Kody gave a small laugh, eyeing me shrewdly. "That's cute, princess. But I've barely even started flirting with you yet. Guess I need to step up my game."
My brows shot up, and he stepped forward, backing me into the wall between a portrait of Thomas Edison and the door to a classroom.
"Kodiak," I growled with warning, "what are you doing?"
His body pressed against mine, and I bit back a pathetic moan that wanted to escape my throat. "Turning up the heat," he whispered back, then captured my earlobe between his lips and sucked on it. This time I barely managed to clamp my mouth shut when a shudder of arousal ripped through me, and Kody's dark chuckle told me he'd noticed. Damn him.
"Cute touch putting Archer as a bottom, babe. I'm pretty sure that's the part he's most pissed about. But hey, at least you got my favorite position right." He smacked a quick kiss against my shell-shocked lips, then swaggered away with a mocking, "See you at home, Princess!" tossed over his shoulder.
After he was gone, the uncomfortable realization that I was far from alone came flooding back to me, and I pulled my barriers back up. Other students were whispering and staring, so I dished out a heaping of death glares and hurried my ass into my first class of the day.
Kody was proving to be a harder target than I'd anticipated. If a very convincingly Photoshopped image of him and Steele spit-roasting Archer wasn't going to push his buttons... maybe I was approaching him the wrong way.
I needed to rethink my plans for him.
Dropping my bag next to a vacant space in the lecture hall, I dropped into the seat and glanced up at the board, reminding myself what class I'd just walked into.
CRIM-100
Ah shit.
I looked around until I spotted Bark sitting two rows away, the hood of his SGU Ghosts sweatshirt pulled up and his face ducked low over his books. Almost like he could feel me staring, though, he looked up, and I gasped.
The side of his face was a puffy, mottled purple, like he's run into something hard. Repeatedly.
It could have been a football injury, but based on the way he glared at me, then skipped his gaze away again... yeah, I doubted it.
Fucking Steele.
20
Considering the guys were three years above me at SGU—they’d transferred from elsewhere and I hadn’t cared to ask where—it was no shocker that I didn't see them again throughout the day. Bree and I left campus for lunch—she had her period and was craving Mexican—so I didn't get a chance to confront Steele until I got home at the end of the day.
Even then, I needed to hunt him out.
"Steele!" I called out, entering the enormous garage and making my way through the line of stupidly expensive cars and motorbikes. Most of them were my father’s—I recognized them from before Cambodia—but some were new to me, like the G-Wagen or Steele's silver muscle car... whatever that was. "Are you in here?"
I reached the workshop area just as he slid out from under a jacked-up car, lying flat on his back with one of those rolling things mechanics used.
"Hey," he greeted me, sitting up with a delicious ab flex. "How are you?"
My lips had been parted to go off on him, blast him about beating up my date on Friday night rather than just sending him home, but his question confused me. Even more so, the genuine look of concern on his face as he asked.
"How are—huh? Shouldn't I be asking you that? I'm not the one who just had his home porn blasted to the entire university campus." I frowned in confusion, and a brief flash of irritation passed over his face.
"Yeah well, as flattering as it was that you'd start a rumor I was gay after what we did on Friday night... it could have been worse." He shrugged and gave me a lopsided smile. Damn him. Why was it so freaking hard to hate Max Steele?
"Oh yeah?" I found myself asking, playing along. "How's that?"
His grin spread wider. "I could have been in Arch's position." He winced, and I laughed before catching myself.
"Yeah, well. It's always the big ones who like to be dominated in the bedroom. Or so I hear. Anyway, I came here to yell at you, and you've just taken the wind out of my sails." I scowled, but it totally lacked the heat of a few minutes ago.
Steele stood up and pulled a rag from his back pocket, using it to wipe a streak of grease off his face. All he managed to do, though, was smear it further, and my nipples hardened at the sexy image he portrayed. Why, why had he suddenly stopped wearing shirts around the house? It wasn't fair.
"Shall I give you a minute?" he suggested, teasing. "Maybe you can find that outraged anger again."
"Fuck you," I replied, but it was totally without conviction.
His grin turned wicked, and he came closer to me, crowding my airspace in that infuriating, intoxicating way all three of them seemed to love to do. "That's what I'm hoping you'll do," he murmured, dragging a grease-darkened finger from my throat to belly, then grabbing me by my jeans to yank me closer still. "Just say the word, Hellcat."
I needed to swallow several times before I could force the right words off my tongue.
"Never going to happen, Steele."
He studied my face for a second, no doubt reading the lie all over me, but released my jeans and took a step away. "So, what did you come to yell at me about?"
I cleared my throat and frantically searched for my invisible shields. The pesky ones that seemed to turn into mist whenever I was around Steele... or Kody for that matter. Okay fine, Archer too, not that I'd ever admit it to anyone.
"I saw Bark today in class," I told him, folding my arms over my chest. "He looked like he'd run afoul of something hard. Maybe, say, someone's fist? You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
A smug smile crossed his lush lips, and he tucked the greasy rag back in his jeans, then reached for the open beer on the floor. "Now then, beautiful, you know my dirty little secret. Do you think I'd risk my hands just to punch some meathead jock over comments that seriously walked the line toward a rape threat?" He held up his right hand, showing me all the smudges of grease... and totally undamaged knuckles. What little anger I had left in me deflated, and I felt a bit guilty for assuming the worst.
Steele snickered a laugh, heading out of the workshop with me following. "His car door, though, might have a few face-shaped dents in it."
I gasped. "Steele!"
He shot me an unrepentant smirk over his shoulder. "Anyway, how are you dealing with the whole stalker situation? You okay?"
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"With the what situation?"
Steele paused, too, turning back to face me with a stunned look on his face. "Oh shit," he murmured. "Arch hasn't talked to you, yet? That prick."
Fury was building inside me with speed. "Talked to me about what?" I demanded, my fists balling at my sides. Steele hesitated, looking pained, and I lost it. "Tell me, Steele!"
He blew out a heavy breath, his gorgeous gray eyes sympathetic. "You've got a stalker, Hellcat. And they don't seem content to watch from a distance any more."
My stomach churned, and acid rose in my throat.