“Was there a reason you were waiting for me?”
Exhaling heavily, Theo paced like a caged lion right in front of me. I waited him out when I could have been escaping because maybe guilt was seeping in a little. I didn’t know Theo, but from what he’d shown me, he wasn’t deserving of my wrath. Not yet, at least.
“Theo—”
He stopped abruptly, swinging his fury onto me. Even then, barely more than strangers, I could read him, and I knew that fury wasn’t mine. If the men who’d shaped me, turned me wary and skittish, were standing here with us, Theo would’ve unleashed on them. It was only us, though. There was nowhere for it to go. So he paced, tugged his hair, grunted for me to go on.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” I dragged my teeth along my lip. “I don’t know if it makes you feel better, but I think what I said reflects more poorly on me than you. I made myself look like a crazy bitch, and you, my poor, hapless victim.”
“Is that an apology?” he groused.
“Yeah.” I wasn’t much for saying sorry, but right was right, and I wasn’t that. “Sorry, Theodore.”
Theo stopped pacing and stared at me. He did it for so long, he made me twitchy. My fingers brushed over my hair, under my bottom lip, smoothed my shirt, and finally tucked away in my pockets when I couldn’t keep still.
Then he burst out laughing and grabbed me by the nape, pulling me into him. “I didn’t expect that, Little Tiger. Not in a million years.”
My hands were trapped in my pockets, otherwise, I definitely would have pushed him away. “Don’t kiss me.”
His head lowered. “Why do you think I’m going to kiss you?”
My eyes narrowed. “You’re getting closer and your eyes are twinkling at me.”
He chuckled, his warm breath ghosting over my lips. “You were just a complete dick to me. What makes you think I’d evenwantto kiss you?”
“Because you’re obviously obsessed with—”
His mouth came down hard on mine, his playful mood vanishing. Wet, deep, he kissed me like we were naked in bed, not the middle of campus where anyone and everyone could see. And I participated, because along with his playful mood, my brain function ceased. My hands magically came untucked from my pockets and wound up beneath the back of his T-shirt, exploring the smooth, hard planes of his back and hips.
We were so close, pressed together so tight, when Theo's phone vibrated in his front pocket, I felt it too. It might as well have been a strike with a Taser zapping me back to reality. Except Theo didn’t let me jump back from him when I tore my mouth away. He kept his hand buried in my hair, the other claiming the small of my back.
“Don’t run,” he warned.
“You’re a liar. You said you didn’t want to kiss me.”
“Never said that.”
Maybe he hadn’t. I couldn’t think straight—and that was a problem. I needed my wits around this man.
His phone vibrated again.
“Someone wants to talk to you.”
He lowered his chin. “I’m talking to the only person I want to talk to right now. Whoever is texting can wait.”
I couldn’t handle the underlying sweetness of that. Not in a million years could I take that in and make it mine.
“So talk, Theodore.”
His kiss-swollen lips twitched. “I need your phone number.”
“Why?”
“So I can text when I’m out front of your dorm tomorrow.”
My forehead fell into his chin. “Oh. I forgot.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”