Zoe made a point of keeping her distance. If that guy managed to get close to 100 on that score, the school would be hard pressed to explain why she got the seat so easily. Not because her score would not be better, but the argument of her privileged background would be used to suggest she give up her seat and allow him to have it instead.
This would be an insult to everything feminist she had been working to do. She was pushing the education system to favor women and giving them a chance to break the glass ceiling. Plus, she was strongly pushing for a better STEM program to help young ladies rise to the top. This boy threatened everything she was trying to get. More selfishly, she didn’t want her perfect track record of top seat performance to be touched and blemished at all.
The Exam
The exam was this grueling long ordeal that lasted a week. The students taking the exam was giving up their week of summer to sit in a hot classroom to take an 8 hour exam each day. The students were responsible for their own lunch too. They sat and worked a whole slew of topics during the five days of trial, as they affectionately called it.
The whole point of the “trial” was to reward only the most dedicated of students. Sadly for the school, only the few well prepped affluent students ever took the test. The rest of the student body was either traveling or playing in the streets. To sit in and endure 40 hours of intense testing was not for everyone.
This particular year, the testing body was only thirty students on day one. That number was cut in half by day two. The heat was very oppressive. By the fourth day, there was only that boy and two other young ladies. From the looks of it, they were there only because their parents insisted they be. But that boy. He was in a zone all by himself.
Worse, anytime they had a quick break, his eyes had a way of undressing her and flushing her system with copious amounts of estrogen. The boy was calm, cool, collected, dark. Not just his skin tone, his soul. He was able to move spirits with his eyes and cause galactic shifts.
Although every physical sign pointed to this boy being on the verge of sweating every ounce of fluid out of his body before the lunch breaks, his super calm steady level headed calculated moves suggested a deep spiritual calm of a seasoned hunter. The kind that moved her spirit to run and hope he’d chase her down and own her.
Zoe found this not just distracting, but dangerous. She’d been chased before by far more groomed pedigrees of men and boys. None were this cool.
None moved her soul so thoroughly.
None made her so wet with one flick of an eyebrow.
None made her heart quiver with desire whenever they wet their lips.
While most of the guys she was used to had chiseled chests and ripped abs, this boy had none of that. He was just a boy. OK, not a boy.
But a boy.
Ugh.
Just another boy she was going to crush academically.
But this boy.
See, this boy had something very beastly about him. Nothing about his body stood out, OK just his backside stood out, but. See, the boy was just a boy.
However, there were moments when he just moved like a king.
There was something there.
Something instinctual.
Something innate.
Something that Zoe wished she didn’t feel.
Feelings were messy. He was touching her feelings.
That was not good.
It was going to be quite messy if she ever allowed him to see her feelings.
The last day of the exam was pure torture. For reasons that made no sense at all, he decided not to sit at the back of the room like he always did. She now could sense his movements, as they were now in the same row.
Worse, he had the nerves to say hi to her before things started.
Zoe felt her soul back-flip and spill all manners of moisture all over her womanhood. He had to know the effect he was having. No man could so nonchalantly do this to her just for the sake of doing this.
This had never happened.
She always knew the intention well before the man or boy made a move.
This guy though.
This was different.
Her soul wanted to be his prey.
The test day was hotter than usual, not just because the day was the hottest of the heatwave that was plaguing the city since the middle of the week. This boy had the nerves to ask the proctor if it was OK for him to unbutton his shirt.
Of all days, he had to wear a sharp…
Crisp…
Clean…
Perfectly pressed…
Tailored…
Cologned-button-down shirt!
Now he was tantalizing, no, torturing her with this request.
And the silly proctor lady gave him permission!
The collective blissful sighs of the other two gals joined Zoe’s sigh of panic. They instantly asked to move up to the front row. The proctor leveled a stern look of warning to them before acquiescing to their requests.
Shallows of the Deep 