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Somehow, his animal eyes grow even more potent and I’m forced to take a step back.
Not that I have anywhere to go really.
My spine is pretty much stuck to the tree I was hiding behind.
And he knows that.
His eyes flick to the ground to gauge the distance between us before lifting back to my face. “Yeah? Well, this one looks a little too daisy fresh. I’m not sure she can handle your sex ed class without passing out. So fuck off.”
I think I just pulled a muscle.
Because this is the hardest that I’ve frowned and glared and pursed my lips at someone, the hardest and the longest.
Meanwhile his friends, who still don’t know that I’m standing here, listening in, chuckle and laugh and make crude comments from behind me.
When they’re done though, they scramble off.
Leaving me alone with him.
The guy who’s staring at me like I’m the most interesting thing he has seen tonight. The most interesting thing he’s ever seen, actually, and now that I’m in his clutches, he can’t wait to play with me.
He can’t wait to open me up, unravel me, take me apart.
He can’t wait.
“I’m not daisy fresh,” I say and regret it soon after.
This is what I say to him, this.
Of all the things I could’ve said, like how dare you talk about me while I was standing right here or how dare you sneak up on me — because he did sneak up on me, right? — I say the most asinine thing ever.
I go to take it back.
But no words come out of my mouth because he chooses that very moment to move his eyes.
Which makes me realize that he hasn’t looked anywhere else except my face ever since he got here.
He’s changing that now though.
He’s slowly making his way down my swallowing, hiccupping throat, my heavily breathing chest.
Even though there’s very little light, I know he can see me clearly.
I think it’s his wolf eyes; they can see in the dark.
They can see everything: my cardigan that I knitted myself – it’s early February and unusually un-winter-like weather that only requires a light sweater – and my dress.
When his eyes move over it, I realize something else too.
Something both silly and important.
Daisies.
I’m wearing daisies.
My dress has printed daisies on it. That’s why he said that.
Oh, and it’s white, my dress.
Holy crap.
Lost in the woods, I’m dressed in his favorite color — white — and he’s staring at me in a way that makes him look like a predator. Part human, part wolf, who hunts unsuspecting girls like me.
Girls foolish enough to wander alone at midnight.
“I beg to differ,” he drawls when he finishes his perusal and comes back up to my face. “You look daisy fresh to me.”
See?
Predator.
Beautiful, gorgeous… predator.
I fist my dress and press my back into the tree. Raising my chin, I try to look more experienced even though I’m anything but. “And I’m not a freshman either.”
“Is that so?”
Look at that tone, so condescending.
God, I hate him.
Also, I hate myself for saying that.
But now that I have, I’m going to stay the course, because backing down would be even more cowardly.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I mean I am. But I should’ve been a sophomore. I repeated a year. And so I’m older and hence wiser. I’m about to turn sixteen in three months.”
All true.
I did repeat a year. Back when my mom had been sick and eventually died of cancer.
Everything had fallen on Conrad, who was only eighteen at the time and a freshman in college. He had so many, many balls to juggle back then, what with my mom’s deteriorating health, getting a job, keeping the house, taking care of my brothers and me – well, all my brothers chipped in and helped with me, but they were all kids themselves – that perfect attendance wasn’t very high on the list.
So my teachers thought it would be best if I repeated a year.
“Sweet sixteen, huh,” he murmurs, his eyes all glowy and intense.
I swallow. “Yes. So you shouldn’t have said what you said. To your friends.”
“What’d I say to my friends?”
I fist my dress harder.
I know what he’s doing. He’s provoking me. Because this is what he does.
He, Reed Roman Jackson, provokes and I, Calliope Juliet Thorne, make good choices.
So I should make a good choice here and backtrack.
But something in his eyes, in his casual but also tight demeanor, makes me say, “That I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
I lick my dry lips. “That I don’t know how babies are made.”
“And how are they made?”
Stop. Just stop, Callie.
But you know what, I hate that he’s so amused right now.
It makes me want to say it, throw him off, shock him.
So I widen my stance and throw back my shoulders as I say, “They are made when you f-fuck.”
