My gaze narrowed on Sterling as I slumped against the building. “Do you seriously have nothing better to do than stalk me?”
“Is that what I’m doing?” Exhaling, he was close enough to me that the smoke reached my nostrils.
He seemed to be everywhere I went. I didn’t know if it was intentional or just because we went to the same school. Regardless, he was making me uneasy, more so as I thought about hiding out in the locker room just to avoid him. My gaze stayed on him warily. “To be honest, I don’t know what it is you’re doing.”
He leaned a shoulder on the brick exterior, angling his body to the side so he faced me. “This feels awfully familiar, except it was you bumming a smoke off me.”
A flashback to the night I’d met the nameless boy on the porch of an Elite party flipped through my mind. “I’d rather not take a stroll down memory lane with you. Not now. Not ever.” My fingers twitched, missing the weight of a cigarette between them. I should just go back into the bar, but the urge for another smoke grew strong inside me. Damn addiction. It had become a crutch I couldn’t kick.
He didn’t move a single muscle other than his lips. “I don’t recall you being so prickly.”
Confiscating my cigarette from his fingers, I took a quick drag. “I don’t recall you being so clingy,” I snapped as the smoke coated my lungs.
“You want clingy, Splash?” He moved as quick as a hiccup, trapping me against the wall with his body so fast that, for a few breaths, I couldn’t process what happened.
Music from the live band pumped from the other side of the brick wall, but I barely heard it over the pounding of my heart. “What are you doing?” I demanded, attempting to move out from the prison he created with his arms and body.
“We had fun together, didn’t we, Mads?” he murmured, his breath stroking my cheek.
The way he used my name, it felt like a felt punch in the gut, and not in that take-your-breath-away feeling I got when Micah kissed me.
Twisting my head, despite the fact that the movement had the tips of our noses brushing, I blew a puff of smoke into his face. “I’m not having fun now.” Most of my blissful buzz had fizzled out, leaving me weary and annoyed.
Sterling angled his head to the side, his golden gaze drifting to my tight lips. “I guess we’ll have to change that.”
Gah! How was I ever attracted to him?Let him touch me? Kiss me? Sleep with him?The thought only repulsed me now. “Get out of my way.” I used my stern voice, praying he would take me seriously and realize how uncomfortable I was.
“Not until I get what I want.”
Panic exploded inside me as I jumped to a conclusion about just what Sterling might be after. He had insinuated more than once that he would like to be more than friends, regardless that I had a boyfriend. My brain stopped thinking logically, forgetting that we were in public with other people around, not that they were paying any attention to me. I suspected that, to someone glancing our way, we might look like lovers, or drunk—drunk lovers.
Sterling rolled his eyes. “It’s not that. At least not tonight, not here. But if the mood ever strikes, or your boyfriend isn’t fulfilling your needs…” He ran his fingers down the back of my arm.
“Don’t count on it,” I spat, putting my shoulder into his chest, hoping to break free from him.
No such luck. The asshole didn’t even flinch.
Disappointment and dread slithered inside me like a slimy snake.
He had this habit of always touching my hair when he was near me and did so now, brushing at a dark blonde strand. “I’m counting on a great deal from you,” he whispered leaning closer.
Is he going to kiss me?My first instinct was to shrink away or turn my head, but there was nowhere to go. Rough bricks pressed into my back. “Sterling, don’t—”
I heard the shutter of a camera. It was faint, nearly overrun by the music from inside, but I swore I heard it.
What the fuck?Who was taking a picture, and why?
Momentarily, Sterling’s impending lips flew from my mind at the new possible dilemma. It could be anyone taking a photo, and it didn’t have to be of me. After seeing that picture in the article, I was paranoid, and yet… that snap of a shutter had been close. Too close for me to disregard it. As if it had been…
My eyes went to Sterling’s lips. The prick was grinning. Not just a normal grin but a wicked one, and it became obvious he was up to something.
I didn’t think, just reacted. My hand holding the nearly burned-out cigarette lifted, pressing the end onto Sterling’s arm. It was the easiest patch of exposed skin I could reach.
“Mads,” he hissed, but it ended in a growl.
Shoving hard at his chest, I managed to put some distance between us, not much but enough to see the phone in his hand. I caught a glimpse of the screen lit up in the night.
He hadn’t.