Beneath The Skin(14)

“Big ol’ scary camera like that?” she says, taking a step toward me.

I feel her heat. Or maybe it’s mine.

“Yep. I’m the … new c-camera guy. I wanna take your, uh …”

Camera guy? What the hell am I saying?

“Camera boy.” Her breath falls over my face, inviting and cool.

“Is that a yes?” I whisper, my voice lost.

Her face clouds over suddenly, the green in her eyes turning dark unless I’m imagining it. “A boy like you with a hunk of metal around your neck doesn’t make you a photographer,” she murmurs so softly, I could forget her actual words and be convinced that she was trying to seduce me into a state of gooey, limbless bliss. It’s working, by the way. “You wouldn’t know art if it turned into a scorpion and slipped down your pants.”

“Joke’s on you,” I murmur back, taking my own step toward her. “I already have a scorpion in my pants. Wanna see?”

“I’ve already seen it. Twice.” Her voice is somewhere between a hair and a kitty’s sigh. “And it’s no scorpion. And you’re no artist.”

“Then what am I?”

“A dick,” she answers almost politely. “A walking, talking dick. And when you graduate, that’s the song they’ll sing about you. The dick that every lucky girl on this campus got to know so intimately. The dick who’s got more mileage on him than the New York City metro. You’re no artist, Brant the Camera Boy.”

So—random observation, not gonna lie—I’m hard as hell right now.

“Maybe I need to be taught,” I suggest, hoping that’s the bait she’s tossing me, if she’s tossing anything at all.

“I’m not a dog trainer.”

I’m encouraged by her taunt as I smile with dimples. “So show me what art is, mystery-woman-with-the-green-eyes-who-won’t-get-out-of-my-mind. Show me all the things I’m doing wrong here.”

I lick my lips.

Her eyes jerk down to them, distracted for a second.

I got you.

“I’m a hands-on kind of learner,” I insist.

She parts her lips. My face is inches from hers. My cock aches, as if my pants could explode if she lays just a single finger on me.

She says, “Saturday at six. Meet me by the Quad fountains.”

My face wrinkles. “Saturday? I gotta wait until—?”

And then she pulls away from me, creating a vacuum between us that nearly topples me onto the floor. Her hair whipping in my face, she saunters into the classroom ahead, paying me no more mind at all. My mouth hangs open as I grasp at the last tendril of her sexy, sultry scent.

I feel a hole in my chest where I’m sure a vital organ or two ought to be. Saturday at six? What the hell am I supposed to do until then other than hold my dick in my hand?

I meander out of the building, lost in my own head. I can’t explain even for a second what this woman is doing to me. All I know is, I’m feeling this surge of awkwardness that I haven’t felt since Clayton and I were kids growing up and it was him teaching me the ways of women. I remember the way I used to freeze in front of girls … The way my throat would constrict like some jungle boa had me by the neck, its tongue tickling my ear tauntingly whenever a female was around … The complete and abhorrent blankness that would fill my brain when all I wanted to do was tell a girl she was pretty.

I’m that fool all over again around this woman with the dark hair and the green gems for eyes. I am sharing an uncomfortably familiar likeness to my former, younger, pimplier self.

It’s like puberty, but in reverse.

I’m twenty-fucking-two. That’s too damned old to be experiencing any sort of puberty whether in reverse or not. Shit, my voice even cracked in front of her. How did that happen??

As if on cue, my phone buzzes. A text from Clayton himself, who’s always too busy to hang out, being so wrapped up with Dessie.



CLAY-BOY





Dude I gotta cancel.





I growl at my phone as if he can hear me through the screen. Even if we were face-to-face, actually, he couldn’t hear my growl; he’s deaf. He’d just see me making a snarl, then make fun of me and sign something obscene at me with his hands—some vile thing he and Dmitri will understand, and I’ll be left looking like the idiot staring between them.



ME





Why????





CLAY-BOY





Dessie said rehearsal





is supposed to go late tonight.





ME





She doesn’t need any more rehearsing.





She’s perfect and everyone loves her.





Blah, blah.





We need to hang, dude.





I got real problems.