Brutal Blueblood

smile. I’d read in Gotham Girl once that even a fake smile can trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “I’m ready for all the fun!”
As we watched the boys laughing and throwing snowballs at a howling Lennox, I rolled my eyes because God, could they be any more of the prep school, rich-boy vibe? Except, my gaze landed back on Owen, I couldn’t seem to drag my eyes away from him.
Sera sighed. “I see you looking at him.”
I snapped my gaze away from Owen to my best friend. “I am not.” Lies. “He’s staring at me. Bet you he’s trying to figure out where he remembers me from. Such a jackass.”
Sera shrugged. “You know what, I agree with that. He is maximum dickage, and not in a fun, I-watch-smutty-dramedies kind of way.”
I choked back a laugh. “I couldn’t agree more.”
The boys turned around, still laughing, and Owen’s gaze met mine. I meant to look away. Honestly, I did. Except I couldn’t. We were like the magnets we studied in class; no matter how hard you pulled them, they always wanted to be together. Suddenly, his brows furrowed, and he scowled like I had done something to him.
I glanced around. Sera and Aurora were now busy chatting about something and they hadn’t even noticed. I frowned and glanced back. He was still staring at me, still frowning.
And clearly, Owen Montgomery was still very much a dick.

Chapter 4
Owen
Fuck me, she was back.
I could hear the girls chatting and the one voice above all with its sweet melodic tone.
She was fucking back.
My skin instantly went tight and itchy all over. I stilled and told myself not to turn around. My bloody body didn’t listen, as if pulled into compliance by the sound of her laugh alone. I turned toward it to see Tanith Bradford sweep a lock of hair over her ear.
It was like my body seized. Fucking Tanith. The flavor of her berry lip balm hit me hard as the memories of Ibiza assailed me. She’d tasted like nothing else I’d ever tasted in my life. And in those few moments with her, I’d been about as reckless as I’d ever let myself become.
What the hell was she doing back? Why didn’t she just go home since it was the end of the semester? Why come back to Pembroke at all?
I’d adjusted to her not being here. Hell, I’d even gotten over the fact she’d slid into a fellowship that should have been mine.
If I could go back in time, I would say something different. The moment I’d not recognized her had ruined everything.
Like the twat that I am.
I’d made plans to apologize when we were back on campus after the summer. Not that I was ever wrong, but she seemed to need the apology.
But she hadn’t been here. She’d been in LA doing the Everston Fellowship. The same one I’d gone for. Without telling my mother. Only one student was accepted, and thousands applied.
She’d gotten it. I’d been second.
Bloody second. I was second to nobody. Ever.
But yet she went, and you didn’t.
My mother had been displeased, to say the least. Displeased I’d applied without telling her so she could pull the requisite strings. Displeased that I’d failed. Displeased all around.
She was smiling now. Fuck, I felt like I was under siege. My heart was beating too fast, and my mouth was too dry. And fucking hell, I couldn’t activate my bloody body to move. Scratch that—my cock had glorious ideas on what we should be doing right now.
Dirty. Filthy, raunchy ideas that culminated with her pressed against the stone wall on the way to the gardens, her skirt lifted, and my cock buried inside.
Fuck.
The girl who’d taken my fellowship wore simple studs in her ears. No makeup. Freckles dusted just over her nose. Her eyes were a deep-sea blue I’d gotten lost in once.
God, I was a fucking mess. I needed to get my shit together. So she was back. So what? I didn’t want to be anything with this girl. She was cute enough. But I’d decided in the months since Ibiza that she wasn’t my type. Not at all. I preferred girls who were a little wilder, who weren’t going to take quite so much work. Girls who weren’t looking for me to stick around. I had plans. And Tanith looked like she was one of those “stick around” girls.
She is cute, if you like that naughty book-girl thing, and you don’t.
No, I did not.
I liked my girls—I don’t know—different. Or at least not my competition, perhaps. In the months since I’d learned she’d nabbed the Everston, I’d done some investigating. Tanith was inching her way to magazine fame—fame that was mine by birthright. She’d not only written for the paper and the school literary mag, but she’d even had something published in the New Yorker. I was begrudgingly impressed, but still, that made her all wrong for me to date.
And besides, she was a scholarship case, which meant I had to be aware I was prime property for a social climber looking to better their connections through dating me.
You’re also a prick.
No lies detected there.
But despite the fact she wasn’t my type, and a relationship was out of the question, I couldn’t deny she haunted my thoughts constantly. Haunted my body, even. For the last four months, I’d been seared alive with the need to finish what we’d started in Ibiza. Even if only to prove to myself that I could get this brainy, T-shirt-wearing, fan fiction–reading girl out of my system.
I watched as she pushed her glasses up over the bridge of her nose and then pressed her lips together into a mild purse as Lennox grabbed his girlfriend, Sloane, and dipped her, practically mauling her in front of everyone. Sloane took one kiss, then easily evaded him and did something with her arm that nearly had Lennox on his ass. He laughed and reached for her to kiss her again,