Chapter 665 | Not Cool About You

Chapter 665: 665 | Not Cool About You

Felicity didn’t ask during Hero Law. She waited, which for Felicity Hardy was a form of torture she normally reserved for other people.

Her knee found mine under the desk at 9:31 and stayed there for ninety minutes while Mercy explained municipal liability statutes in a voice that could have sanded paint. Felicity wore the full Halloran uniform today, blazer buttoned, white shirt tucked, pleated skirt at a length the dress code technically allowed and morally objected to.

Her blonde hair was down, loose waves over one shoulder, and every so often she shifted her weight and the vanilla in her shampoo drifted across the aisle and parked itself in my lungs.

She didn’t look at me once. That was the move, and it worked, which annoyed me because I knew that’s exactly what she was counting on.

At 10:47 my phone buzzed against my thigh.

FELICITY: room 304. now. i skipped lunch for this so dont make it weird

FELICITY: sloane knows btw. i told her. she said and i quote "fine but if he limps into combat theory i’m blaming you"

FELICITY: also she threatened to detonate my door if i "pull any of that mirage shit to make it take longer"

FELICITY: your situationship is so unhinged bestie

I looked up. Felicity was already standing, sliding her tablet into her bag with the kind of deliberate slowness that meant she knew I was watching.

She walked past my desk toward the door without a word, without a glance, her platform boots clicking against the floor in a rhythm that sounded like a countdown.

On her way out she dragged one fingertip across the back of my hand, nail first, slow enough to leave a line I could still feel three steps later.

By the time I got to the stairs the line hadn’t faded.

Percy watched me stand up and wrote something in his notebook. He didn’t say what it was, and I didn’t ask, because some data you just let the man keep.

The West Tower third floor smelled of expensive candles and industrial carpet cleaner, and Room 304 was already open a crack.

Felicity stood in the middle of the room when I came in. Her blazer was gone, draped over the desk chair. The fairy lights over the headboard were on even though it was noon, gold dots against the grey sky in the window, and Gerald the water stain still wore his pink heart sticker on the ceiling.

"Close the door, please," she said.

I closed it. The lock clicked. Felicity didn’t move, and for one long second neither did I, two people standing six feet apart in a dorm room like we were about to negotiate a hostage exchange.

"I lasted a day and a half," she said finally. Her voice had dropped out of the bright register and into the low rough one I’d only heard in the dark. "I had a whole plan where I was cool about it. I’d wait until the weekend, I’d let you come to me, I’d be mysterious. It lasted until breakfast yesterday when you cracked eggs one-handed and I had to go stand in the bathroom for four minutes."

"You were in there a long time, I noticed."

"Everybody noticed, Lukas. Caden asked if I was okay through the door." She started unbuttoning her shirt from the top, slowly, her eyes on my face the entire time. "I’m not cool about you. I tried. It’s not happening."

The shirt opened on a pale pink bra, lace, the cups doing heroic structural work against the weight they’d been assigned. The bruise I’d left on her collarbone two nights ago had faded to yellow at the edges, and she touched it with two fingers like she was checking it was still there.

My Intelligence stat is a hundred. I want that on the record. A hundred points of processing speed, sixty percent past peak human, and every single one of them went offline at the same time.

"You’re staring," she said, pleased.

"You told me to stare last time, so I’m following instructions."

"Good boy." She let the shirt slide off her shoulders and drop. "Come here before I lose my nerve, which I won’t, but I like saying it."

I crossed the room. She met me halfway, hands in my hair, and the kiss wasn’t polite. It tasted of mint gum and the coffee she’d stolen off Caden in homeroom, her mouth opening under mine and her tongue sliding in like it had a lease. She made a small sound against my lips, mmh, a hungry little hum of breath, and pulled me toward the bed by my collar until the backs of her knees hit the mattress and she sat down hard.

"Shirt off," she breathed. "Mine’s off. That’s only fair."

I pulled it over my head. Her hands went straight to my stomach, palms flat, and she dragged them up over my ribs to the center of my chest and stopped there. Her fingers spread over my sternum. She was feeling for the second heartbeat, and it answered her, a slow outward press under her palm.

"There you are," she whispered, and she wasn’t talking to me.

I didn’t have a joke for that. I pushed her back onto the bed instead, and she went down laughing, hair fanning across the pillow, and I caught the waistband of her skirt and pulled it down her legs along with the pink lace underneath. She lifted her hips to help, then hooked one heel behind my thigh and dragged me in.

"Mouth first," she said. "You owe me for Tuesday. You were mean."

"You told me to be mean, Felicity."

"I’m a complicated woman. Get down there."

So I did. I kissed the inside of her knee, then higher, her freckles scattered across the soft skin of her thighs, and she was already wet when I got there, glistening under the gold of the fairy lights. The first slow drag of my tongue made her hips jerk off the mattress.

"Ahh, fuck," she gasped, both hands fisting in my hair. "Fuck, okay, yes, right there, don’t you dare move."