Page 41 of The Darkest Note

My eyes widen. I didn’t expect her to say that and it takes me a second to coach my expression back into a bored look.

“Seriously. Is there something wrong with your head?” She pokes her finger in my chest. “Because you have to be absolutely insane to think what you’re doing is okay.”

My eyebrow arches.

She steps into me, fearless and sexy as hell. “You listen up,Dutch. I am not your property. I do not belong to you. And as long as there is breath in my body, I willnevergive you the privilege of telling me what I can and cannot do.”

“I see,” I muse, nodding once. “And I totally respect that.”

Her jaw drops.

I don’t waste a second. Flattening my hand against her torso, I push her off balance and throw her over my shoulder.

The kids in the cafeteria run to the windows to stare at us.

“Put me down!” Cadence shrieks, kicking her legs.

“Keep doing that and you’re going to flash every junior in the lunch room,” I warn her. For some reason, the thought of them staring at her pert little backside is not sitting well.

Thankfully, Cadence is on the same page because she stops struggling. At least with her legs. But her slender fingers form fists and start pounding on my abs like Zane when he plays drums after a drunken binge.

“Let go,” she shrieks. “Get your filthy hands off me!”

“I don’t think so,” I growl.

“I swear I’m going to slap you so hard that your head spins a full 360.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Brahms.” I keep moving toward the tree line. “I wouldn’t let you close enough to spin my head in a one-eighty.”

“Dutch! Dutch, you better… you better stop. A teacher’s going to see you. You think you can get away with this?”

I ignore her. Even if teachers were around, which none of them are, they wouldn’t intervene. Not unless they wanted to get sacked like Mulliez.

I can’t see Cadence’s face, but I can feel the frosty stare she’s aiming at my stomach as if she wishes she could drill through flesh and bone and drain my blood until I turned blue.

By the time I get deep enough into the tree line that I’m sure no one in the cafeteria or even the mysterious Jinx can see us, Cadence has accepted her upside-down status and isn’t struggling or screaming anymore.

Good girl.

I don’t want to take my hands off her, which makes me fling her to the ground a little more roughly than is necessary. She wobbles on her feet, but doesn’t fall and slants me a murderous look.

“What the hell do you want from me?”

I turn away from her, wrestling my lust back under control.

Her eyes blaze with fury. “You’re seriously doing all this because I didn’t run straight to you when you called me? Are you that insecure? Or was I right earlier? Are you really off in the head?”

New Girl’s got a lot of fire for someone who has no idea she’s poking at a bear. I watch her slam her hands on her hips and wait, angrily, for a response.

When none is forthcoming, she huffs and moves as if she’ll walk back to campus.

I grab her by the hips and pull her against me. I thought my body was wound up from Christa, but I’m not prepared for the way every nerve in my body snaps to attention when her hips connect with mine.

My fingers dig harder into her hip as I hiss.

She whimpers, easing back. Finally. The fear that belongs in her eyes is there.

If only her presence wasn’t affecting me as much as mine is frightening her.