Page 66 of Loving the Liar

With an eye roll, she doesn’t deny it. “Fuck off.”

“I will in just a second. I have one last question.”

She cocks an eyebrow at me.

“Are you already wet imagining being fucked on this desk? Be a good girl and don’t make a spot on the chair, will you?”

This time, she completely ignores me, but there’s not much she can hide from a man who’s learned everything about her.

Like the way she shifts her hips the second she sits down. Or the way her eyes don’t come up to meet mine anymore. She focuses on taking her notebook out of her bag, her tablet, and Reeves’s terrible book about criminal law. That man is the biggest fraud to walk this college. He was born into the Circle, initiated the second he turned eighteen, and has been demanding favor after favor since then. It’ll come back to bite him in the ass.

I believe it already did when I threatened to tell the board he sleeps with students unless he left Ella to me after the initiations.

I’m the one who covers his lesson today. He was called by the Circle to work on the case of a Shadow who got too handsy with one of his housemaids. Those men have access to a pool of Aphrodites, and they still manage to put their filthy hands on unwilling women.

Like the parties Gerald Baker would organize. He wasn’t only a pervert who paid younger people to be his and his friends’ sex toys. He also roped his innocent daughter into it and threatened to take her down with him if she went to the police. Him and I talked extensively about this when I told him to leave her alone. He didn’t listen, unfortunately.

Unfortunately for him.

Everyone is surprised when I start the class. I can only work on a case I studied in first year. I don’t have the knowledge or experience to do much else, but most of these guys won’t pass their LSATs anyway.

Watching Ella squirm every time I walk a little too close to her table is a thrill that makes me giddy. If I’m close enough to smell her perfume of vanilla and lavender, then I’m close enough to make her feel how much I want her.

She knows what I smell like too. I could sigh lovingly remembering that. He didn’t smell like you.

They all have to hand in an essay today. I stand in front of my desk as they form a line, piling them up on the old furniture. When Ella hands hers over, I grab it right away, pretending to read some of it. I don’t even lift my eyes when I say, “Ella, could you hold back.” There’s no justifying myself. She does what I say because she doesn’t have a choice in front of everyone. An authority figure asks to talk about her essay. She listens.

But the second they’re all gone, and the door closes, she doesn’t have to behave anymore.

She sprints for the door without looking back. The tiny thing has nothing on me, though. I catch her before she reaches it, but for the sake of it, I fist her hair from behind, and push her until she’s against the door.

“So close,” I rasp in her ear. “We have to be quick, Sweets. Next class arrives in ten minutes.”

Chapter Seventeen

Ella

SPINE - WesGhost

“Let go,” I pant. It’s not from the short run.

My breaths are ragged because of the man who needs minimum effort to turn me on. They were only a few words, but they kept me shifting on the spot for an entire hour.

My order—or plea—doesn’t even register with him.

He’s got a grip on my hip, and with the hand in my hair, he’s holding my face against the door. It’s not violent, but it’s firm, nonetheless. He’s not hurting me, just making me feel who’s in control.

“Chris.” I struggle in vain, but I don’t stop. “If you care about me like you keep saying, let go. I know you. You like me safe. I don’t feel safe right now.”

His presence is intense behind me. It’s impossible not to feel vulnerable when a man his size holds you against your will.

“Don’t be so naïve, Sweets. You know there’s more to it.” Pressing his lips against the top of my head, he inhales me before straightening again. “There’s nothing better than putting you back together after I break you.”

“Please,” I squeak. The mix of lust and fear is not a convenient cocktail. If the next class is so soon, we could get caught. My reputation is already getting worse every day. This will be social suicide. “Please, not here.”

“We’re slowly getting somewhere, aren’t we?” God, even the voice of his monster is so soft. It’s deeper, more dangerous, but the violence is undeniably elegant. “We went from you not wanting me to touch you, to you not wanting me to touch you in this room. A little more and you’ll be screaming my name.”

I hate when he does that. When he points out the way he pushes through my defenses.

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