Spider-man Unleashed

Chapter 10

They walked towards her chemistry classroom in silence.

Weirdly, Mary Jane was enjoying the said silence a lot. It was a welcome change from the other men, desperate in their attempts to fill the silence with incessant chatter, like they were afraid of her forgetting their presence, though it rarely worked as intended, as their juvenile insecurity made her cool of them rather quickly. It was ironic that Peter was younger than them by a few years, yet displayed a sense of calm maturity.

Ideally, she should have continued in silence until the class, but an impulse struck her, and she reached for his hand, his heat calming and exciting at the same time. A part of her was afraid that he would pull it away, something she was afraid to be conveyed in the firmness of her fingers, but if he noticed, he didn't bother to comment on it. So, they traversed the corridors in silence, their view sending the gossip mill overdrive.

When they arrived at the class, Mary Jane dropped her homework in the appropriate box, and was about to take her usual seat on the first line of the class. She had enough trouble following the class without the distractions from the others. But Peter had a different idea, because he tightened his fingers around hers and dragged her towards the far end of the class, to a seat conveniently hidden by a structural beam.

"It would be better if I don't get noticed, since I'm auditing," he explained.

Mary Jane would have liked to argue that it wouldn't be trouble for the professor Connors, but the professor chose that exact moment to enter the class. Mary Jane took the seat. It wasn't important enough to earn the ire of the professor of a class that she was edging on failure. Though, only after the class started, she realized that if he was trying to hide from the professor, maybe he should have sat on the concealed seat.

At that moment, Peter turned at her with a smoldering expression, and Mary Jane realized he had ulterior motives picking up that exact seat. Destroying that plan didn't require much from her side. She just needed to change her seat. An emphatic no would probably work just as well. Of course, both of those things required for her to be able to move.

But she was motionless, drowning in a sea of anticipation.

Recognizing her demeanor, his smile grew wider as his fingers landed on her thigh, gently caressing in a way that made her both thank and curse the fact that she chose to wear jeans rather than a skirt, especially a loose one that would allow direct access to his magical fingers, somehow managing to set her skin on fire with the barest of touch. To make things even more interesting, he had a pen in his right hand, occasionally scribbling notes on her notebook.

She had assumed that it was a part of his disguise, not expecting him to actually follow the lesson while delivering that magical treatment underneath the desk, but soon, she had realized the inaccuracy of that particular assumption. It was just a few minutes into the class, and Dr. Connors had just launched another monologue about the latest developments in the field of genetics, missing the fact that students of a beginner-level class failed to follow more than a few words into his explanation.

Or almost no student, she corrected when she saw Peter raising his hand. She wasn't the only one that was surprised, as from her expression, she could see that other students weren't expecting her guest to actually care about the class, the way he dressed suggesting delinquent rather than studious. Dr. Connors was also surprised, but his expression was more pleasant, happy that one of his students actually had an input to the topic, even if just a clarifying question. "Yes, Mr?"