FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
UNIVERSITY OF MERIT
EVERYONE was shitfaced.
Marcella sat on the kitchen counter, her heels knocking absently against the cabinets as she watched them stumble past, sloshing drinks and shouting to be heard. The house was filled with music, bodies, stale booze and cheap cologne, and all the other inane trappings of a college frat party. Her friends had convinced her to come, with the weak argument that it was just what students did, that there would be free beer and hot guys and it would be fun.
Those same girls were lost somewhere in the mass of bodies. Every now and then she thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar blond bob, a high brown ponytail. Then again, there were a dozen of them. Cookie-cutter college kids. More concerned with blending in than standing out.
Marcella Renee Morgan was not having fun.
She was nursing a beer in a glass bottle, and she was bored—bored by the music, and the boys who swaggered over every now and then to flirt, and then stormed away, sulking, when she turned them down. She was bored by being called beautiful, and then a bitch. Stunning, and then stuck up. A ten, and then a tease.
Marcella had always been pretty. The kind of pretty people couldn’t ignore. Bright blue eyes and pitch-black hair, a heart-shaped face atop the lean, clean lines of a model. Her father told her she’d never have to work. Her mother said she’d have to work twice as hard. In a way, both of them were right.
Her body was the first thing people saw.
For most, it seemed to be the last thing, too.
“You’re think you’re better than me?” a drunken senior had slurred at her earlier.
Marcella had looked at him straight on, his eyes bleary, hers sharp, and said simply, “Yes.”
“Bitch,” he’d muttered, storming away. Predictable.
Marcella had promised her friends she’d stay for a drink. She tipped the bottle back, eager to finish the beer.
“I see you found the good stuff,” said a deep voice, rich, with a faint southern lilt.
She glanced up and saw a guy leaning back against the kitchen island. Marcella didn’t know what he was talking about, not until he nodded at the glass bottle in her hand with the plastic cup in his own. She gestured at the fridge. He crossed to it, retrieving two more bottles. He cracked them open against the counter’s edge and offered one to her.
Marcella took it, considering him over the rim.
His eyes were dark blue, his hair sun-kissed, that warm shade between blond and brown. Most of the guys at the party hadn’t shed their baby fat, high school still clinging to them like wet clothes, but his black shirt stretched tight over strong shoulders, and his jaw was sharp, a small cleft denting his chin.
“Marcus,” he said by way of introduction. She knew who he was. She’d seen him on campus, but it was Alice who’d told her—Marcus Riggins was trouble. Not because he was gorgeous. Not because he was rich. Nothing so bland as all that. No, Marcus was trouble for one simple, delicious reason: his family was in the mob. Alice had said it like it was a bad thing, a deal breaker, but if anything, it only piqued her interest.
“Marcella,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs.
He smiled. “Marcus and Marcella,” he said, lifting his drink. “We sound like a matching set.”
Someone turned the music up, and his next words were lost under the bass.
“What did you say?” she called over the song, and he took the opportunity to close the gap between them. She shifted her legs to the side, and he stepped closer, smelling like apples and linen, clean and crisp, such a welcome change from the sticky, tacky grime of lazy, drunken bodies.
He rested his beer on the counter just beside her arm, the cold glass brushing her elbow and sending a small shiver through her. A slow smile crossed his face.
He leaned in close, as if telling her a secret. “Follow me.”
He stepped back, taking the scent of linen and the blush of heat with him.
He didn’t pull her off the counter, but she felt pulled, drawn in his wake as he turned away, slipped through the crowd. She followed him, through the party, up the stairs, down the hall to a bedroom door.
“Still with me?” he asked, glancing back.
The door swung open onto a room at odds with the rest of the frat house. The laundry was hampered, the desk clean, the bed made, the only clutter a neat stack of books on the comforter.
Marcella hovered in the doorway, waiting to see what he’d do next. If he would come to her, or make her come to him.
Instead, Marcus went to the window, slid up the glass, and stepped out onto a widow’s walk. A fall breeze whispered through the room as Marcella followed, slipping off her heels.
Marcus offered his hand and helped her up and through. The city spiraled away beneath them, the darkened buildings a sky, the lights like stars. Merit always looked larger at night.
Marcus sipped his beer. “Better?”
Marcella smiled. “Better.”
The music, obnoxiously loud downstairs, was now a muted pulse against her back.
Marcus leaned against the wooden rail. “You from here?”
“Not far,” she said. “You?”
“Born and raised,” he said. “What are you studying?”
“Business,” she said shortly. Marcella hated small talk, but that was because so often it felt like a chore. Just noise, empty words meant to fill empty space. “Why did you bring me up here?”
“I didn’t,” he said, all mock innocence. “You followed me.”
“You asked,” she said, realizing he hadn’t. There’d been no question in his voice, only a simple command.
“You were about to leave,” said Marcus. “And I didn’t want you to.”
Marcella considered him. “Are you used to getting what you want?”
The edge of a smile. “I have a feeling we both are.” He returned her long look. “Marcella the Business Major. What do you want to be?”
Marcella twirled her beer. “In charge.”
Marcus laughed. A soft, breathy sound.
“You think I’m joking?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because,” he said, closing the narrow space between them, “we are a matching set.” A breeze cut through, just crisp enough to make her shiver.
“We better go inside,” said Marcus, pulling away.
He stepped back through the window, offering his hand. But this time he didn’t lead.
“After you,” he said, gesturing toward the bedroom door. It was still cracked open, music and laughter pouring up from the party below. But when Marcella reached the door, she hesitated, fingers coming to rest against the wood. She could picture Marcus standing a few feet behind her, hands in his pockets, waiting to see what she would do.
She pushed the door shut.
The lock caught with a soft click, and Marcus was there as if summoned, lips brushing the back of her neck. His hands slid, feather light, over her shoulders, against her waist. Heat flooded through her at the almost-touch.
“I won’t break,” she said, turning in time to catch Marcus’s mouth with hers. He pressed into her, pushed her back against the wood. Her nails dug into his arms as he unbuttoned his shirt. His teeth scraped her shoulder as her own came off. They laid waste to the order of his room, shedding clothes, knocking over a chair, a lamp, sweeping the books from the bed as Marcus pressed her down into the sheets.
They fit together perfectly.
A matching set.