Page 49 of Guarded Rebellion

It was almost as though my experience with Lev—losing my virginity and feeling so damn liberated and free after he made me come so epically—surpassed any experience I could obtain from being a not-so-independent college student.

I could exercise my mind whenever I wanted. Reading and even taking online courses could go a long way in keeping my mind sharp.

But in the wake of Lev touching me and showing me what it could be like as the center of his attention, I had no idea how to protect my heart. My soul.

Yeah, no. We’re not going there.

I shook my head, irritated that I could be letting my thoughts meander into the realm offeelings. Of love. I was attracted to Lev, and I wanted a lot more of that wickedly hot intimacy with him, but it was just physical. It had to be.

There was no room for the concept of love in my life.

“I thought tonight is your study group at the library?” he asked later that night at the apartment.

I sighed, pausing in my walk from the kitchen to my room, where I stayed most of the time to avoid the pain of him pushing me away.

“It is, but Kelly said she wasn’t going, so I don’t want to go.” I shrugged, amused that this was the most we’d talked in a whole week.

As if mentioning her was a cue, my phone buzzed with a call. “Oh. Maybe she’s changing her mind about that.” I continued to my room, unwilling to look at Lev when he was determined to be so hard and stiff around me.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ava?” a woman asked.

It wasn’t Kelly, even though it was her name on the screen. I furrowed my brow, stopping before I reached my bedroom door. “Eva,” I corrected. “Who is this? And why do you have Kelly’s phone?”

“I’m Laura. My room is down the hall from Kelly’s. You’re listed on the website as her roommate so I used her facial recognition to unlock her phone and call you.”

“What’s going on?” I tensed, knowing without any further information that something had to be wrong.

“My friend and I found Kelly in the showers. It looks like she’s been drugged. I didn’t know who else to call and I didn’t want to tell the dorm supervisor. They’re such bitches around here about any mention of a drug or booze.”

“Is she awake?” I jerked at Lev coming up behind me, taking my phone, and setting it to speaker. I glared at him, hating this invasion of privacy, but I was too focused on this news about Kelly to care about his highhandedness.

“She’s sort of waking up,” Laura said, “but she’s totally out of it. She had to have taken something. You’re the only contact on her phone that’s not a school number, so I figured… I don’t know. That you could help?”

“Yes. Of course. I’ll…” I frowned at Lev looming over me. Concern covered his face as he glowered, tuned in to this call. “I’ll be there to help her.”

Laura told me that she’d stay with Kelly in the dorm bathroom until I came, and she’d keep the dorm supervisor away. As soon as I disconnected the call, Lev reacted.

“When could she have taken something?” he demanded, curt, direct, and businesslike. He was an individual who’d take charge and command any situation. That was who he was and what he’d been trained to do as a lethal and powerful Baranov soldier.

But I tried my best to squash this flicker of frustration with him, this niggle of jealousy.

All week, he was cold and aloof with me, but the second he heard about Kelly needing help, he’d snap out of that distance?

“I don’t know,” I told him as I grabbed my coat. “But I intend to find out.”

I might not know how to handle him and navigate how much we’d changed things between us since we had sex. But I was clear and determined to assist my one and only friend in her time of need.

21

LEV

“When could she have been drugged?” I asked Eva as she pulled her coat on.

I didn’t move toward the door, blocking her in place.

“I don’t know. Come on. Let’s go.”

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