Page 36 of A Dusk Of Stars

To my surprise, his lips tug into a smirk. “Perfect,” he says, his voice suspiciously saccharine.

Then he stands straight and starts walking over to me.

I feel my eyebrows pull down as I watch him come to sit on the side of my desk, bent at the waist to face me.

“What’re you doing?”

He raises his eyebrows in feigned innocence. “Teaching you to shift,” he says as he takes the cup of coffee off my desk, turning it in his hand. “Or is it lessons in embroidery you’re after?”

“How is this teaching me to shift?”

He sniffs the coffee through the lid. “Ah, black…” And only then does he turn to me to acknowledge my question. “You’re so stuck up, you can’t even get close,” he says with a shrug. “You need to let those emotions surface.” His face lights up with a knowing smirk. “Some of thatanger, for example.”

And he lifts the cup to his mouth, and without taking his eyes off me, he downs it all.

The bastard, he’s intent on pissing me off, I think as he puts the cup back down and throws me a smug smile. Maybe the smart thing would be to let him, but I can’t. Forcing myself to stay in control, I give him a fake smile and say, “Oh you’d like some coffee? Well, help yourself.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” he says, and he grabs my tote off my desk, making me almost move to stop him.

I grit my teeth. Let him, I tell myself. Don’t show that you mind.

“The Blood Treaty,” he starts reciting as he takes one of the books out, “the Ramifications of the Agreement Between the Scions and the Vampiric Crown and Its Effect on the Postmodern Era.” He shakes his head. “Ugh.”

“Too basic for you, I get it,” I say, but he’s already tossing that back inside and going back to rummaging, making me grit my teeth again.

“You know,” he says, “I’m falling asleep just looking at the contents of your bag.”

“And here I went to so much trouble to make it interesting for you.”

He ignores me, throwing yet another smug smile on when he finds something and takes it out of the bag. A tampon. “Well well, what do we havehere?”

I roll my eyes at him. “No, not the tampon,” I drawl flatly. “Please, I’ll die of shame.”

My actual indifference is making it boring to him, so he just tosses it back inside and takes something else out.

My notebook. “Hey,” I hear myself warn before I even realize what I’m doing.

It makes a spark appear in his eyes. “Interesting,” he sneers.

The next thing I know, he’s lifting the hand with the notebook in the air. Gritting my teeth, I scramble to get out of my chair, but he’s already off my desk, walking backwards with this self-satisfied grin on his face.

“Give it back,” I demand as I try to catch him.

He lets me almost do it and then pushes past me, knocking into my shoulder with his. He’s found what he’s been looking for and he doesn’t seem to be willing to part with it.

I turn on my heel and keep following him as he walks between the rows of desks.

“Is it a diary perchance?” he asks mockingly, just as I lunge at him and almost grab the notebook.

He turns around and grabs my hand into his, squeezing it into a fist so I can’t move it at all.

“Don’t,” I warn as I watch him move to open the notebook with his free hand.

“The musings of a unique, troubled mind, am I right?”

I take advantage of his focus on the notebook to break my hand free, putting all my effort into keeping my cool. “I’m asking you,nicely, to give it back.”

“Ah,nicely. Pity. And what if I don’t?”

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