Read Unspoken (The Woodlands) for Free Online

no contest.
    “Fine,” I huffed. Now that I’d told Ellie, I’d have to text Bo back or she’d take the phone from me somehow. Ellie didn’t make idle threats. She told you what she was going to do, and then she followed through.
    How? You going to send duck-faced selfies? I shot back.
    What? Came the immediate reply, like he had nothing better to do than send me texts.
    I searched the Internet and then selected an appropriate picture of three young girls making the V with their fingers pointing to their overly pronounced lips pursed and pressed into little fleshy duck bills.
    I now know why we’re sitting next to each other in bio. We need to find a cure for the disease those young ladies are suffering around their oral cavities before it spreads to others.
    An inadvertent huff of laughter escaped me, and Ellie demanded to see the reply, which I showed to her.
    “You’re toast.” She rolled off the bed and exited the room.
    “I know it,” I told the empty space. Bo was funny, smart, and showing an inordinate amount of interest in me. I was so screwed.

    O THER THAN THAT LATE M ONDAY night text, I didn’t hear from Bo again. On Wednesday, though, he met me outside of class.
    “Cutting it a little short, aren’t you?” He checked his watch, a big black thing with many dials.
    “Class hasn’t started yet.” I tapped his watch, which showed we had about two minutes to find a seat. “Besides, I like to sit in the back.”
    “Since when?”
    Since the rumors regarding my supposed sexcapades had infiltrated the classroom and people behind me felt bold enough to lean forward and whisper things like, “Leave your panties at the Delts last night?” I didn’t know whose panties were waving from the fraternity flag; they weren’t mine, but protests were only met with knowing smirks.
    “Since Thor decided to hog the front row.”
    “I’m Thor?” he asked, sounding a bit too pleased.
    I guess being compared to a Viking war god was a compliment. I cringed inwardly at revealing that I sometimes envisioned him standing on the prow of a longboat with a horned helmet and a spear. In my fantasies he was shirtless even in the long, cold, Icelandic nights. Real Vikings, I theorized, would be immune to the cold. Or at least they were in my dreams.
    Adopting my best uncaring attitude, I waved a hand down his body. “You add a spear and a helmet and you look like you should be standing at the prow of a longboat.”
    Too busy rifling through my mental images of Bo, it wasn’t until he maneuvered me sideways that I realized I had walked all the way to the front again where we had sat on Monday.
    “Just because we’re lab partners doesn’t mean we have to sit next to each other in class.” I frowned.
    “I know.” Bo just grinned and pulled out my chair. “It’s a perk.”
    Remaining immune to his infectious charm was going to be near impossible. I was given a momentary reprieve when the professor greeted us with an announcement about our lab studies. “You’ll have two primary lab projects this year. The first is to test the hypothesis of nature over nurture by examining whether there are innate differences between males and females. The second is to create a crossbred plant or animal that can survive here in the Midwest and combines whatever traits are perceived to be lacking in the other.”
    I tried to pay attention to the details of our lab project, but as hard as I was attempting to ignore Bo, every shift of his body that brushed up against mine sent little prickles of electricity shooting throughout me. I felt his jean-clad thigh press against mine when he let his legs fall open. He stretched his right arm across the back of my chair. The smell of his cologne or aftershave or shampoo released into the air with each movement.
    By the end of class, I felt like I was drunk on Bo Randolph. How in the world was I going to make it through a five-credit course with Bo Randolph as my lab partner and not become