Page 54 of Hunted

Graduation Day was coming.

Then she’d be gone for good.

[ 19 ]

ADDIE

PARAMORE – I CAUGHT MYSELF

I felt like the biggest idiot walking away from Evander Lockwood. Not for just one reason, no. That would be too simple. But two? Yeah, two seemed just right.

The first? Because neither Mercy nor I had even bothered to check the rest of the drawer.

How the fuck did that happen? I should be smarter than that.

The second, because I actually thought he was going to kiss me.

What a fucking idiot.

Of course, Instructor Lockwood was never going to kiss Initiate Sinclair.

I scoffed self-derisively. Physically shaking off the mortification, I shuddered, rounding a blind corner—and walked right into someone else coming the other way. “Jesus fucking Christ on a bike! You three need neon fucking signs or something!”

Pearce blinked, then threw his head back in uproarious laughter.

It did little to improve my mood, or so I let myself believe—for all of nought point two seconds.

“Do you have a habit of walking into people, Adelaide?” he asked around a shit-eating grin.

“Unfortunately, yes,” I grumbled, rubbing my nose. “Particularly of the gargantuan variety. Am I bleeding?”

He grabbed my upper arms, gently shifting me into the multihued shafts of light shining in through the stained-glass hall window. Pausing for a moment, we stared at each other—lost in the same fractured shards of colour.

“No,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the fresh dressing on the side of my neck. “No blood.”

My gaze dropped to my feet, my toes suddenly overwhelmingly uncomfortable in my boots. I made a show of wiggling them and bent at the waist to re-tie the perfectly comfortable laces.

“Allow me,” he said, beating me to the punch.

Pearce crouched and tugged on one of the cords, wickedly prolonging something that should have taken less than a second. Instead, he stared up at me, the corner of his lip twisting devilishly as it took him three. His perfect teeth flashed in a grin, and—gods, have mercy on me—a dimple appeared in each of his cheeks.

All of a sudden, I found it hard to stand.

“Something the matter, Sinclair?” he purred. Actually purred—or as close to one as a human could produce.

The audacity of that question grounded me, however. He really thought he could affect me so wholly—and that in itself was enough to shatter his spell.

Once he was done tying a neat little bow with the laces on my left boot, I snatched my foot back and stepped around his still-crouching form. I barely managed to traverse half the length of the corridor when the hellion fell into step beside me.

“Leaving so soon?” His deep voice rumbled the question, igniting a furnace in places I’d done well so far to ignore in this place.

I knew better. But I was almost out of here, too. What harm could a little flirting do when there was less than a week before we’d each go our separate ways, never to be seen again?

“Don’t act like you’ll miss me, Sir.”

“I never miss, Adelaide.”

Without stopping to look, I raised a brow and started down the dark, winding staircase. “Oh yeah? They say you can hit your mark from two clicks out—is that true?”