Page 29 of The Werewolf’s Study Date

"No reason." He turns back to his textbook. His jaw is set. "Just wondering."

"Because if I don't have other plans, I might go," I say. "It's supposed to be really good, someone was telling me⁠—"

"You have plans," he says.

I set my textbook down. "Do I?"

He meets my eyes. The amber has gone a degree warmer than usual, and I know what that means now. "You do," he says, certain in a way that has nothing apologetic in it. "With me. I was going to ask you."

"You could have asked me when he asked me," I point out. "You have my number."

"I'm asking you now."

"Under duress."

"Maisie." He says my name in the voice that makes it a full sentence, quiet and direct. "Please come to the Halloween thing with me."

I look at him. The set of his shoulders. The gold-warm color of his eyes. The way he's leaning slightly forward.

"Okay," I say.

He relaxes. Just slightly. "Good."

"You were jealous," I say.

"I was planning ahead," he says.

"Boone."

"Strategically."

I laugh, and whatever careful distance I'd been maintaining breaks. He smiles back, easy and real, and suddenly the textbook doesn't seem very important.

I'm not entirely sure how I end up with half my legs across his lap.

One minute we're actually studying—or something that looks like it, books open, notes out—and the next we're arguing about the practical exam format. Then I make a point about cellular adaptation that he calls unnecessarily pedantic. Then I throw a pillow at him. Then he catches it without looking because he's infuriating, and then he tugs on my ankle until I stop trying to take it back and I end up sideways on the couch with my legs over his thighs.

Which is, I realize, entirely too comfortable.

"You know," I say, to the ceiling, "for someone who's supposed to be helping me study, you're extremely distracting."

"You started it."

"The pillow was a proportionate response."

"To what?"

"Your face," I say, which makes no sense, and he laughs, low and warm, and I feel it through where my legs rest against him.

"My face," he repeats.

"You know what you look like," I say. "You do it on purpose."

"I genuinely don't know what you mean."

I tilt my head to look at him. He's already looking at me, easy and certain, and the apartment smells like food and him, and outside the window it's properly dark now, and everything is just—easy. That's the word. The kind of easy that happens when something fits right and you've stopped bracing for it to get weird.

"Come here," he says quietly.