Into You Series: The Complete Collection

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I could have chosen any seat on the first day of class, but something about Wes said “I’ll be your college fling,” and, well, I can’t argue with destiny.

I see the bad boy extraordinaire from across the auditorium, relaxed in his chair—the morning sunlight filtering through the windows illuminating him like the tattooed prince that he is, fingers twiddling the top of his to-go coffee cup , giving a deep exhale that expands his large chest and stretches the shirt advertising a band I’ve never heard of.

But I will soon.

Wes sits alone like the rest of us early birds, but I’ve never been a shy kind of girl. I make a beeline across the room, cross the front podium, and take two stairs at a time until I plop into the seat in front of him.

I twist to face the front of his desk, placing my own cup of coffee on it, stained with my berry-pink lipstick.

His eyes swing over to me from looking out the window. He’s even more beautiful up close with his pointed Michelangelo nose, black eyebrows arched in unmistakable curiosity, and brilliant green eyes. The sunlight is doing them favors, tightening his pupils and showing me more of the color I’ve longed to see again.

Because I’ve absolutely seen them before.

I’ve met Wes twice, whether he remembers or not. The first time was at college orientation a couple months ago, I walked through the courtyard with Grace.

“I need to get screwed this year,” I’d said.

“Well, all right, there’s that.” My best friend’s response didn’t skip a single beat. I’ve known Grace since elementary school. I don’t think anything I say would surprise her at this point.

“I’ve made up my mind, Grace. Every movie says you need a friend with benefits to complete the college experience and here I am, entering college with nobody in sight.”

We passed another vendor booth and stuffed our bags with whatever promotional swag they pushed at us. So far we’d collected about twenty branded pens and a mousepad. I guess they didn’t get the memo that most of us have laptops now.

“I’m calling it Project: Pound Town,” I announced.

“Nice name,” she’d said with a grinning side-eye. She wasn’t taking this seriously. But I was.

“I need passion,” I continued, taking an offered stress ball from the physician school’s table.

“I get the point.”

“I need hot sex .”

“Please don’t say that while you’re squeezing a ball.”

“I need to get laid .”

Then I had the air knocked out of me. Someone had bumped into me faster than I could process how or who they were, but when I turned to give a piece of my mind to the culprit, I was instead greeted by a hand on my shoulder and the most beautiful green eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” he’d said.

“Oh, sure, yeah, no problem.” It was all I could get out of my mouth after staring at the man in front of me. Yes, a man . I mean, sure, judging by the bag he’d just dropped to the floor, I had to assume he was around eighteen, like me. He wouldn’t have a bag with brochures, pens, and keychains like the rest of us if he wasn’t attending orientation too. But something about him didn’t scream teenage boy . Maybe it was the various tattoos scattered across his arms. Maybe it was his beard—something boys at our high school simply didn’t have. Maybe it was his grip, firm on my arm as he helped me steady myself after our bump.

All I knew was the second he walked away, I looked at Grace and said, “Him. That will be my friend with benefits.”

Now, by some twist of fate he's in my class, and I'm sitting in front of the same boy-man. And I’m determined to form the friendship I promised myself.

I lean forward, using the half of his desk unoccupied by his tattooed arms to rest my own.

“Hi.”

He looks across the classroom, no doubt seeing the rest of the empty desks and lonely students that seem probably ten times more inviting—there’s even a girl with cupcakes. I bet she would have made a great friend. But, no, I chose him, and his narrowed gaze tells me he’s curious as to why.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“Not yet. My name is Ramona,” I say, my hand shooting out. “You can call me Ray.”

His green eyes—those same green eyes that I am determined to have looking at my tits and ass in a few weeks’ time—glance between my face and my extended hand. With a small smile, a slight tug at the edge of his lips, and a narrowing of his eyes, I know he’s interested.

“Wesley,” he says, shaking my hand. “Call me Wes.”

Look at us like a bunch of super spies with our fancy nicknames. I can already tell we’re meant to be.

“Nice to meet you, Wes.”

I try the name on my tongue. I like how the word sounds in my mouth.

The second time I met Wes was during move-in day. My brother Ian was helping me load boxes into the dorms, and it was also coincidentally the day all the girls in my building felt the need to introduce themselves: one sentence to me, then about an entire monologue to my brother. Girls get like that around Ian.

“I’m nine years older than them,” he’d told me, heaving boxes onto my dorm bed. “Don’t they get that’s weird?”

“College girls like tall, older men,” I answered.

“You shouldn’t know anything about men, Ray,” he said. “You’re eighteen.”

Little did he know about Project: Pound Town.

“Watch out, watch out!”

Grace’s voice echoed down the hall, followed by a tumble of boxes and little tippy-taps across the floor.

As with my Project: Pound Town, Grace is no stranger to scheming either. Her latest endeavor was convincing our college administration to let her have a dog in the dorms even though she had no real functional need for a puppy. Somehow, someway, I ended up with two roommates this fall: my fiery redhead of a best friend and her new golden retriever puppy Hank.

Ian and I stuck our heads out the door to find her tumble of red hair, the puppy, and—be still my lustful heart—that same boy who was too gorgeous to be considered anything other than a man, in a heap on the floor.

I felt my thighs clench tight, like they already knew the face of the man who would tempt them. If they didn’t, my sinking heart sure did.

Hank was already bounding toward Ian and me, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and jumping up on the legs of the two people he already knew.

“Sorry,” Grace said, standing to dust herself off and pointing over to Hank. “He’s new.”

“Hey, me too,” the tattooed future friend said. “I jump on people too when I’m nervous.”

And the boy-man is funny . If my brother hadn’t been right behind me, I might have audibly swooned. As it was, I was already red in the face—my best friend was getting his attention and not me.

“Wes!” Another head poked out of a room farther down the hall. It was an older, graying man who looked like a middle-aged version of this beautiful boy, fully tattooed from his neck down to his fingertips. He looked so out of place but intriguing all the same.

He waved to the man I now know as Wes and said, “Let’s finish unpacking.”

And then it hit me: holy shit, was Wes my neighbor ? Please dear god tell me he lives in our hall.

He gave a small wave to Grace and then another over to me and my brother as we absentmindedly petted destruction-prone Hank.

First my neighbor, now my classmate. I think the university itself wants me to sleep with him, even if it means knocking into the poor guy twice.

“I’m looking for potential study partners,” I tell him now, as I lean forward onto his desk.

Wes laughs. It’s a sudden, surprised laugh.

“The first day of class hasn’t even started.”

“I’m a go-getter,” I say.

“That’s cute.”

“Do you think so?” I tilt my head, dark curls bouncing into my eyes. I blow the few strands of hair out of my face, which only makes him laugh again. A manly , low laugh.

“What’s your major?” he asks, the edge of his lip curling up into a smile.

“Undeclared. Still discovering things. Still discovering myself.” I lift an eyebrow at that. He looks away, letting out a mix of a laugh and a scoff. Yes, let the implication settle in his horny man mind. Let it simmer . “How about you?”

“Undeclared too,” he says, echoing my answer.

We already have so much in common. Cute shortened first names, indecisiveness with life, Ah, we’re just two peas in a pod.

From the corner of my eye, I can finally make out the details of his tattoos. They’re scattered, no real rhyme or reason to their location, but each one is a piece of art in its own right. I half expected cartoon images or silly quotes, but all of them follow a theme—a minimalist black-and-white style with geometric patterns or simple line drawings ranging from vague sketches to intricate detail-work.

“Do these mean anything?” I ask, wanting to reach out and touch them. I’ve never seen a tattoo this close. Does the skin feel any different? Does it feel nice? More specifically, does his skin feel nice?

“Are you normally this nosy?” Wes asks.

“Are you normally this secretive?”

The smile on his face seems permanently set there, like he’s amazed and entertained by the whole interaction.

“I just like the way they look,” he says.

So do I. They look like chemical compounds strewn together by straight lines and precise edges, tracing over his forearms and biceps, looping over the veins and muscles. I wonder where else he’s tattooed.

Am I drooling?

“Who’s the band on your shirt?” I ask, pointing to it.

“Wait, no, my turn. Your shirt is far more interesting.” He grins.

I lean away from the desk, tugging at the edges of my shirt to expand the design across my chest. It’s a cartoon rendering of our college’s tiger mascot with the words Roaring into graduation written below it.

“What? I like making shirts,” I say with a smile.

His eyes widen. “Oh, wait, you made that?”

“I can screen-print anything, Wesley.”

He laughs, a small shake of his head following. “Can you make me a shirt?”

Oh, the question alone makes my heart melt. Of course, I can make you something. Hell, I’d knit you a sweater if I knew how. Or I’d present myself in a black bra and panties set with a little red bow in the center.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“The best pun you can come up with.”

I exhale. “Well, that’s a large order.”

“And I expect the best.”

I purse my lips together, trying to resist the pull of a smile. I’ve been smiling this whole time but giving in to happiness on account of his swoony sarcasm almost makes me seem too easy.

Well, then again, aren’t I? Whoops.

“Of course,” I say. “You have my word.”

He holds out his large hand and we shake again.

I haven’t realized other students are now piled in, picking random seats and creating the general murmur of sound in the auditorium. I’ve been so distracted by Wes I’ve almost forgotten what class this is until the professor comes in and loads the syllabus on the projector: PSYCH 101.

“Oh, great,” I excitedly whisper over my shoulder, looking from the corner of my eye to see if Wes is paying attention to me. He leans forward just enough to hear me, and my stomach flips at the thought. “I love psychology.”

“I would hope so,” he whispers back. I catch a whiff of him—a soapy smell, like he just showered before this. Bliss . “Isn’t it a core class?”

“Maybe,” I mutter. “But I like it.” I wanted to go to college—specifically college with my best friend, Grace—but I just didn’t know what I wanted to do . “And apparently making punny T-shirts isn’t exactly a major.”

He chuckles. “Shame.”

The professor talks about grading structures, test dates, and all the other important items that I should probably pay more attention to, but I’m too distracted by the small sounds from behind me: Wes’s tapping of his pencil, his random exhales of air, the shifting of his legs. I couldn’t focus unless he was shirtless at the front of the class. Though then we might have other issues.

Throughout my daydreaming haze, I catch the professor’s recommendation to start study groups. I twist in my seat to glance at Wes. He’s already looking at me as if knowing I would be so bold.

Our connection is too much for me to handle, like a live wire between two souls destined for a future together—a very bright future between my aching thighs and his very practiced hands. Oh, I can only imagine them on me. I want to study every single one of his tattoos, trace my fingers along their edges, and taste their lines on my tongue …

And then my fantasy is ruined by the voices of others. Some other girls encroaching on our fun, our conversation, our tightrope of tension pulled taut between us.

“Study group?” one girl asks him. I don’t even catch her name because my eyes swing to Wes’s. He’s not looking at me anymore. He’s looking at them, allowing them to type out his number, giving it so willingly to people who didn’t even earn it.

“Study group?” the same girl asks me. I smile politely and pull out my phone, but she’s the least of my worries. I need his phone number. I couldn’t care less about Katherine or Heather trying to hand theirs out like candy. As long as I make sure to get his, I’m golden.

“Just checking I have everyone,” I say, looking at him. “What was yours again?”

“Just checking, huh?” he asks with a smile.

His eyes get smaller when he smiles, his cheeks dominating his face as it brims with happiness. I want more of it. I want to hold hands with this type of happiness. I want to skip in large grassy fields of dandelions with it.

“Yeah, just checking is all,” I say, nodding as I hold up my phone. “So what’s your number?”

Wes reads it out to me and I text him to make sure it’s correct. His phone lights up once it’s sent and I beam back.

“We’ll be great study buddies,” he says, and that’s when I get a very small twinge of … something not so great.

Buddies.

Buddies.

Like we’re five years old. I’m not supposed to be a buddy; I’m supposed to be the fun friend with benefits here! Where did I go wrong?

Phone number exchanged? Check.

Soulmate-like connection? Double check.

Watching as he continues exchanging numbers with every girl in class?

Ugh.