The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 279

Chapter 279: 279 | The Lang Calculus

The water warmed despite her intention to keep it cold. Her hand had apparently adjusted the temperature without consulting her brain, because apparently her body was determined to betray her in every possible way tonight.

She reached for the shampoo. Worked it through her black hair with movements that should have been routine and soothing. Instead, her fingers caught in a tangle and she yanked too hard, the sharp pain doing nothing to distract her from the way her nipples had tightened against the spray of water.

Petra looked down at herself and felt her jaw clench.

Her body was responding to the warm water the same way it would respond to any pleasant physical stimulus. That was normal. That was biology. That had nothing to do with the memory of amber constructs sliding across her skin or the weight of a boy’s body beneath hers or the way his breath had caught when she demanded he release her.

She turned the water cold again. Forced herself to stand under the spray until her teeth chattered. Let the temperature punish her nerve endings back into submission.

It didn’t work.

The ache between her legs intensified rather than faded. Her body apparently interpreted the cold as a challenge rather than a deterrent, because every shiver seemed to heighten her awareness of exactly which parts of her anatomy were most affected by the afternoon’s events.

This was intolerable.

Petra Lang did not get distracted by boys. Petra Lang had dated exactly twice in her life, both times with sons of her mother’s business associates, both times ending after three carefully structured outings that confirmed the young men in question had nothing to offer beyond family connections she could access through other means. She had never lost a single night of sleep over either of them. She had never stood in a shower at nearly midnight wondering why her body refused to cooperate with her brain’s very reasonable demands.

But Lukas Belmont was not like those carefully vetted candidates her mother had approved.

Lukas Belmont was a delivery boy. A scholarship case. A student whose Aspect file contained documentation so thoroughly falsified that Percy Mendoza had apparently already noticed the discrepancies. He was someone who should have been beneath her notice entirely, a background character in the narrative of her academy career, relevant only as an obstacle to be managed during team exercises.

Instead he had kissed Camille Ortega to break her concentration, tactical deception deployed with the kind of smooth efficiency that should not have been possible from someone whose official Aspect file contained barely half a page of documented capabilities. Had outmaneuvered a Legendary-tier Aspect user through methods that Percy Mendoza’s muttering had suggested were deeply suspicious for reasons Petra had not fully processed yet. Had looked at her with eyes that suggested he saw something worth looking at rather than the institutional heiress everyone else perceived when they bothered to look at all.

And when his constructs had malfunctioned and pulled her against him, when her costume had betrayed every attempt at dignified distance and her composure had cracked like ice under pressure, he had not apologized.

He had not even looked away.

He had stared, direct and unashamed, and something in that stare had registered in parts of her biology that her academy training had apparently neglected to prepare her for.

The water ran cold across her shoulders, temperature dropping toward genuinely uncomfortable, but Petra barely registered the shift.

She was too occupied remembering the exact angle of his jaw when he had been that close, the specific shade of amber that his eyes shifted to when they darkened with whatever he had been thinking, the way his lips had parted slightly when she had demanded he release her with a tone that probably sounded more breathless than commanding and definitely sounded nothing like the composed authority she had intended.

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