my shoulders and pressed a kiss to my temple. "Babe, you tell him yet?"
I stiffened under his arm.
"Tell me what?" Steele asked, his sharp gaze taking in the casual way Kody touched me.
Kody's grin was pure evil. "That MK and I are dating."
Christ on a goddamn fucking cracker.
If I had ever wished for a time that the ground would open and swallow me up whole, that was it. Right fucking here.
6
To my intense relief, on the way to SGU Kody explained the whole "MK and I are dating" bombshell he’d dropped on Steele in the garage.
By the time he was done telling his friend about our diabolical plan to piss off Archer, Steele's infectious grin was back on his face. It reminded me of that first day when I'd returned from Cambodia and he’d smiled so much I wanted to hit him.
"I know," Kody said when Steele barked a laugh. "I'm a genius."
Steele rolled his eyes and shot me a quick look from the driver's seat. "You are," he replied to Kody, "but not for the reason you think, dickhead."
I gave him a tight smile in response, but couldn't shake the tension out of my body until we pulled into Steele's designated parking space outside the university entrance.
Archer's midnight-black Stingray was nowhere to be seen, but that was no great shock. He only had three lectures a week.
The three of us got out of the car, and I slung my bag over my shoulder. A dull ache tweaked as my stomach muscles shifted, and I cringed.
"Come on, babe," Kody called to me with a smug grin. "I'll walk you to class."
Steele whacked him in the stomach as he shifted past, making Kody groan. "Give us a second, you sneaky fuck," he growled, jerking his head to the building behind us.
Kody snickered but did as he was told, heading inside the university without us.
"Are you okay?" Steele asked when his friend was out of sight. He came around the car to me and hovered his hand over my waist like he wanted to grab me but didn't want to risk hurting me.
I nodded. "Totally fine," I assured him, lifting my shirt up slightly to show him the healing wound. "It was a clean cut, and the stitches came out days ago. It barely even hurts now, unless I move too quickly."
Steele's brow furrowed, and he traced his thumb gently along the raised scar, his touch feather-light. "You know we're going to find whoever did this, right?" His gaze met mine, but his fingertips still rested on the bare skin of my stomach. "We'll find him and show him the true meaning of agony for what he did to you."
The cold violence in his eyes sent a shiver of fear through me, balanced equally by arousal. A therapist would have a field day with my attraction to these three mysterious, dangerous guys, but I wasn't in the mood to psychoanalyze myself.
Instead, I just pulled him in with a handful of his shirt, crushing my lips and my body to him in a physical display of what I thought of his promise.
Steele ended our kiss way too soon, but I was mollified by his reasoning. "Dammit, Hellcat. You're going to make me suffer through my lectures with a hard-on."
I smirked but gave him a second to rearrange his dick before we headed into the building, where Kody waited for us. Not that he was lacking for company. A beautiful redheaded girl that I used to go to Shadow Prep with was flipping her hair and batting her lashes at him like she was developing a tick.
"You done pawing at my girlfriend, bro?" the gigantic, blond flirt teased, grabbing my hand and pulling me into his embrace right there in front of his admirer. Beth, I think her name was. Bree and I had kept a pretty tight circle at Shadow Prep, and it'd been over a year since I'd seen any of my old classmates.
"Your girlfriend?" she squeaked, giving me huge eyes. They lacked the spiteful jealousy women often threw around when they spotted competition. Instead, she just looked sheepish. "Sorry, MK," she told me, "I didn't realize. Good to see you back in Shadow Grove." Her smile was tight, a little cool, but not malicious.
"Thanks, Beth," I replied. She didn't correct me or look confused, so I must have gotten her name right.
Her answering smile was a bit warmer, like she hadn't expected me to recognize her.