Page 14 of Obnoxious Bad Boy

He starts writing on my lower back, but I have no energy to protest. “Is this my tramp stamp?” I sigh. I deserve it.

He backs off, but not before sliding his fingers along the length of my spine a final time, and it gives me a thrill how much he seems to enjoy my body.

“I want you to think of me every time you see those numbers. Can you be discreet?” Vex asks and kisses my shoulder.

I turn to him and nod, melting at the sweetness of it. I had no idea I needed that bit of affection after the wild ride he offered me tonight. It isn’t like I’m planning to date anyone in the near future. “Yes, I won’t give it to anyone. I’ll put a fake name on it in my contacts.” Okay, Aaron. Overkill. He isn’t undercover in the mafia.

But when he smiles and calls me a good boy, I know I gave him the answer he was looking for.

Chapter 4

Aaron

How is Vex this effortlessly hot? I ask myself as my fingers find the app where I watch him while the professor meanders about Oliver Twist. Literary realism isn’t my favorite subject, so I drift off to things that occupy my mind way more. Like a certain man, whose last social media post features the inked blonde bombshell who works at his tattoo studio.

There’s endless speculation whether they’re a couple, which makes me feel even more guilty about the night I spent with him three days back. In the latest picture, she leans against Vex’s half-naked form while slurping iced tea from a frosted glass.

I put down the phone in frustration. He might be bi. It’s kind of not my business.

Too bad my heart rattles every time I think of the ease with which he carried me upstairs, of the dirty, nasty things he said to me, and how I ate it up.

But that’s exactly the reason why I’ve chosen not to call him since then. Back at his place, I must have lost my mind. I was so stunned when he let me out of the studio that I walked out with one shoe on, and realized that only once I reached my car. By that point, I was too embarrassed to go back and knock on his door, so I ended up leaving the loafer like some goddamn Cinderfella.

What was I thinking? I had sex with a guy I don’t know. Sure, he’s only the hottest man in all of Springton (or the world, really) but I’m not the kind of person who has mindless hook-ups. I’m ashamed to admit it even to myself, but I remember that blissful moment when I thought we’d do it bare, and I wouldn’t have stopped him. How can I be this smart, and yet so stupid?

He did that to me.

He called me his sex doll, his slut, his baby boy, and I eagerly became all that as if my brain turned into marshmallow fluff.

But that is in the past now.

I might have had the most mind-blowing sex, and lost my V-card in a spectacular fashion, but that doesn’t have to define my future. I will not become some thirsty sex pest who trawls through hook-up apps in search of his next hit. I’m above that.

So I didn’t call him, and I won’t.

Though I do hope he wants me to. He did give me his number after all. Does he go to Rainbowology in hopes of meeting me? I’ve made a point of avoiding the cafe in the days since our night together, and hope that by the time my non-permanent tramp stamp of numbers fades, he will have moved on to some other pretty thing.

A part of me wishes this was a romantic comedy, and that Vex, the bad boy, would change his ways for me, but while I consider myself attractive enough, I’m not the kind of guy who could make such a thing happen. I didn’t even get a tattoo out of the whole thing, and probably won’t. Because I can now see plainly that he never meant to ink me. He seduced me. That’s why he invited me at night. I’m so fucking easy it’s embarrassing.

Either way, my parents would not accept a tattooed dude without a college degree as my partner. They do know that I’m gay and have no objections, but there’s still many expectations they have of me.

If I am to benefit from my trust fund, I have to become a lawyer. A boyfriend with connections and an exterior they don’t find abrasive is the fine print. So, yeah, Vex would not do, no matter how attracted I am to him.

Not that he’d want to be my boyfriend in the first place, but this is all a philosophical construct.

And I don’t have time for a guy anyway. I have books to read, and a degree to get. While my knowledge of literature and my creativity are far beyond the grasp of my fellow students, my dad insisted I take certain classes that I ended up struggling with. Economics and logic are the bane of my existence, and I regret that I didn’t take an extra class on mythology instead.

So no, I don’t have time for dating.

“Mr. Astor?”

My blood freezes when the professor’s nasal voice forms my surname, but I manage to look up and meet his watery gaze. Too bad the man with a face so forgettable I’d have trouble recognizing him in a line-up has the attention of a hawk.

“Yes?”

“What were we just discussing?” the professor asks sharply, staring at me with hands clasped behind his back.

I can sense sweat forming on my back and soaking into my top, because I’ve been so deep in my thoughts of Vex that everything else has melted away. I glance around, but I made sure to sit away from other people, so there’s no help to be had in the form of a quick note on the edge of a paper sheet.