Page 30 of Alpha Varsity

The volume in the class has steadily grown. Somehow everyone realized I won’t be teaching today, and they’ve clearly decided not to work. Or rather, they’re pretending to work as they talk.

A wave of heat rolls over me as I swish the brushes in the thinner. I immediately understand why. The hulking form of my worst student has appeared beside me. Asherpretends to look through the stack of magazines I have out for multimedia work.

“Your smell is off.” His voice is low—barely audible to me, which means no one else in the room should be able to hear him, shifter hearing or not.

“Youdid this to me,” I whisper-snarl. I don’t look his way. If anyone glanced over they would see our backs angled away from each other. Two people near each other but not interacting.

He edges a little closer, reaching above me to open the cabinets above my head. His cedar and soap scent assaults me. The tension rippling through my body is too much. My fingers close in a fist around the mason jar, and I accidentally crush it in a superhuman grip.

I gasp as the glass shatters, jamming into the fleshy part of my thumb. Half of the pieces fall into the sink, the other half fall over my bare feet.

“What the fuck?”

Before I can even move, Asher picks me up by the waist and plops my ass down on the counter beside the sink.

“Why are you in your bare feet?” He sounds angry, like I’m giving him personal offense by showing my toes. But who knows what’s going through his mind right now. He probably hates the protectiveness his wolf would display over me getting hurt.

“Somebody clean that glass from the floor,” Asher orders and four students scramble to comply.

I move to hop down, my face flaming. “You don’t pick up a teacher, no matter how chivalrous you think you’re bei—Oh.” I suck in a sharp gasp. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Asher rips his T-shirt off, and he holds it beneath my hand, using it as a rag to soak up my blood. There’s nothingwrong with that instinct,per se,except that it leaves his torso bared to me.

And his chest is magnificent. The strong, sculpted pectorals are lightly dusted with golden curls. His flat nipples are taut. His scent is everywhere now, coating my face. I can’t breathe any air that doesn’t smell like him.

He bends over my hand to take a closer look, and pulls a shard of glass from my bleeding flesh.

The room tilts and spins. The air feels thick.

He’s touching me. This is what I needed. What I’ve been needing since the moment he walked out my door last night.

He pulls another piece of glass out of my hand, then stretches my wrist toward the sink.

I can’t think. Can’t function with him this close. It feels like my body is going to erupt right here in the classroom.

“Enough,” I snap, hopping off the counter and onto the floor, glass underfoot be damned. “Class, I’m going to take care of this cut. Keep workingquietly.”

I beeline it out of the room in my bare feet, blood dripping in my wake. I don’t look back to see if the class is going to follow my instructions. I definitely don’t look back to see Asher‘s reaction.

I don’t think I can withstand the view of his beautiful angry visage.

I unlock and shove open the door to the faculty bathroom. My heart pounds at an uneven rhythm. My head swims. I can’t think.

I pace in a tight swift circle. The air feels too thick to breathe. I stop in front of the sink and turn the water on. Blood washes into the basin as I rinse the rest of the glass from my thumb. My chest heaves as I try to regain control.

But that’s an impossibility.

I must not have shut the automatically locking door when I came in because Asher somehow appears in the bathroom with me.

I stare as he shuts the door with a click and closes the distance between us in one long stride.

He tears off my shirt and throws it to the floor.

Chapter Ten

Lotta

I mean to tell him to get out. He shouldn’t have followed me in here.We’re at school!I can’t be seen with a student.

---