AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you ever go back, ever?” she asks. “Like, for alumni stuff?”
“Not really,” I shrug. “Every few years, I suppose. I’ve been back there maybe a handful of times.”
“When was the most recent?” she asks eagerly. “You might be able to give me the inside scoop on what to look out for.”
I grin. “I was actually there last year. They’ve put in some great improvements lately. Invested a bit more in the student social scene.”
“Like the bars?” she asks.
“Like the bars,” I chuckle. “Typical student.”
She shakes her head, grinning. God, that smile. I could look at it all day long. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “It’s kind of weird. Coming to a place where it’s legal to drink three years earlier. I don’t know if I’ll do it. But I heard they have a lot of entertainment going on there.”
“Oh, yes. Live music is pretty regular. And they have talks and workshops from visiting professionals. Actually, that was why I was there last year.”
“No way!” Gabriella exclaims. “You gave a talk?”
I nod, wishing it didn’t show just how painfully older than her I am. If I was twenty years younger, I would be charming her into my bed already.
But even following that thought, I can’t help but find another chasing it. That it doesn’t matter. Even knowing who she is and that she’s almost twenty years younger than me, I don’t know if I can resist her.
I want her. I want to make her mine. I want to put my mark on her so no one else ever touches her again. Like a primal beast, I just want to own her. That’s how strong a reaction she triggers in me.
“I was a guest speaker,” I say, trying to play it off a little less than what it was. They have speakers all the time, after all. Not such a huge achievement in the grand scheme of things.
The more we talk, the more I find myself noticing every little thing about her. The way her mouth moves when she speaks. The curve of her shoulder, the way her eyelashes move as she blinks. How she tucks her hair behind her ears sometimes, the last awkward holdover of a teenager now gone and turned into a woman.
And it’s more than that, too. She’s confident in herself now. She carries herself well in conversation, never making me feel like I’m talking to someone so much younger than myself. Even when we talk about college, it’s like I’m talking to a mature student, not an eighteen year old. I don’t know how she got to be this incredible. But I feel like I could sit here and listen to her talk all day long.
Even more so because it would be the most exquisite torture, watching her all the while and never being able to lay a finger on her.
I know it’s wrong, and that I should respect the fact that she’s Dean’s daughter. I know he wouldn’t like it. He’d be furious to know that I even had these thoughts about her. But, damn. How am I supposed to get them out of my mind when she looks like this, sounds like this, is like this? Everything about her taps into some instinctive, primal urge to claim her as my mate.
To make her mine.
“It’s getting late,” I say, at last, checking my watch. We’ve whiled away the whole afternoon, and people are starting to arrive for drinks – probably after finishing work. I’ve kept her all this time, and now her first afternoon here is gone. It’s time to start thinking about dinner, and she hasn’t even had time to finish unpacking yet. “I guess I should let you go and get settled in.”
“Oh, is it?” Gabriella says, checking the time on her phone in surprise.
“Sorry,” I chuckle. “I guess we got carried away chatting. But now that I’ve checked you’ve arrived fine… I guess I should let you get on with your trip.”
Inwardly, I hope that she doesn’t want me to go. That I’ll see disappointment on her face. But at the same time, I’m not holding out for it – because if she does want me to stay, we could get into a lot more trouble than either of us may bargain for.
Chapter Five
Gabby
When Oz tells me it’s time for him to go, it’s like the world comes crashing down around me. I don’t want him to leave, but what am I supposed to do?
I’m the one who said I wanted this vacation to be my first slice of independence. I’m the one who insisted on coming here alone. And now I’m going to cling onto the first familiar face I see?
I know it isn’t like that, inside. It’s not the fact that he’s familiar that makes me want to spend more time looking at his face. Even though it happens to be the best face I’ve ever seen in my life. But that’s how it will look – and how it will sound even to him. Like I’m some dumb kid who can’t spend a single moment in an unfamiliar city on her own, after all.
