Good Grades & Mystery Games (North University Series Book 2)

I think I almost died walking Scarlett home a few nights ago.

Okay, maybe not, but it felt like it. I was freezing right to the bone, my shirt was stuck to me in every possible place, but for some reason, when I put my hand across her face, flames erupted across my body. I really need to sort whatever the hell that is out, especially when we’re getting somewhere with the case.

I miscalculated time for my run again this morning, so I’m sprinting down the hallway, my shirt untucked, tie loose and my hair a mess as I try not to miss the meeting with Anderson and Scarlett about the project. If I’m more than ten minutes late he’ll probably lock me out of the room. He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again.

I somehow messed up my fitness watch and ended up sprinting half a marathon before realising I was late for school. Again. I can’t blame anyone for this. I set the time for half an hour, but I set it at nine-thirty-seven, and it messed up my concept of the run. It needed to end at ten-forty or else it would irritate me that it’s not landed on an even number.

Still, Anderson wouldn’t care for my excuses, so I picked up the pace again, finally in the same building as his office. It’s the last one on the corridor, tucked between the business library and a lecture theatre. I get to the brown door a few seconds before I would have been ten minutes late, and I open it.

Scarlett’s back is to me at first, sitting in front of Mr Anderson’s desk. She looks a lot more put together than she did the other night. Which is a little insane considering the rain and the dim glow of the moonlight only made her features more striking. Now, she’s wearing a black dress, half her hair tied back with the ribbon into a bow, while the rest falls onto her shoulders and down her back. She turns around, her brown eyes taking survey of my messy outfit.

She snorts. “You look like shit.” I ignore her when she laughs at me and take the seat next to hers.

“Language, Scarlett,” Anderson warns, sounding fed up with her.

“Thank you,” I say to him sweetly as she gives me a stern side glance. I smile to myself, knowing that tiny comment got under her skin.

Anderson goes into his usual lecture, explaining how the project works and asking us if we’re abiding by the guidelines. His office is cool in the sense that the blinds for his windows can convert into a screen which he can project his PowerPoint on. As he turns around, droning on about the requirements, Scarlett scooches her chair closer to mine, her strong perfume hitting me.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, not looking at me as she pretends to watch Anderson’s presentation. She lowers her voice lightly, “Do you need some weed?”

I choke on air because the question hangs between us as we’re in a room with a teacher. He could easily get us expelled for that shit, but he doesn’t seem to care much about his job to even bother.

Still, as he changes slides he says, “You cannot talk about drugs in my office. I am a teacher.”

Scarlett rolls her eyes, seeming way too comfortable with the idea of us getting kicked out. “Yeah, but are you really?” I swear this girl has a death wish. She leans into me again as Anderson groans. She whispers, “I’m being serious.”

“I can still hear you even if you whisper, Scarlett. We’re not even two feet away from each other,” Anderson says. She actually laughs at that and I’m too busy trying not to focus on her proximity to laugh with her. She waves a hand dismissively at his back and then turns to me, a question dancing in her eyes: Well?

“I definitely do not need any substances from you, Scarlett,” I say to her. She turns back to Anderson, slightly slouching in her chair as she crosses her arms across her chest, sulking.

“Okay, jeez. It was just a question. Quit acting like you’ve got a cork up your ass,” she mutters. I ignore her and turn back to Anderson.

“Can we please stay on topic,” I say.

*  *  *

The rest of the meeting goes smoothly.

We explain to Anderson how we’re planning on running the app and when we get in touch with software developers, how we’ll turn it into a reality. He said our plan is good and that we could be coming out with a good grade if we stick to it. It’s kind of hard to do while we’re also solving a mystery alongside it.

After the meeting, we moved into the business library across from his office, finally getting back to work. After such a weird morning, it feels good to submerge myself into work that isn’t my brain. I can give myself time to focus on something that isn’t going to send me into a spiral or lead to a cold shower.

I thought it was working. Then I remembered that it’s Scarlett Voss I’m working alongside.

I notice too many things about her. All the time. I’ve been picking up on small things that she does, most of which drive me a little crazy. Like the way she taps her pencil on the page three times when she’s thinking and four times when she’s thinking extra hard. The way she crosses and uncrosses her legs when she’s listening to me talk. The way she never looks me in the eye for long enough, but how it also feels like it’s for too long. How after four seconds of uninterrupted eye contact, she always drops her head down to her work.

And today, even though I can tell it was probably perfect before she left the house this morning, the bow in her hair is slipping out. We’re both sitting next to each other at a desk facing the window, tucked into one side of the small library. My chair is a few inches further out than hers as she leans over the table and I lean back in my chair, giving me a fantastic view of her hair and the loose bow.

Usually, I wouldn’t care. Okay, I would, but I could suppress my compulsions. Today I’m already on edge with after the run this morning and being late to the meeting. Now seeing that bow, seconds away from falling out, it’s driving me up the wall.

Finally, I mutter, “Your ribbon is falling out.”

She pauses writing for a second. She’s right handed. I like that. It means we can sit on the same side of the table without our elbows rubbing together. It’s a stupid thing to pick up on, but it adds to the very long list of things I’m starting to notice about her.

“Gee. Thanks for pointing that out,” she mutters angrily.

She drops her pencil, her bare slender arms reaching up to fiddle with it. She messes with it for two seconds before continuing writing. It’s even more of a mess now.

“You’ve made it worse,” I say, scratching the back of my neck.

She turns to me now — finally — and her brown eyes narrow. “Thanks for the play-by-play, Branson. That’s really helping. Do you want to sort it out?”

She’s willingly asking me to touch her. Well, not her, but her hair. And her hair is fucking gorgeous. It’s long — too fucking long — dark brown, but not black and always with a ribbon. There’s no way. I must have heard her wrong because Scarlett Voss would never invite me to touch her.

“What?” I gawk.

“Did you hear me or what? I don’t have a mirror and we’re going to waste time if I go to the bathroom to fix it. Can you do it or is it beyond your capabilities?” she asks, tilting her head playfully.

I don’t even flinch at the insult and instead ask, “Are you sure?”

She sighs. “You know what, on second thought, that bathroom break is looking really good,” she groans, standing up.]

Uh, no. Not happening.

I tug on her elbow, pulling her back down to me. Her eyes widen at the sudden contact of my hand on her skin. I gently nudge her into the desk, and she sits on the table, half of her body hanging off it as she angles herself towards me.

I stand up, moving behind her. “Can you be quiet for two minutes?” I ask, not touching her yet.

She shrugs and I can tell she probably rolled her eyes too. I take a deep breath. It’s not a big deal at all. I’ve tied a hundred bows in my life after my mom left and my dad wanted presents to look authentic. Still, this is different. Because it’s her.

Seeing her like this, finally quiet, below me, her posture straight, has my thoughts going straight into the gutter. I imagine how she would look on her knees, that ribbon tied around her wrists instead of her hair.

I watch her shudder as I undo the ribbon slowly, letting it fall, while keeping one hand in the half of the silky hair that almost melts in my hands. I should not be allowed to touch her like this. Not when I’m getting hard just by doing it. She takes in a sharp breath and my breathing shallows. I finally do what she asked, gently but firmly tying the bow so it looks good and is secure enough.

“Are you done?” she asks. She thinks I don’t notice the subtle way she clears her throat, but I do.

“No,” I lie, fiddling with her hair because why is it so fucking soft? It’s so tempting, yet it feels so wrong. So dirty. “Why do you always have these in? I can’t figure you out.”

She ignores me and asks again: “Are you done?”

“Scarlett,” I press, urging her to answer my question. I tug on her hair, the same way I did at the restaurant, but this time I angle her towards me, her delicate face tilted up. When she looks at me, her mouth parts in a gasp, her pupils dilated. Interesting. I release my hold on her hair and her shoulders sag.

“What?” she bites out.

“Can you answer my question?”

She holds my stare. “I don’t need to answer anything.” She stands up and turns fully until she’s right in front of me. I straighten, naturally towering over her, but she doesn’t back down. Instead, she raises her chin, triumphant as if she’s realised something. “I gave you two chances to tell me the truth, and you lied both times. I’m not an idiot, Branson. I can tell that you just wanted your hands on me.”

In a way that she usually does, she doesn’t sound like she’s complaining. She doesn’t sound like she’s disgusted by the idea of me wanting to touch her. She just seems like she wants to know. Or she wants her theories to be confirmed more like.

I give her the bait. “Then why did you let me do it?”

“You wanted to touch me,” she says again as if that makes this make more sense. “I was going to let it carry on. See how long it would take for you to say something, to make you crack. And then you did. You think I don’t know you, Ev, but I do. Especially after the other night. I can see right through you sometimes.”

Fuck.

“Really? Then what am I thinking right now, Angel.”

“You want me,” she says. Of course, I do. I have since freshman year, and I’ve denied it ever since. How could I not? She’s a fucking magnet. “I don’t know why. I mean, of course, I do. I’m a catch. But why you? That’s what I don’t get. It makes sense now. All the touches, the glances, the helping. You want me.”

I don’t believe that she’s not affected by me for a second. So, I inch closer to her, leaning down as our fronts are practically touching. She’s breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling as she tries to keep eye contact with me. She does for five seconds now before dropping her gaze to my chest.

“I don’t want you,” I lie. The last thing I need is to complicate this when we’ve got the project and the mystery to figure out. “You drive me insane, Scarlett.”

“Yeah, and you let me.”

She trails her long fingernail up my arm, not breaking eye contact with me until she reaches my shoulder. My shirt isn’t thin, but it fucking feels like it. Each inch her finger moves sets off small explosive bombs up my arm until she gets to my neck where my pulse is hammering.

She’s enjoying this.

In some sadistic way, she’s enjoying torturing me.

When she reaches my neck, she curls her hand around the back of my head, twisting her fingers in my hair, tugging gently. I close my eyes, taking a second to breathe before opening them again. She’s got that sexy, lazy smile on her lips, her cheeks a little red as she presses herself into me.

“Don’t do that, Scar,” I mutter, placing my hand on top of hers, practically swallowing it whole as I drag it from my face.

“Tell me I’m lying, Branson,” she urges.

I cannot.

So, I divert instead.

“Let’s get back to work,” I say, stepping away from her. When I get to my seat, I don’t look at her. I can play along with whatever game she wants to. I’d do just about anything she wanted me to. If she asked me to jump, I’d ask how high.

God, I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if she asked me.

When we settle into a rhythm of comfortable silence, I try my best to ignore whatever just happened between us.

Something shifted.

Either she’s playing hard to get, or she genuinely has no interest in me, and she wants to push me until I break. Unfortunately for her, I don’t have much self-control.

If we were ever that close again, there is no telling what I would do.

Scarlett

After Evan and I leave the library, knowing that I’ll see him again at the game night, I realise two things.

1. I am going to need to buy more batteries for my vibrator.
2. I, almost certainly, have some sort of pathetic and emotionally draining crush on Evan Branson.

Fuck. My. Life.