by M. K. Hale
Maybe the fact that I was not a millionaire. “Right.” My father’s current extracurricular was throwing out hush money like candy at a parade of people to keep the fraud, blackmail, and embezzlement rumors at bay. Being a member of the millionaire Reddington family was less glamorous than most thought. I had no money and one chance at escaping, and that was finishing school as an RA with all A’s.
“Then again, you would never break one of the rules.” Ryan sighed. “It’d make you too interesting.” He stood up and took his half-empty plate with him.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going to go talk to her.”
Ryan walked over to Allie and the mystery guy, sat down, and had both of them laughing within seconds. A black hole formed in the pit of my stomach. How could he just start a conversation like that? Make her laugh like it was as easy as breathing?
Around her, even breathing was a difficult task to perform.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I questioned Joey, but he seemed uninterested.
I poked at the spaghetti on my plate, trying to eat, but my gaze kept falling back to Allie, Ryan, and the unknown male.
After about a minute, all three of them glanced over at me then turned back to continue their conversation. Alarm bells went off in my head. Were they talking about me? What were they saying? What was Allie saying?
My feet walked to her without my brain’s permission. Joey’s “Where are you going?” bounced right off me.
“Hey,” I said when I landed in front of their table.
“Hey,” they all replied.
Insert awkward silence here.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Eating since we’re at a dining hall and all,” Allie replied. “What’s up with you, Nate?” At least she stopped calling me a control freak.
“You two know each other already?” Ryan asked.
I answered, “We met on the first day when she said I had a stick up my—”
“Up his ass,” Allie finished for me, with no shame in her tone.
“You said that to him? To Nate Reddington?” Ryan’s eyes went so wide, they threatened to fall out of the sockets. “Is this what love feels like?”
“I think you’re my RA,” mystery boy said.
Typically, I made it a point to know all of my residents. The fact that I could not put his face to a name showed how much Allie distracted me. “I’m Nate.”
“Gavin.”
Allie smiled up at me. “I followed your advice and made two new friends.”
Male friends. “Fun.”
“Why don’t you join us? Four is a party after all,” Gavin said.
“Do you party at all, Nate?” Allie cocked her head at me with a thoughtful expression. “What kind of drunk are you?”
“Excuse me?”
Ryan answered for me, “Nate never gets drunk drunk. I think once I saw him semi-drunk. He just went around dancing like a lunatic and kissing every girl he saw.”
“Caveman drunk, huh?” Allie’s green eyes sparkled with amusement. “Did he grunt a lot too?”
“Like tequila took away his whole vocabulary.”
“This is not an appropriate conversation.” I regretted my words when Allie appeared disappointed.
“You chugging gin that night wasn’t appropriate either,” Ryan joked. I elbowed him. She was going to think I was an alcoholic.
“Tequila and gin?” Her expression scrunched in shock. “Why did you drink so much that night?”
“He gets worked up every time his dad calls—” I elbowed Ryan harder than before, knocking the air out of him. It was not his job to tell her my business.
“I’ve got to go—” The ringing of my cell phone cut me off. After a glance at the screen, I waved goodbye and answered it while walking away.
“Nate?” my twelve-year-old sister’s voice was quiet over the phone. I strained to hear her as I walked through the loud dining hall toward the exit.
“Is everything okay? What’s wrong?” Blue never called me. It was always the other way around.
“Yeah, you just didn’t call yesterday, and I got worried,” she said. “You call every day.”
“Sorry, Blue, something urgent came up and once it was over, it was too late to call you.” The warm August air wafted over my face when I walked out of the dining hall.
“Mom says hi,” Blue lied to spare my feelings. Of the few things our mother said to her children, a “hello” was not one of them.
I changed the subject from our parents because, my, what a rabbit hole to fall down. “How did your math test go?”
“I aced it.” Her smile was as audible as it was contagious. “Just like you said I would.”
“You studied hard. You deserved it.” She deserved everything. “What did you have to eat today?”
There was a pause. “Um, ravioli.”
“Fresh or from a can?”
She hesitated again. “A can.”
“And what did you have yesterday?”
“Ravioli.”
Damn it. “What happened to the money I sent you to spend on fresh vegetables?”
“Mom found it in the mail before I could open it.”
Damn. It. After the decrease in money coming in and an increase in money going out, the Reddington family was a mess. My mother had lost the maid and the cook, but she was not willing to learn how to do those household tasks herself. My father never visited the house anymore, so he was even more of a lost cause. Blue was stuck in that empty mansion for another year until I graduated, found a job, and sent the adoption papers in. I wanted to have her move in with me in the dorm, but if my boss found out, I’d lose my ticket to graduation and everything else would fall apart.
“I’ll send more money soon, so make sure to watch the mailman. You need to start eating meals that don’t involve a microwave.”
“We had pizza last week.”
Jesus. “That’s not real food, Blue.” My sister needed protein, fruits, and dark, leafy greens.
“I know.” She let out a long breath. “I wish you were here.”
“Me too.” Even calling her once a day was not enough for me. She was the only person in my life who knew everything and understood. “I’d make you a grilled cheese and broccoli.”
“I hate broccoli.”
I chuckled. “You think you hate broccoli because it’s been ingrained in you to reject anything healthy.” A squirrel ran in my path, chasing another one up a tree. “Maybe you could try to eat dinner at a friend’s house for the next few days.”
“Mom doesn’t like to be alone.”
Mom did not like a lot of things. “You’re too good to her.” The woman refused to learn how to work an oven so her twelve-year-old daughter could eat. “Study hard for your history quiz next week, okay?”
“I will. Love you, Nate.”
“I love you, Blue,” I said, and she hung up.
I just had to graduate, get a job, and everything would fall into place after that. No more distractions. No more Allie.
As I studied late that night, sound traveled through Allie’s wall and into my room. She seemed to be talking on the phone, so I did my best not to listen and invade her privacy. Our dorm building lacked the normal cinderblocks, so the thin walls did nothing to keep noise out. That was half the reason Allie’s loud music drove me insane. The other half was because it was her.
“…and new friend…Gavin…miss France and you…”
As I stared at the page in front of me, I willed myself to absorb the written words, but my ears kept honing in on her conversation. It was wrong to listen when she did not know, but I had no choice. From what I gathered of context clues, she talked to someone she knew from her time abroad in France.
“…RA…Nate…”
My head shot up at the words. Was she talking about me? Did it matter? Of course not—
“…he’s so…”
So what? I put my book down and scooted my
chair closer to the wall.
“…rules. It’s annoying. He has some issues…help him…”
Excuse me? I was the one with issues? She was the one obsessed with me. How dare she judge me—
“…but so hot…”
I moved closer, not pressing my ear against the wall but also not not pressing it against the wall.
“…the kind of attractive…legitimately question whether or not he could be human…looks like a freaking Greek god.”
This was wrong. I should not have been listening in like this.
“…Nate is hotter than a third-degree burn…but he’s my…and he’s frustrating.” There was a sound like a laugh. “Yes, sexually frustrating too…Oh trust me, I’d love to jump him in the hallway, tear off his clothes, and—”
I slammed my book closed against my desk, and she stopped talking.
There was a brief moment of silence before she asked, “Nate, can you hear me?”
I knocked my knuckles against her wall, once for “yes.”
“Oh, shit.”
Chapter 6
Allie:
* * *
The word embarrassed did not come close to describing how I felt. Mortified came close, but not close enough. How much of my conversation with my French friend Eliza had he heard? The parts about his issues with control and pushing people away? My plans to help him? Or the small part of the conversation where I told her he turned me on more than anyone else I had ever met? Oh, God.
I buried my face in my hands. I had said things to make him think my mouth watered every time I saw him. Did it? Yes, but he still did not need to know that.
Wait.
Why was I so embarrassed? My thoughts were a natural reaction. Hell, being attracted to him was the most natural thing I had felt in a while. Liking—Finding Nate visually pleasing was healthy for me. I should not be ashamed.
This was ridiculous. I would not hide. The stuff Nate heard me say was not terrible. Well, not the end of the world at least. It would be fine. I would be fine. And he knew he was hot. He must hear it all the time. It was not like I liked Nate. I did not like him. He interested me because of his apparent issues. He was a psychological subject I was curious to study.
He is a frog. I am a dissector. I had no interest in kissing frogs, anyway.
I got up and knocked on Nate’s door before I had time to think it through. I should have thought it through.
“Why were you listening anyway—” I cut off when he opened the door because his unarmed expression surprised me. Why did he look so…off balance?
His eyes dropped, and I looked down.
Ah, yes, my pajamas.
I had not been planning on seeing anyone else for the night, so I had slipped into my pale purple silk nightgown, which was a bit—a lot—more revealing than my normal pajama pants and an old T-shirt. The sheer material glistened in the dim fluorescents of the hallway.
A pained groan came from him.
The short fabric did nothing to hide the expanse of my bare legs, and a rush of warmth spread through me as his eyes locked onto them. Nate seemed to love my legs because he was looking at them like they were juicy sausages. Let me find some mustard, and you can get set on devouring me.
“A little under-dressed, aren’t you, Miss Parser?” Was icy Nate teasing me? Interesting.
“I like nightgowns,” I said, and his gaze still did not meet mine. I cleared my throat, and he blushed, looking up. “They’re comfortable.”
“Looks comfortable.” The amount of mischief in his eyes shocked me. His mischievous side was a well-hidden secret. I liked it.
“Don’t look so smug,” I said, but I liked his smugness all the same.
“Being hotter than a third-degree burn shouldn’t make me smug?”
His familiar words rang in my ears. Hotter than a third-degree burn. Those were the same words I had used to describe him to Eliza. I had hoped he had not heard that part.
“That was a personal conversation.”
“About me.”
Did he think this gave him power over me now? Screw this tension. “I find you extremely fucking sexy,” I admitted.
His smirk fell off the face of the earth as he stumbled back a bit. This turn of direct honesty seemed to be the last thing he expected. “Um…”
“Is that what you want to hear?” I took a step into his room, and he inched back. Electricity sparked up my skin. I breathed in the new heavy atmosphere. “You want to know how I feel about you?”
“N-No.” His gaze fell from my eyes to my chest, to my legs, before jumping back up again. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“When I look at your hair, I want to pull it.” A lion stalking in on a gazelle, I moved. The tip of my fuzzy slipper brushed against him, but I wanted more than a light touch. “When I look at your eyes, I want to see them roll back, hazy with lust.” His back hit his wall, and I stopped right in front of him. “When I look at your lips, I want to bruise them with mine.”
He tried to keep his eyes off me by staring at his ceiling, but his control slipped. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t believe in keeping things inside,” I said against his chin, unable to make contact with his lips unless he bent down. My lips brushed against his short stubble, like a sexy rug burn. “Keep things inside for too long and you’ll explode.” My hand settled over his chest. Over his fast-beating heart. “Do you feel ready to explode, Nate?”
His heavy breathing hit my forehead as his eyes zeroed in on my lips. His head tilted to mine but stopped before making contact. He hovered there. The smell of apples berating my senses. A moment of silence and loud blood rushed to my ears. One of his large, warm hands came up and covered mine on top of his hard chest. “You need to go,” he said.
“But you don’t want me to, do you?” I asked. His smugness vanished. I took it for my own. The sexual power felt incredible. It was the first time his walls experienced some crumbling. “I guess someone isn’t the dom everyone thought he was.”
He blinked, his tense expression turning to one of anger as he glared down at me. “What did you just say?” The new intensity in his gaze caused a slight tremor in my spine. The electricity in the air shifted. He had yanked the power from me and awarded it back to himself.
“I-I said I guess you’re not the dom—”
My back hit the wall in a surprise turn of events. He had somehow picked me up by my waist and pivoted me so I was the one trapped, with him standing in front of me, in mere seconds.
“You want me to dominate you?” He thrust against me, pressing me harder into the wall. His hands swiped down my arms, taking my fingers and pulling them up over my head. He planted a palm over my two wrists, holding them there. Caging me. Making me his prisoner. “Is this what you want?” The hot, straining bulge below his waist nudged my stomach, and I forgot any other reason I was there with him other than to feel this. To let my guard down and feel. “Is this what you want?” he repeated in a hard voice, matching the hardness grinding against me.
My jaw fell when my entire body went up in flames for him, and I strained to breathe out, “Yes.”
“You break the rules just because you secretly want to be punished, don’t you? You want to drive me crazy. You want me to lose control with you?” he rasped, his eyes narrowed on my bottom lip, which I nibbled. “That’s all this is to you? A game?”
His choppy breath wafted over my face, warming me. I craned my neck up to eliminate the distance between our lips, but his hold denied me the pleasure. “W-What?”
“I’m getting really fucking tired of you teasing me, Allie Parser.”
The way he said my full name in his gruff, frustrated manner caused another full-body shudder. “Y-You cussed again.”
“Oh, I can do more than cuss. And I bet you want to know what more I can do. I bet you didn’t know you wanted to be pressed up against a wall until just this moment, did you?”
He was right about that.
Gain back your power. Your ground. “You’re not the only one who can give me pleasure.”
He straightened and moved my arms back down in front of us despite my protesting whimper. His hot lips brushed over my fingertips, burning the flesh. “Have you been touching yourself in your room, Allie? Thinking about me?”
Hell yes, I had been. “No.”
“Because knowing you’ve been touching yourself in the room next to mine—a wall between us—would do some things to the remainder of my self-control. Some things that can’t afford to happen.”
“What kind of things?” Be graphic, please.
He grunted. “Get out of my room before I show you.”
I tilted my head up, refusing to back down. “What if I said I want you to show me?”
“You don’t,” he replied, letting me go and taking a step back, away from me. Why? The heat from his expression faded as he tried to hide it from me, but his eyes were still as stormy as ever.
“I do.”
“You need to stop teasing me, talking about me, and trying to figure me out,” he said. “I’m getting tired of it.”
“I’m not teasing you.”
“Stop pushing me, Allie. I mean it,” he growled. “You don’t want to know what I’ll do.”
If I don’t push you, who will? He needed a push; this interaction proved it. He had all that sensual energy locked up inside him, burning away? He needed an outlet. Not that I would be his outlet for him to plunge—plug—into. I just wanted to help him. Write a paper about him.
So why did it hurt not to kiss him?
He waved me to his door, escorting me out with a dominant, warm hand on my back. Sparks shot through my blood, hissing in my veins. “Try not to dream about me tonight.”