In the Arms of the Elite (Rich Boys of Burberry Prep #4) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,46
we head over there, but he barely talks to either of us. Actually, he looks sort of pissed off when we walk in together.
“Did you two get tired of holding hands, skipping, and making daisy chains?” he asks sarcastically, and I notice he’s making a critical error with the formula on the paper next to him. I bite my lip and raise up on my toes, lifting the heels of my shiny black shoes off the floor.
“Just inside the parentheses, it’s actually one plus two times h times v to the third power.” Tristan pauses and looks up at me, his eyes practically glowing silver.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he growls as I grit my teeth.
“I mean, like no …” I gesture randomly at his paper as Lizzie looks back and forth between us, tucking dark hair behind her ear and forcing a laugh. “You literally wrote to the fourth power, and—”
“Get the fuck out of my classroom,” he snarls at me, but I’m sorry. I’m not about to walk away and just let him screw up the equation like that.
“You see, v is the frequency being observed and—”
“I know v is the frequency,” Tristan throws back at me, his fingers clenched so tightly around the pencil that they’re shaking. “And I know it’s to the third power. This is a typo.”
“How is it a typo when you’re writing with pencil?” I ask, and he seriously looks at me like he wants to kill me.
“I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about,” Lizzie adds with another giggle, reaching over to run her fingers down Tristan’s bare forearm. He’s taken his blazer off, and in a rare move, he’s unbuttoned his shirt until about halfway down. He’s even rolled up his sleeves a bit.
He glances over at her, but he doesn’t tell her to stop, turning back to look at me in stark defiance.
“You little smart-ass. You think you’re so knowledgeable with your public school education.”
“Clearly, I am,” I retort, lifting my own chin in defiant response. “Because I can see the frantically scrawled page of notes beneath your report. You’ve been messing the formula up this entire time. How do you expect to beat me out for valedictorian when you can’t even get the equation for the brightness temperature of the sun—”
Tristan sweeps his arm across his papers and knocks them all to the floor, panting furiously, teeth gritted at me in a snarl.
“Tristan, don’t, she’s just trying to be helpful,” Lizzie says, attempting to step between us. The look he gives her is cold hell.
“Get out,” he says, and she gapes at him. She glances back at me once, sympathetically, before scurrying out and closing the door behind her. I turn back to look at Tristan, but I’m not afraid of him, not anymore. He’s just a damaged boy with a cruel streak. I … shouldn’t want to hold him close and banish his darkness, but I do.
Fuck me, but I do.
I’ve fallen for the good girl fixes the bad boy stereotype.
I need to take more women’s studies classes at Bornstead. Because I will get in. I will. I absolutely will.
“Who the hell do you think you are,” Tristan whispers, his voice like freezing fog off the bay. His eyes are the same color, like a stormy sky above the ocean. He moves toward me, putting us so close that the toes of our shoes touch. “Coming in here like that, and getting all mouthy with me.”
“Whoever heard of the king of the school being a brainiac, hmm? Your stereotypes are all messed up. Then again, you got the equation wrong, so—”
Tristan grabs me around the waist and pushes me against the counter so fast that my head spins, positioning himself behind me so he can press his hardness against the curve of my ass. Considering I’m wearing the shortest skirt known to man, all I can do is moan as he reaches around and cups my left breast. With the other hand, he slides the pencil horizontally between my lips, so that I’m biting down on it.
“To stifle your screams,” he whispers, and then his right hand dives down and under my skirt, teasing me and making me moan. The pencil really does help when I clench my teeth around it. “You’re too smart for your own good. It drives me nuts.”
I spit the pencil out, and it bounces across the soapstone counters, bumping up against a silver propane faucet.