Cruel Kisses (It's Just High School #2) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,83

done something.

I should’ve noticed the signs… but I didn’t.

And now, she’s dead because of me. I did this. Her blood is on my hands.

18

I wake up feeling groggy, disoriented and off center, but strangely I’m well rested, well fucked and emotionally well spent.

I actually slept, something I haven’t done in God only knows how many days, weeks, maybe months?

I’m cognizant of the little fact that I didn’t have a nightmare this time, which is a damn relief, but I also didn’t dream of anything in particular. All I remember before the sweet, mindless oblivion took me was being in Julian’s arms. I think I was crying, yes, I was, and he held me in a solid embrace, lulling me to sleep as only he can into Julian’s chest, then nothing after that.

I sit up on the bed, the sheets falling down to my waist. I rub my eyes and bit by bit, I become conscious of being watched. And not just being watched, but watched intensely, being seen, studied, observed by someone who both knows my body with an intimacy that has never been allowed anyone else, and a certain level of darkness that made me shiver and not the good kind.

I look around the room for him, then find him watching me. He’s sitting by the mini bar, a dark drink in one hand, while his other hand clenches and unclenches slowly, rhythmically, like he’s trying to hold back from doing something, but his cold, dark, hard gaze is set on me.

A powerful shiver moves through me when I hold his stare, but I can’t for the life of me, figure out what’s going on with him.

I take in the icy cold stare of his gaze, the hard, rigid set of his body as he sits there, the energy vibrating from him so at odds with last night while I was in his arms, that I pause, staring at him.

Something’s wrong. I can feel it in the way he takes a sip of his drink, the way his jaw is locked. How long has he been sitting there like that, watching me with that gaze?

He takes a sip of his drink again, still watching me, not saying a damn word. I take a deep breath and decide to break the ice, hating the thick silence that has fallen over us.

“Morning,” I whisper, not sure what to say. What’s going through that head of his? He looks so gorgeous, this guy that sometimes I can’t get over it. Like now, he’s dark, broody with his mussed-up hair, like he’s just been gripping it, then running his fingers through it, frustrated. His chiseled face so tense and impassive, as if he’s shutting me out, not wanting me to read him.

And that alone has alarms blaring in my head.

Something is very much wrong here.

“We land in a few minutes,” his says, his voice dark and sinister, sending chills down my back. Not the regular, ‘make-you-fucking-horny’ shivers he usually gives me, no, this is different.

These are angry, cold, and vibrating with tension.

“Oh,” I whisper. I must have slept the entire flight, but then again, I was so emotionally spent. “I guess we need to go down and take our seats, right?”

“Yes,” he says simply, still watching every move I make like he’s waiting for something to happen.

Okay, the mood swings are back so it seems. I go to stand up, ready to get out of this damn plane but before my sock clad feet can touch the floor, he stops me.

“Stay there,” he mutters darkly, making another shiver race down my spine.

“Julian?” I stare at him, my knees growing weak at the intensity of his stare. “The plane is about to land,” I say standing up and that seems to push him.

“Sit down, Mia,” he demands, and my mouth grows dry. Jesus, he’s not angry, he’s livid. At me, so it seems. His gaze is ice cold as he chugs the rest of his drink, setting the glass done on the bar with a harsh thud that reverberates through the small room. “I said sit the fuck down.”

I take in deep breaths, trying to calm down.

Something has him in a mood I don’t like and I’m starting to think that Julian suffers from multiple personality disorder.

I watch him like a wounded, feral beast about to attack me because three things are clear to me as Julian gets up from the stool, unfolding his powerful yet rigid frame like he’s only now coming alive,