Wanted Read Online Free

room, right at me, a half-smile lingering on his lips, making my knees swiftly turn to mush.
    He wore soft, black pants and a dark green button-down shirt that had a kind of sheen to it, like silk. He looked amazing, all black and green and smoldering, and standing right in front of me. He gazed at me expectantly. Oh yeah, he’d asked me a question.
    “Uh…Yeah. Actually.” I was freaking brilliant. He was a breath away from me, staring down at me with a strange intensity in his green eyes, and he smelled like heaven. I tried not to visibly breathe him in. His lips twisted into another half-smile.
    “Read me something,” his voice commanded soft and deep. The shining emerald color of his eyes mesmerized me.
    “Um…what?” Had I heard him right? He reached over my head and pulled a book off the shelf. He flipped through the pages and paused, and then handed me the book, the corner of his mouth pulled up in a grin.
    “Read for me.” A command again. I tore my eyes away from his and looked at the proffered book. Love poetry? What a total player!
    My mind screamed in outrage, but my eyes scanned the page, ready to read. He had probably done this exact scene a hundred times to get girls all pliable and willing to do whatever he wanted. I knew this logically, yet I couldn’t say no to him. I was alone, in a cozy room, with Conor Peterson, and he wanted me to read him Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt.” We’d read it in English class earlier in the year. It was supposedly about some dude chasing a deer, but in reality, he was chasing after a woman who wasn’t his.
    My heart lodged in my throat. As much as I wanted to throw the book in his face and march out of the room, my mouth read the words aloud. I was basically his to command.
    I felt like such a wuss and it struck me again why vamp/witch relationships didn’t work well. The power balance was too uneven. Even with my own power base, he still held me powerless to deny him anything. Or did I feel that way because I might be falling in love with him? Such a sucker, and not in the literal sense.
     
    “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
    But as for me, alas, I may no more.
    The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
    I am of them that farthest cometh behind.”
     
    I recalled so far in the poem, the narrator was looking for love, and he was one of many hunters chasing the ‘deer.’ Was there a specific reason Conor had chosen this poem?
     
    “ Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
    Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
    Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
    Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.”
     
    I was grateful for our English teacher, because without having discussed the poem, the archaic language would have me so confused. It really was pretty when you heard it read aloud, and thought about what it meant. The narrator knows his love of the woman is futile, and he knows he must stop chasing her, but he can’t. Kind of like my crush on Conor—futile, yet I persisted. Huh. Over-relate much?
     
    “ Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
    As well as I may spend his time in vain.
    And graven with diamonds in letters plain
    There is written, her fair neck round about:
    Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
    And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”
     
    There it was, the collar that read “Don’t touch, I belong to someone else.” Conor didn’t wear a collar, but he was still not mine. I wondered not for the first time if he was trying to tell me something. Was he the deer? Or was I? His looming presence unnerved me and my voice started weak and breathy. As I read, it grew stronger, the words sounding almost musical, even to me. I tried not to stumble over the Latin phrase Noli me tangere . I was sort of familiar with the language as it was often in my spells, and knew it translated to “don’t touch me.” Then I was done.
    My heart beat wildly. His scent invaded my senses and my skin prickled with warmth. My