This Fearless Girl (St. Clary's University #2) - E. M. Moore Page 0,15
touch. It wants everything he’s mocking. It wants him to keep going. It wants him to prove me wrong.
His fingers edge over the top of my suit bottoms, and my muscles jump in response. He slips his fingers underneath the elastic, skimming over my flesh as he homes in on where I’m greedy for him most. “Stop flooding your pussy?”
My core clenches. He brushes just over my clit. He’s not kidding, desire drips from me, my head rolling backward.
I freak out. I literally jump away from him, his wrist snagging on my suit bottoms momentarily before I put space between us. My chest heaves as I gulp in air. It’s easier to be angry than turned on around him. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true anymore, but it’s definitely better for me to be mad than give in to the pull between us.
He doesn’t look contrite about what he’s done. In fact, his smirk says it all. He knows I want him but, unlike Lucas, he wants to force it out of me.
Well, I’ve got news for him. It doesn’t work that way. “You know,” I say, forcing my desperate breaths to be laced with anger. “Cole did tell me one more thing.”
Stone cocks his head, clearly stunned by my change in conversation. “What’s that?”
“He told me Dickie sold the Jacobses our secrets. I think he was trying to talk me out of my grief, but what I really need to hear from you, Stone Jacobs, is if that’s true. Did you ask Dickie for information about the Wilder treasure?”
Stone’s face falls.
I have my answer. I push past him, trudging through the resisting water. “Dakota,” Stone calls out, but I’m already rushing up the steps. I race across the stone, through the glass doors, and straight to my room, dripping water as I flee.
At this point, I don’t even know who I’m more hurt by, Stone Jacobs or Dickie.
6
I’ve discarded my soaking wet bathing suit on the shower floor and pulled on my jammies when a knock sounds on the door. “Go away.”
I’m miserable. They call it being stabbed in the back, but it’s more like being stabbed in the heart. My chest squeezes uncomfortably as I crawl onto the bed, slipping beneath the covers.
The door opens. I stick my head out from the sheet and find Lucas coming around the edge of the bed. “Stone sent me. He said you were upset.”
It dawns on me that the hits keep coming. If Stone asked Dickie for secrets, so did Lucas and Wyatt. Does that mean they’re just as culpable? “I don’t know if I want to see you.”
He shrugs, joining me in the bed and hauling me against his solid chest. He cradles my head in the crook of his arm while his fingers slip through my chaos of wet curls. “And I told you I wasn’t going to let you get away with that. I’m not going to sugarcoat what happened, Wild Girl. We haven’t always done the right thing, and I’m sure we’ll fuck up in the future, too.”
“You’re not giving yourself a glowing recommendation.”
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”
I crack a smile.
“However,” he says, “I think it’s easier for you to get mad at us. What we did wasn’t honorable, but it’s nothing compared to what you’re probably feeling about Dickie.”
I swallow, trying to keep my emotions in check, but it’s so damn hard around Lucas. “It hurts,” I admit. “I thought Cole was lying when he told me. I can’t imagine Dickie doing that. He— I thought he cared for us.”
Lucas lets his head rest back against the pillow and sighs. “I’m not sure life is as cut and dry as that. People do things for all sorts of reasons. What he did doesn’t mean he didn’t care for you or your dad. It could’ve just meant that he wanted the money.”
“My dad would be so mad,” I growl, knowing that would’ve been his first reaction. “And now I can never ask Dickie why.”
“Sometimes it’s easier not knowing,” Lucas says, his voice the perfect tenor for what I’m feeling right now. We’re silent for so long that I would’ve thought Lucas had fallen asleep if it weren’t for his fingers brushing the side of my face. “It was Lance’s idea to ask Dickie.” His words hang in the air. “I thought you might want to know that. It doesn’t absolve us of what we did, but we were just following orders.”