed, since the human wall they had to go through to get at me was temporarily missing.
When I reached the back of the room, I slid into the chair across from the new kid and took a bite of my apple. The headphones blocked out the sound of my arrival, but there was no way he could miss me sprawling in the seat across from him. I left my blazer in my room today, so there was nothing to cover how my white button-up pulled tightly across my chest. He wouldn’t miss the way my tailored black pants stretched across my groin when I approached his table either. He tried to hide that he noticed, but I watched as his gaze flickered away from the page he was reading.
After five minutes of silence, while I finished my apple and drank my water, he sighed and put a finger, the nail painted a shiny black, on the page to mark his place. He pushed his headphones back. His dark eyes met mine, unwavering and clearly annoyed.
I was hard from nothing more than that one look.
The way his lips twisted into a frown had me craving a taste of that perfect pout. His dark roots were even longer than when I first noticed him, giving his hair a rough, two-toned look, I wanted to run my fingers through. He had a row of hoops running along each earlobe, and I wanted to feel them on my tongue. Sitting down, we were eye-to-eye, even though I had a couple inches on him when we stood next to one another. We had similar builds. Long and leanly muscled, indicating he wasn’t a stranger to the gym, but not a frequent visitor like I was. Colorful ink and images covered every inch of skin I could see, and I wondered how many his school uniform was hiding. I wanted to see him in street clothes, in his natural habitat. I figured my fascination would wane when he wasn’t the most interesting person in the room to look at.
“Can I help you with something?” He didn’t have an accent. Not even a hint of one. It was another thing that set him apart from everyone else. The kids who went to school here were from the New York’s Upper East Side and from the hills outside of LA. They traveled from all over Europe to come to school here, hailing from countries with kings and queens. I was one of the few who also had no discernible accent when I spoke. My mom gave birth to me in New York, but Dad and his family immediately moved me to his house here in Aspen.
“You don’t have any accent. Where are you from?” It wasn’t what I meant to say, but I was curious about him, and that was something new for me.
He sighed again and gave in, reluctantly closing his book.
“I’m from all over, that’s why I don’t have an accent. I’ve never been in one place long enough to pick up any specific inflection. I was born in London while Dad was working on a knock-off Bond film. My parents own a home in L.A., which I guess is home-base, but we’re hardly ever there. In the last couple of years, I’ve lived in Austin, New Orleans, Amsterdam, Rome, Zimbabwe, and Philly. Sometimes I forget which city I’m in. So, I’m from everywhere and nowhere. Why do you care?”
He was so confrontational. It made my dick twitch and heated my blood. People called me cold, but sitting across from him, I suddenly felt warm all over. I purposely spread my legs wider. I needed the room, and I liked watching the way his eyes reluctantly tracked my every move.
“I don’t know that I care, but I’m curious about you, so I asked. No one seems to know anything about you… Bash. That’s what Mac calls you, isn’t it?” It annoyed me to no end that the scary, erratic Malachi knew more about this boy than I did.
He pushed his painted nails through his messy hair and leaned back in his chair. I fought the urge to reach out and grab the tie hanging around his neck. I wanted to use it to yank him forward and seal my mouth over his.
“Yeah, Bash is what my friends call me, and Mac has decided we’re friends, regardless of how I feel about the matter.” His dark eyebrows lifted and a grin pulled at his serious mouth. “Bash and Edge. We sound like we should be meeting in the ring for WrestleMania or something. Ridiculous nicknames are something we actually have in common.”
I smirked at him and lifted my eyebrows back at him. “What’s WrestleMania?” I took great satisfaction when he sputtered and blinked his eyes like an owl.
“Are you serious right now? You can’t be that removed from common society.” He sounded disgusted and so affronted that it made me laugh.
I lifted a hand and used my thumb to rub my jaw. “I’m kidding. Roman Reigns is hot.”
He blew out a breath that sent his white and black hair dancing across his forehead. “You have a thing for massive men with black hair, it seems.”
Obviously, he was talking about Cutter. We were so close and spent so much time together, I’d stopped explaining our relationship to outsiders years ago. He was the most important person in my world, but I was never going to fuck him, even if it was an option. I would never risk ruining the one relationship in my life that had ever mattered.
“I think we both know that, currently, I have a thing for you.” I’d been known to seduce with nothing but a look. Unfortunately, the new kid was a much harder nut to crack than my typical trick. “Most people would be thrilled I’ve set my sights on them. I haven’t quite figured out why you’re treating it like a death sentence.”
The black-tipped fingers sifted through his hair again and his gaze jerked away from mine. The toe of his ugly black boot started tapping on the floor in front of him. His leg bounced up and down in time.
“Look, I’m not blind. You’re stupid hot, like way above average. I can also see the way everyone in this entire school is caught up in the hype like you’re the second coming or some shit like that. I get that you’ve always been special, that you’ve always been someone extraordinary, but I’m neither of those things. I’m just a regular dude who happens to have parents who were also told they were special and extraordinary.”
He put his hands on his knees and leaned in my direction. As if I was pulled forward by a magnet, I copied his pose so we were almost touching noses. He was so close it would take nothing to steal a kiss, but I suddenly realized I didn’t want anything he wasn’t willing to give me freely.
“Right now, you like the chase, you like the game, because for the first time ever, you’re losing. As soon as you catch me, as soon as you consider me another win, you’ll realize all you did was waste a shitload of time trying to get something you didn’t really want.”
He grabbed his book and pushed back, suddenly standing and forcing me to lean back and tilt my head so I could look up at him.
“And so you know, I’ll never be the guy on his knees sucking you off in a bathroom. That kind of power trip does nothing for me, and someone who needs that kind of validation to get off is as far from sexy as I can imagine.”
As parting shots went, it was a decent one. He thought he had me all figured out, and maybe he did, but he didn’t know me well enough to know I was a master manipulator. The one thing my dad had given me before ditching me here was his innate ability to see a loophole in every mandate, and a different course around any and all obstacles standing between me and my endgame.
I caught the wrist he was lifting to put his headphones back on and felt his pulse thudding. It was like a butterfly trapped under his skin, making all those colors that marked him flutter at my touch.
I lifted an eyebrow and gave him the grin I saved for when I really needed to schmooze my way out of trouble.
“What if I’m the one on my knees? What if you’re the one with all the power? Still don’t think that’s sexy? Still think being the one in control isn’t enough to get you off?” Granted, that wasn’t a position I could remember ever being in, but there was a first time for everything. The idea of finding someone I was willing to submit to sent a shiver down my spine.
He looked at the fingers I had wrapped around his wrist and then his pitch-black gaze settled on mine. I wished I could read him better, because I had a feeling a lot was going on behind that veil of darkness, and if I could see my words were getting through, all his barbs would be much easier to wade through.
After a long minute, he shook my hold on him loose and twisted his head in the negative. “I want to get through this year with the fewest complications possible. You have no idea the things I did to get my parents to push my admission through. Or what I had to do to get them to cough up the dough to get me in on such short notice. You are more than a complication, Rutledge. You’re a goddamn disaster waiting to happen.”
With that, he stomped off, his boots noisy on the polished wooden floors. I would have been pissed if I hadn’t seen the flare of desire in his eyes when I mentioned getting on my knees for him. I was a disaster; I’d been that way from the start.
The more he tried to convince me I didn’t want him and he didn’t want anything to do with me, the more determined I was to prove him wrong. He was right, the thrill would die as quickly as it sparked to life, but for now, all I wanted to do was bask in the warmth that ember of interest had fired to life deep inside me.