Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (13 page)

I was prepared to burn him with a mouthful of scathing words about women and respect and
boys
like him who only have sex on their minds … when quite suddenly sex is the only thing on
my
mind.

How’d he become ten times hotter since the last time I saw him? And this time, he’s got clothes on.

“Actually, what I came here to say …” he starts.

“I think you’ve said it already.” I steal my confidence right back by ripping my eyes away from him and returning to my work.

“Listen. I … I joke a lot, alright? It’s like my defense mechanism. I sorta deflect all my anxiety and shortcomings by … flirting. By staring at your gorgeous boobs. By imagining you in different positions.”

“Please, go on,” I moan mockingly. “You’re making me so wet.”

“But maybe you do the same thing.”

I can’t even decide where to place my pencil. Also, for some reason, my thighs are squeezing together so tight, you’d think I was trying to fuse them together. I turn to Brant again, humoring him. “Is that so?”

“Yep. And maybe your
art
is … kind of a defense mechanism too.” He takes a few tentative steps toward me. “Maybe you hide behind all that angsty art so that you … don’t have to risk being hurt by people.”

I rise from my stool, pencil gripped like a weapon. “Don’t come in here and presume to know me after one night.”

“Am I right, then?”

“My art isn’t a
defense
mechanism
. It’s the means by which I express myself. It’s what I do. It’s my
passion
. Maybe you’d understand any of that if you had a passion outside of the one in your pants.”

Brant wrinkles up his face. “I can’t tell if you just insulted me or complimented me.”

“I mean, really, tell me. I’m curious. Tell me what made you choose photography. Or is that all a lie? Are you just some creep with a camera around your neck? Hell … Are you even
enrolled
at Klangburg?”

“I left my camera at home. So I was right, then?”

I blink. “What?”

“About the art thing.” His expression turns quizzical as his bright eyes dart over to my drawing. “Is that cat eating its own tail?”

“I just said …”

He moves around me, as if he just lost all interest in debating art and cameras and defense mechanisms. He stands in front of my raked desk, observing my work. When he crosses his arms, his back spreads, flexing the muscles of his triangular form that peek out from under the black tank top.

There’s something incredibly sexy and intimate about how Brant studies my work. This time, he knows it’s mine. Something about that fact sends a shiver of anxiety through my system, not unlike the way his fingers might feel if he brushed them over my skin.

“Is it like … symbolic?” he asks, keeping his gaze on the drawing.

I don’t answer, watching him with my pencil gripped so tightly, my hand cramps.

“We eat ourselves. We’re so hungry we … eat ourselves.” He starts moving his knee, as if gently bouncing to some song in his head. “Yeah. I think that’s what it means. Except I don’t got no tail,” he throws at me, turning his head and flashing a sexy, teasing smile.

Just his face melts all of my insides. His dimples convert my guts into a steamy broth that both feels like home and like somewhere frighteningly unfamiliar and exotic. His eyes—like the sky at noon without a single cloud in it—dive so deeply into me that I fear for a moment he can see my every truth, even the ones I’m too scared to see myself.

Of course, on my exterior, all Brant
really
sees is what anyone sees: a woman who’s turned to ice—emotionless, bitter, and with an invisible shell as hard as diamond enclosing me like a second skin.

“So, is this a game show?” I throw back at him, though my voice is softer. “You guess what my work means and I give you a prize?”

The joke encourages him, his smile growing. “What kind of prize do I get? You gonna take your top off?”

I swallow a chuckle, pressing my lips together tight so as not to laugh.
Damn it, Nell. Remember who he is.
“Nope.”

“Good idea. Make me wait.” He winks. “Then a kiss, maybe?”

“Nope.” I fold my arms.

His eyes flick down to my breasts for a moment. I guess folding my arms just brought them into focus. When he returns his gaze to mine, he says, “I’m probably wrong about your drawing anyway, aren’t I?”

I purse my lips, studying him for a long moment. Then, I finally give in. “If I’m totally honest, I never quite know what my drawings mean.” I come around to his other side, trying to see my deranged cat with objective eyes. It’s always so hard to do.

“So it was a trick challenge?”

“Maybe,” I admit.

“Settin’ me up to fail?”

“Probably.”

I continue to inspect my work, noticing a spot where I could shade under the food bowl better. I also take a mental note of a part of the tail where the fur looks too perfect and needs some fussing up.

I realize he hasn’t said anything for a moment. I glance up, only to find Brant no longer looking at the drawing. His blue eyes are glued to mine instead.

The sudden intimacy makes me recoil in fear, yet my body doesn’t seem to move. I’m frozen in place, hypnotized.

Brant inhales, then lets it all out slowly, his crystalline eyes never leaving my face. A smile creeps onto his lips just as slowly before he says, “Honestly, I think I’d be pretty much the dumbest guy alive to try and win any game against you.”

“Dumbest ever,” I agree lamely, my gaze lost to his mouth and the silky words coming out from them.

“I mean, really, I ended up chained and nearly naked after losing my last game to you …”

“Cuffed, not chained.”
The way his lips move are hypnotic …

“So maybe we should forget all the game playing and … just do this the old-fashioned way.” He swallows so hard, I hear it in his throat. His smile is gone. His hands are back in his pockets and his posture stiffens.

Did shit just get serious?

“Old-fashioned way?” I prompt him.

“Do you want to go out with me, Nell?”

“I …”

Now it’s my turn to swallow hard, blinking at him and completely thrown. My mouth is so dry suddenly. My insides tremble. I can’t even remember the last time I was asked out. Freshman year? High school?

Never?

“Just dinner,” he says. “Nothing else. Maybe. I mean, you know, if I manage to woo you over a nice steak or somethin’, I’m not opposed to getting naked in front of you for the
third
time. Or is it the fourth?”

“Fourth,” I answer numbly. “Unless you count those black briefs you were wearing at the gallery.”

“Aww, you remembered the color!” he exclaims, his face lighting up.

And my face flushes, frustrated that I let that slip. I grit my teeth, my arms folding tightly.

“Those were one of my gay roommate’s fault, by the way,” he adds quickly. “He insisted that I wear them.”

I’m turned to stone, from my feet to my stomach to even my brain. I can’t seem to trust him, no matter how imploringly those beautiful eyes of his glow. When I look at his gentle, inviting arms, I remember a boy who embraced me long ago and told me he’d never let go—then did. When Brant’s lips spill such sweet words, I hear the same sweet words that a boy once whispered in my ear—and his words were so heartfelt, I was nearly convinced that he meant every one. Even the day my father abandoned me charges forth to shovel more doubt into my fast-filling brain. The pain I harbor for my twin brothers who moved as far away from home as they possibly could hurts anew.

I can’t move. I can’t trust him. I can’t even appreciate his sweetness for what it is, because my brain knows that no matter how sweet the fruit, it’s in their nature to rot.

“So you wanna go out with me or not, Nell?” he asks gently, stirring me from my thoughts. “If you’re feelin’ nothing here and I’m just … barkin’ up some tree I got no business barkin’ up …”

“I have work to do,” I blurt.

His face freezes, startled by my blunt response. “Afterwards, then?”

“My work will take me all night,” I lie, running the back of a wrist over my forehead before making a move to reclaim my stool.

“Wait,” he says, stopping me.

I stare into his eyes.

To my surprise, he gently presses a thumb to my forehead, then wipes. He brings the now-darkened thumb to his lips. “Smudge,” he explains, the word barely a whisper.

I hold my breath, then let out a word: “Charcoal.”

He glances at my drawing, then lifts a questioning eyebrow. “Does it have a name yet?”

“No,” I lie.

He smirks at it. Then he asks, “You really don’t want to go out with me tonight?”

I press my lips together, refusing to answer him again. Or maybe I don’t trust the answer I’d give him.

“Alright,” he says softly, taking my silence for his answer, and then quietly leaves.

I stare at my cat for a long while. Then I clench my eyes and purge all thought of Brant and his messy hair and his perfect body and whatever tiny, nearly undetectable trace of humanity or sensitivity or soul that might—with some very, near-to-breaking-point stretch of the imagination—exist. I take a deep breath, face my work, and patiently decide where to place my next stroke.

“You know …”

I jump at the sound of his voice again, turning to find him still standing at the door.

“If I were to name it,” he muses, leaning against the doorframe, “I might call it something like …
Dinner.
” He smiles, his dimples showing. “Doesn’t tell the viewer what to think. Doesn’t explain anything. Just … sort of … unsettles you. Makes you think. Makes you … hungry. Which I’m hoping is the point, because I’m starving.”

“Brant …”

He screws up his forehead. “Yeah?”

“Nine o’clock,” I make myself say. “Tonight.”

NELL

There are two very passionate young women inside of me. One of them wears black and summons the rain with her dark, furious eyes. The other wears a bright green dress and dances in the puddles. I’m always at war with them.

Brant has the girl in the green dress to thank for my saying yes.

I don’t know what kind of woman he was expecting to pick up, but I don’t imagine it’s the one he gets. When he pulls up to the rear of the art school that grazes the main road by a line of carefully placed shrubs, there’s a look of awe in his eyes when I open his car door and slip inside. I had run home and changed into a pair of black jeans that
don’t
have paint stains on them, complemented by a red crop top. I even bothered to tease a few curls into my hair. Why? I don’t know. I never have a reason to do much of anything with it lately.

And Brant? He’s apparently gone home and traded his look from earlier with a totally new one. He wears a clean, seemingly starched blue-and-orange plaid shirt buttoned with the top one undone, tucked into a pair of rough, distressed jeans and a belt that thankfully doesn’t have a dinner plate for a buckle. His hair has been tamed, parted to the side with just a few rebel tufts here and there going in their own stubborn directions. His eyes are somehow softer than usual too. It’s both inviting and disarming, what those eyes do to me.

“Well, hey there, pretty.”

“Nell,” I correct him reservedly, securing the seatbelt.

He smiles at me, pulling onto the main road. “Nell,” he amends. “Not fond of terms of endearment?”

I check my phone for the time, then pocket it. “Not particularly.”

“Alright. I’ll remember that, babe.”

I shoot him a look, then question whether he even knows what he said as he innocently pays attention to the road, one hand hanging on the top of the wheel and the other gripping the stick shift.