I knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore me forever.
“You’re adorable when you’re angry,” I told her. I meant it—she was.
She growled something under her breath and looked away from me again. I reached over to her tray and grabbed the plastic spork out of the bowl she had for her fruit cup. I started spinning it around my fingers like a drummer with a drumstick, but I wasn’t very good at that. I kept dropping it and starting all over again.
“You should come to practice again tonight,” I told her.
“Why would I?” she asked, still not meeting my gaze.
“To watch me,” I said with a shrug, as if it was obvious. It was obvious. Most of the girls there were coming to watch me or one of the other guys. “Why else?”
“Is that supposed to be the point of the game?” she asked, finally looking at me. “Watching the guys play? I thought there was some sort of objective about getting the ball in the net or something.”
“Well, yeah!” I laughed. “That’s during a game, though. If you come to watch practice, you’re just there hoping I end up on the team playing skins in the rain.”
Her eyes widened and then narrowed, but I picked up on her quick breath. She tried to let it out slowly, tried to calm herself, but I was pretty damn sure she was thinking about what I had said.
“You want to see me without my shirt?” I winked at her. “I’m only too happy to oblige.”
“I most certainly do not!” she snapped and glared at me. She started to grab her tray, but I put a hand on it and held it against the table.
“Am I annoying you?” I asked with a half-smile.
“Undoubtedly!” She pulled at the tray, but I slid it to the side and grabbed both her hands in mine. She started to pull away, but I held on. She leaned back a little but didn’t keep trying to get away from me.
“Let me just make a quick observation,” I said as I looked into her blue eyes. “You do want to see me practice, and you do want to see me with my shirt off. You’d probably like to see more, too.”
“Oh, yes, because you are such a charmer.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm, and she rolled her eyes, but her pupils were slightly more dilated than they had been, and her lips were darkening in color.
“Yes, you do,” I insisted.
I lifted my head off my arms, pulled my legs up and got on my knees on the bench seat. Then I leaned over the table, getting right up next to her. I moved forward until I was only a few inches from her face.
“There are several ways I can tell,” I informed her, keeping my voice low and soft. I let my tongue dart out and lick my lips, noting her distraction as her eyes flickered to my mouth and back again. “Like right now, I know what you’re thinking about.”
“Oh, really?” she said, trying to sound snarky but not quite pulling it off.
“Yeah,” I responded. “You’re breathing faster. Your heart’s pounding in your chest. Right now you’re thinking about how it would feel to have my mouth on yours. You’re wondering if I’d kiss you hard and rough or soft and gentle. You’re thinking about just how it would taste to have my tongue in your mouth and where I might put my hands on you…I bet you’re even getting wet, aren’t you?”
Even as her eyes went wide with shock, and she seemed just a little bit paralyzed by what I had just said, I leaned forward a bit more and moved my mouth close to her ear. I was pushing my luck…I knew I was. Sometimes I just couldn’t help myself.
“Are your panties wet, Rumple?”
She gasped, and I watched her hands tighten into fists as she yanked them out of my grasp. Her eyes narrowed, and Rumple’s little kitten claws came out, tearing at me.
“You are the most conceited, narcissistic, obnoxious jerk I have ever met in my entire life!” She swung her legs around to the other side of the bench and stomped off.
“She is right, you know.”
Taking my eyes from Rumple’s retreating backside, I looked to my left to find a barely five-foot tall, dark haired and dark eyed girl dressed entirely in black. She had dark, smudgy eye makeup, and her hair was stuck up in spikes all over the place.
Amy Cutter, the school freak.
“Fairly certain I wasn’t looking for your opinion,” I told her. I sat back down in the seat, hoping she’d get the hint and go away when I didn’t look at her again. It didn’t work.
“I know you aren’t looking for anyone’s opi
nion,” she said. “That’s kind of the point. The thing is, I’ve never seen you actually try to pursue a girl before, and it’s just sad.”