Page 13 of Ignition

My voice had risen more than was wise. Someone gasped to my right, and people passing by cast us glances—curious at best, sharp, lingering ones at worst.

I bit down on a wince and forced a few pained breaths in and out.

Don’t make a scene. Don’t get expelled.

“The rules?” He stepped closer, and my chin tipped up. “I do have respect for your precious rules.” The smile he wore pulled into a half-smirk. “I just happen to like breaking them.”

He peered down his nose at me and my hand flexed on my notebooks with a mad urge to smack him.

“I’m not surprised. They don’t seem to apply to you,” I growled.

He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against a lamppost, the picture of ease, with his head cocked sideways at me and notebooks held loosely in one hand.

“You got that right, genius,” he drawled.

His smirk widened, and the glint in his eye sharpened. Then, his tone lowered, growing rough around the edges.

“You could learn a thing or two from me. God knows you could do with some…” His eyes roved over me, drawing a slow line from head to toe, before snapping back up to my face. “…loosening up.”

The curl to his mouth told me I’d come up short again.

“I don’t need any advice from you,” I snarled.

“Is that so?” he murmured, in the most patronising tone I’d heard yet. Then, he grinned—a show of perfect white teeth and something like… triumph.

Movement flickered in the corner of my eye, telling me people had stopped in their tracks to gawk. My stomach sank and twisted into knots, but he seemed tunnel-visioned on me as he leaned in a fraction and dropped his voice, as though letting me in on a little secret.

“Not even with… say… Intellectual Property Law?”

My jaw ticked.

Of course he knows.

He crossed his arms over his chest and held my gaze. Even the glint of silver from his ridiculously expensive watch seemed to mock me.

My glare grew teeth.

Blood thrummed in my ears, turning up to an almost deafening volume.

I didn’t answer.

For one, I didn’t want to give him more ammunition. The last thing I needed was for word to get out that I was struggling with anything.

For another, none of the retorts clinging to the tip of my tongue felt appropriate, not with the crowd gathered around us and the possibility of my scholarship being snatched from my fingers before I’d even tasted it properly.

So I did the next best thing: glowered at him with as much venom as I could. Shoulder shoving his, I pushed past him.

Someone gasped.

Silence fell, then whispers resumed. Louder. Sharper.

My insides tangled into leaden knots as I strode past him, and a clean, masculine scent whispered around the edges of my senses, one I ignored with all I had.

I was congratulating myself internally for my monumental restraint when he called after me.

Because of course he did.

“Careful, Mia. You walk away that fast, people might think I… got to you or something.”