Page 15 of Savage Don

A wicked smile crosses my lips as Francesca disappears around a corner up ahead.

Step one has been a success.

Now that the introductions are done, I can move on to the good stuff.

3

Francesca

“Wait, a bomb?”

That puts an end to Janice’s school girl giggling.

“That’s what he said.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” she shrugs, looking back over her shoulder one last time. But the handsome stranger is gone, vanished into the same twisted shadows he walked out of. “Probably someone who was trying to get out of the pop quiz.”

When her curious gaze turns back onto me, I see a playful suspicion dancing in her eyes.

“Obviously it wasn’t me,” I huff, shaking my head. “We went over this. I hadn’t even heard about the pop quiz until I met up with you like ten minutes ago. It’s not like I planned a bomb scare in advance, just in case.”

“I didn’t say it was you,” Janice smiles. We may be talking about this bomb thing, but I can tell that her mind is still stuck on the stranger.

Well, she’s not alone.

Ray.

Even in the darkness, with shadows crawling over his fine features, I could tell he was different. And not just because he was tall and muscular.

That face. Those eyes. They’d seen shit. Dark shit. Sexy shit. Forbidden shit. He may have been the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.

And he works at this school?

It doesn’t make much sense. I would have remembered if I’d seen him around. This campus isn’t that big. Faces become familiar. Especially ones with such smoldering good-looks.

“Well, it wasn’t me. I’d never be so cowardly as to call in a bomb threat.”

“Sure, babe,” Janice winks.

I know she’s joking, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I’m here to study. To learn. Not to worm my way out of the responsibilities I’m risking so much to take on.

“I think the big question here isn’t who called in the bomb threat,” I tease back. “But how you didn’t know about it. I have an excuse. My phone was on airplane mode. What’s yours?”

“You know damn well what my excuse was,” Janice giggles, leading me around a corner.

I’m not sure where we’re going, but I now have two hours to kill, and the last thing I want to do is go crawling back to my gilded cage.

It’s a Friday night, after all. And I’m a college girl. Really, I should be looking for fun.

“And what excuse is that?” I ask, looking back over my shoulder. The man is definitely gone, but his dark, handsome presence lingers.

Who are you?

“This dump they call a university revoked my campus wi-fi privileges after I was caught torrenting the entirety of Supernatural,” Janice reminds me. “And I ran out of data about midway through the day. Since then, I’ve been off the grid.”

Shaking my head, I try to dislodge Ray from my mind and think about what to do next.

“You criminal,” I laugh. “Was it worth it?”