Double Clutch - Реинхардт Лиз - Страница 4
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There was one exception.
He had inky black hair that looked both perfectly styled and like he’d just crawled out of bed. His dark brown, almond-shaped eyes flicked slowly around the room, clearly unimpressed with everyone and everything. His olive skin was smooth except for the prickle of five o’clock shadow already darkening his jaw. Those nearly-black eyes settled on me and his lips curved into a taunting grin that tugged at me and made me fight not to grin right back. He didn’t have a backpack, didn’t have any papers out, didn’t seem the least bit interested in his textbook. He was calm amidst all the busy chaos, leaned back in his chair with a sleepy, bored look in his eyes.
“Sit up before you break your neck, Saxon!” the teacher barked. The dark-eyed boy gave him a sharp salute and banged the chair down on all four legs, never taking his eyes off of me. My mouth dried up and my heart hammered fast and erratic.
“I’m Sanotoni, for whoever’s new. Who’s new?” The teacher looked down at the roll book and up at me. “Blixen? Like the reindeer?” The class chuckled with him.
I cleared my throat. “Like the Danish author. Pen name Isak Dinesen.”
“I like this one.” Mr. Sanotoni pointed at me with his ruler and laughed, a strange sound that was something between a bark and a howl. Everyone else joined in except Saxon.
Sanotoni snapped up and pulled down a map of the United States. “We’re dividing into parties and setting up a mini caucus,” he ordered. “Let’s make it a three party system in honor of the kooks who think that might ever work.” He barked/laughed again, counted us off quickly, handed out pamphlets and instructed us to start working answering the campaign sign-in questions using the textbooks he passed out. A petite girl looked at Saxon then me, rolled her eyes, and headed over with lots of huffing and sighing.
Saxon sauntered towards me, plopped his textbook down on the table and fell into the chair with a lazy smile just for me.
That smile made me think of a predator for some reason. I shivered suddenly. Meg Yakovy’s dramatics had definitely rubbed off on me.
“I’m Brenna Blixen.” Kind of unnecessary since Sanotoni just mocked my reindeer-based name, but between Saxon’s sexy stare and the girl’s pronounced scowl, I felt like someone needed to make normal introductions.
“I’m Lynn Orr,” snapped the dark-haired girl with daggers shooting out of her eyes. “This is Saxon Maclean. Are you planning on actually working this term, Saxon?”
“Why should I bother? Don’t you already know all the answers, Lynn?” His words stretched out slow and sweet as warm taffy. He turned the wattage of his lazy smile on Lynn, and that smile only widened when she snarled in his direction.
“You’re such a stoner. I don’t even know how you got in this class.” She threw her textbook open with a pout.
Saxon uncrossed his long arms and leaned close to her, his words sliding out with lazy glee. “Well, it wasn’t based on the fact that my mommy’s the big, fat mayor. Isn’t that how you got in?”
“Screw you, loser,” she hissed, her hands clawed around the edges of her book, her teeth bared.
“Um, so I think the answers to questions one through three are on page eighteen,” I announced a little loudly. “About registration requirements. Here on page eighteen.” I thumped my index finger on the page, hoping to distract them away from jumping across the table and ripping each other’s throats out.
“You’re right,” Lynn sneered at me, her glare fixed on Saxon. He crossed his arms and flexed, the biceps bulging under the sleeves of his t-shirt, clearly enjoying Lynn’s simmering temper. “Aren’t you going to write this down, Saxon?”
He flipped her a smile and shrugged.
“Why don’t we all just do our thing and not worry about anyone else’s?” I suggested desperately.
“Yeah, and what if we get a group grade, genius?” Lynn turned her malice on me. “Are you willing for your GPA to take a nosedive for this idiot?”
I blinked in the face of her open hostility. “Well, if we get a group grade, it will probably be based on one paper,” I pointed out. “So, let’s get one done.”
“This is bullshit,” Lynn muttered, but she began filling her questions in with angry slashes of her pen.
Saxon winked at me and pulled his chair over so our shoulders bumped. He wore cologne. I had smelled guys’ cologne a million times before, but whatever he wore made me want to bury my head in his chest and take long, deep breaths until my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. My pen wobbled in my shaky fingers. Saxon leaned over my open book, his warm arm pressed against mine, his cheek inches from my face, and acted as if he were innocently checking the pages. “You rode a bike in.” His voice was low, so low that Lynn didn’t even look up.
He noticed I rode a bike in? How? When? How had I missed him this morning? My head swam. Words. I needed words. “Yeah,” I finally managed. “I ride my bike to school.”
“You won’t be able to do that for long. New Jersey winters are long and cold. Lots of snow.” His voice had a vibration to it that I felt right in the pit of my stomach. It was almost like he was this big, purring jungle cat.
Ugh, what was I thinking? Who was I, Mowgli? I had to focus on government, on not failing, not on some good-smelling, purring jungle boy. I brushed my bangs back, sat up straighter, and decided to breathe through my mouth, do my work, and stop my brain from curling around this guy in ways that made my heart thump.
“I know. I’ve lived in New Jersey for most of my life. Listen, I had this speech from my mom this morning. But I haven’t figured out what the average percentage of incumbent wins over a five year period in the Northeast is, so can we get back to that?” I gave him my best all-work, no-messing-around, strictly-school face and prayed he couldn’t tell how much I wanted to smell him and stare at his lips all day long.
There were little gold flecks floating in Saxon’s eyes, but mostly they were almost the same inky black as his pupils. He leaned close to me, licked his lips and whispered, “Bottom of page twenty one.”
It took a minute for me to shake myself out of his hypnosis. I looked down frantically at page twenty-one, seeing the numbers but not processing. I felt hot, very hot, fever hot.
“Thanks,” I managed to mumble and wrote down the answer. “Do you want to fill your sheet in?” I offered, hoping that he would look at something other than me.
“No thanks.” His eyes never wavered; the gold flecks shivered. “I have a photographic memory.” His smile went smug.
I narrowed my eyes at him and tilted my head. “Really?” I pulled the word out so it was long and stretched. “How exactly does it work?”
I swear his incisors gleamed like the Big Bad Wolf’s when he smiled at me. “I look at a page.” He traced one finger down a page in my book. “I look for a whole twenty seconds. Then it’s here.” He tapped his head. “And it doesn’t leave. At all.”
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