This wasn’t the first time that Jack had blatantly insulted her intelligence, and while comments like that pissed her off, she didn’t let it show this time. Jia Li knew she wasn’t anywhere near being a genius, but she worked really hard to learn and to be as intelligent as she could be. She hadn’t gotten that academic scholarship for nothing, after all. Of course, if she didn’t study, she would fail her courses. The dryad wasn’t the sort of person who could skate by with B’s without working at it. As it was, her hard work usually brought her A’s.
So, even though his insults about her intelligence were hurtful, she was confident enough in herself that she didn’t feel a need to defend her mind. In fact, she wondered if he had some self-confidence issues that made him want to hurt those around him, to bring them down so he could feel better. Wasn’t that how bullies usually were?
“Metal glove or not, I’m not really interested in amusing myself by frightening small creatures that won’t understand what I’m doing. Hell, I bet you don’t even understand why you’re doing it. Besides, I really don’t want to hurt anything, and I’m afraid I would hurt it.” Jia Li really was afraid that she would hurt any squirrel he thought to throw for her to catch. She still didn’t know how he had caught it when it had gone so far and so fast, but she wasn’t going to stroke his already inflated ego by asking him.
“Wow…” She stated sarcastically. “What are you, twelve? You must have already used up all of your good jokes. They’re really going downhill now.” That was, of course, in response to the “name” he gave her. She wasn’t lying, either. His jokes were a lot better up until that one. It was like he only had so many jokes in his bag saved for specific situations, but now, he was running low or something.
Jia Li tensed when he moved closer to her. He was too close. She could feel part of him touching her, but she didn’t move. She didn’t back away. The dryad was determined not to show her fear. Instead, she just tilted her head back to look at him with an almost bored look. She hoped she was getting it right. It was kind of difficult with him so uncomfortably close to her. She could feel the warmth of his body heat and smell the whiskey on his breath.
Heat flamed her cheeks, and her bored look transformed into a glare when he said she was probably a bad kisser. She couldn’t refute it. After all, she was out of practice. When she was younger and dating boys all of the time, none had ever judged her as a bad kisser. In fact, they had seemed quite happy to kiss her, so that must mean she wasn’t bad at all, right? However, having never kissed anyone since the incident, she had no idea if she was still any good. “Well, you can’t prove that you’re even remotely decent at kissing, either, so there’s really no reason why you should get to see my half-naked.”