Page 14 of Guarded Rebellion

Icouldn’t. I couldn’t tell Kelly that Lev was an ugly man. He was a god among men, rugged and so masculine. He was sexy, but that hardly mattered.

“He’s a sarcastic jerk, Kelly.”

“A bad boy, then,” she teased. “Even better.”

“Lev? Aboy?” I scoffed.

“You know what I mean.”

I did. I was all too aware that she had noticed how sexy he was. I’d witnessed how damn near every woman in our classes took notice of the brooding soldier lurking in the back. Even the likely married female professors seemed to blush when spotting him. He just had that pull on people. I wasn’t impervious to acknowledging how damned fine he was, but that didn’t mean that my opinions about him would change.

“He represents an arm of control in my life,” I whispered to her. “He’s a sign of how I’ll never actually be free to live the life I want. To justbe.”

She nodded, sliding her books out of her bag. “I know.” She was clued in to how I lacked the power of deciding what to do with my free time. While she respected that I was held to expectations and limited to the whims of my damn bodyguard, she seemed to know better than to ask for details. “I remember how disappointed you were last night.”

“What, when I told him yesterday that we wanted to check out that pub for dinner? And he refused to let me go near it?” I glowered at the wall ahead, waiting for the prof to show up.

“Well…” She shrugged.

I gaped at her. “Oh, you’ll side withhim?”

“No. It’s just, well, that Rocky’siskind of seedy. I’ve heard that it’s not a great place.”

“Rocky’s?” a man said as he suddenly slipped into the chair to my left in the lecture hall. “Rocky’s is the best! I love their happy hour.”

Kelly and I both turned to face Bryce as he made himself comfortable in the chair next to me.

“Of course,you’dsay that,” Kelly quipped.

“Hi, Bryce,” I greeted belatedly.

“Hey, Eva. How’re you doing today?” he replied, heating up his smile as he leaned closer to me. We’d met the second day of courses, and it was obvious from the get-go that he was just one of those guys, goofy and charming, outgoing and full of some thrill only he seemed to see in life.

Just like I couldn’t lie and say Lev wasn’t hot, I lacked the ability to find a flaw in Bryce. He was good-looking. He had charisma. But…

He wasn’t anything like the men I knew. Soldiers and bosses were the sorts of men I’d become familiar with, and Bryce lacked that hardness Mafia men were born with.

Just past him, I caught sight of Lev seething as he watched me. To make matters worse, Bryce snuggled closer, putting his arm around my shoulders.

“Rocky’s is an excellent place to hang out,” he said, oblivious to the glowering Mafia soldier who stared at us.

Oh, you don’t like this?I smiled at Lev, getting a little kick out of his annoyance. The ass was so damn strict. Overprotective to a fault. He forced me to live in an apartment off campus instead of in the dorm with Kelly. He dictated where I could order food from. He prevented me from having any kind of a nightlife, even to damn study halls, because he lacked enough advance warning to have the places checked first.

Of course, he’d bristle at Bryce touching me at all. And of course, he’d look like he was two seconds away from making the guy back off.

Tough crap.

So long as I was a student here, I damn well would live. I’d do whatIwanted. Bryce’s attention wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t like he was laying a claim on me or rendering me ruined for an arranged marriage.

It didn’t matter that I wasn’t interested. Not really. Bryce was too pretty. Too soft. He could act like a rebel and bad boy, but inthat comparison, he was more boyish than cutthroat. The faint stubble on his jaw made him look sexy, but it didn’t make him look roguish and rugged like Lev’s beard did. The lean angles to his face made him attractive, but he lacked the hardness Lev showed with scars and evidence of the violent life he survived. Muscles pressed against my shoulders from Bryce’s arm, but they were smaller, found from going to the gym here and there, not a sign of pure masculine strength like what Lev got from kicking ass.

Stop. Stop comparing them.

“I can get you in when we play next.” Bryce’s fingers squeezed on my opposite shoulder, jarring me back into focus.

I blinked, zoned out from whatever he was saying.

“I don’t know,” Kelly whispered as the prof started speaking. “Going to Rocky’s to check out your band isn’t something we should be doing with a test coming up next week.”

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