Share
Chapter 72
Related chapters
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 73
It was a typical late spring evening, powder-puff pink and gold, and Cole sprinted over the flagstones, heading toward the front quad and the Lodge and, ohgodohgodohgod, Aiden Crux. Her mouth was tangy with copper, as though she could taste her own too-fast beating heart. The lawns of Spring Well, like pretty much everywhere else in Oxford, were sacrosanct, but she cut across the corner of one anyway because it was a legit emergency. And that was when she saw him. Initially with a faint sense of outrage because, instead of black tie, he was dressed in a midnight blue three-piece suit. And also because her immersion therapy hadn’t prepared her properly. Fairly good-looking her arse. Those Google images had lied. They had actively lied. The man was beautiful. So ridiculously fucking beautiful it was hard to get your head round it somehow. He looked like a film star. Not the modern sort—not one of your am
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 74
Especially if it was slutty or degrading. Cole turned around, trying to shut down the porno in her brain. They were in a public place, and she was fully dressed (in several layers of formal wear as it happened), but it felt vulnerable. Giving this man, this stranger, her back. Her trust. His arm came around her from behind. And the heat of it, the pressure. The tightening muscles of his forearm made her a bit delirious. She leaned back and his body was right there, all hard planes and angular curves for her to nestle into. She tilted her hips, wriggling her arse until she was tucked in against him, pinned and protected at the same time, at once safe and overwhelmed. She tried to breathe and an excited little moan happened instead. Aiden tugged her in tighter still. No humiliatingly inappropriate noises from him. But his heart was thudding hard and fast against her spine. A finger touched her lightly under the chin and she tipped her head back
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 75
He was sitting on the bench beneath the lime tree, one leg crossed languidly over the other in the way that only really tall people seemed able to manage. He was diddling with a Device but he looked up as Cole skidded to a halt and smiled at her. Not his usual polite, half-smile, but a real one, all heat and unhindered pleasure.She'd given him that. “So this is you?” His eyes did the full sweep, making her shiver. His unrestrained attention wasn’t quite comfortable—Cole was too worried about coming up short—but it was somehow exciting at the same time. She wanted to be worth looking at. For him. “Cole, reporting for duty, sir.” She threw a pretty camp-looking salute. “Did I make it?” For a moment, she thought it might have been nothing but an empty game, but he glanced down at his screen, checking the time, before he answered. “Yes. Four minutes, sixteen seconds.” “What if I hadn’t?” “That would be telling.” He tucked his tech
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 76
“On the contrary, that’s achieved through hard work. Passion is a hindrance to business.” “But you must be pretty driven? Otherwise we’d all be billionaires instead of people with Twitter accounts.” “Perhaps. Though I think I would call that resolve.” “What kind of headline is that? ‘Aiden Crux: Mildly Inclined to Succeed.’ How are they supposed to write you up in the Arrow now?” “They’re not. I don’t give interviews to school magazines.” Cole couldn’t quite suppress a giggle at that. The Book of Making You Feel Bad About Yourself was meant to be taken very seriously indeed. “And besides,” he went on, “attaining success is considerably more than a mild inclination for me.” Cole realized then how easily he wore his wealth. How naturally power became him. “I can’t imagine you growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.” “Everything I have, everything I’ve done, is mine and mine alone.” He didn’t sound proud of it, though. Just sad. “But
Miss Goody Two Shoes chapter 77
Yeah right. Cole idly picked up the little cardboard doohickey that was supposed to tell you about the champagne. Floral character apparently. Hints of manuka honey and demerara sugar and notes of cigar leaves. Cigar leaves? She took another gulp. No cigar leaves. Which was surely a good thing? She wished Aiden was still with her. She could have shown him, and he would have…well, he wouldn’t have laughed, but his mouth, his stern, beautiful mouth, would have promised mirth the way some promised kisses. This was getting silly—lingering by the drinks like a wallflower, pining after a man who’d taken her absence for granted. Cole tossed back her drink and defiantly helped herself to a second glass. He had been so sure of her, so sure of being obeyed, she half expected (hoped?) to feel the heat of his body behind her, the pressure of his fingers on hers. She said have one. Except no. She spotted some of the students she'd got to know during the
Miss Goody Two Shoes chapter 78
It was as though she had been waiting for him all along…except, well, he hadn’t. He stood by the crenellations, looking out at the city, which was all shadows and spires and streams of golden traffic in the distance. Cliché or not, he looked good by moonlight. Sculpted in silver and steel, a man so coldly perfect he was barely real at all.Maybe it was some essential contrariness but his very untouchability made her want to…touch. To spark his beauty to life with passion and surrender. He lifted a hand, bringing a cigarette to his mouth. He was briefly illuminated by a flare of amber and then he tilted his head back, eyes falling closed as he exhaled a sinuous plume of smoke into the darkness. And God, his face like that. Open in pleasure. The suddenly undeniable sensuality of his parted lips. Cole must have been staring at him like a cartoon American cop at a doughnut because, at that moment, his eyes snapped open and she had never seen anyone shut dow
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 79
He shook his head. “Cole, I prefer to avoid personal conversation.” “That’s not personal; it’s just conversation. Personal would be: Have you ever been in love? or What’s the thing you’ll always regret?” Oh shit. Cole shouldn’t have had that second glass of champagne. “I just mean…I’m a stranger. I’m not going to tell anybody and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter because you’ll never see me again. I’m nobody. I’m safe.” For what felt like forever, he didn’t answer. Then, very quickly, “I liked having something to do with my hands.” Cole couldn’t help looking at them: his pale, perfectly groomed, perfectly controlled hands. Hard to imagine them ever doing something inelegant or being restless. As if he read her thoughts, he went on. “I was…different when I was younger. And I’ve been smoking since I was fourteen.” “You iconoclast you.” He didn’t smile this time. Just crushed out his cigarette against the stone and then put his back to the battlements, the city, the deep, blue-black
Miss Goody Two Shoes Chapter 80
But he didn’t react at all, the silence getting deeper and heavier all around them, while he just stood there, a creature of stone, starlight, and secrets. And then he said, “No, he wouldn’t.” It wasn’t the words, but the terrible certainty of them.Completely broke Cole's heart. It just seemed impossible to her that Aiden Crux could believe something like that. And she needed—with this terrible sense of helplessness, or perhaps what Hilary Rupert Baskerville would call hubris—to make it better. To remind him who he was: someone magnificent and rare and deserving of all the pride in the world. She reached out, wanting to comfort him, to bridge the spaces between them—the chasm of their lives—with touch. “Don’t.” He caught her by the wrist, fingers as cool and implacable as steel. Cole was sure, on his part, it was nothing more than the desire to stop her doing something he didn’t want. And while she had tastes, she wasn’t so co
Latest chapter
