Page 52 of Forbidden Lessons

“Can I get a confirmation for Miss Lee please?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kai grumps like I told him he’d better be home before ten or he’s grounded. “Whatever you say, Sir.” But his voice is a little brighter when he adds, “Have fun, Haven. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

I end the call, raising my eyebrows at her as I stretch out my leg, the phone going back in my pocket. “Are you satisfied, Miss Lee?”

Her eyes are glassy again. I wonder where she goes when she tucks herself away like that. The past, or the future?

“I have to be back by two, Professor,” she says woodenly.

I lift my hands. “Barring an Act of God.”

She hesitates one more time, and then hurries around the back of my car and slides into the passenger seat. I watch herfrom the corner of my eye as I tap on the Tesla’s touchscreen, smiling at the way she strokes her hands down the leather.

“Bastian,” I say.

Haven jerks like she’s coming out of a daydream. “Sorry?”

I point behind us at the sprawling campus, steering out of the parking space with the heel of my hand on the wheel. “In there, it’s Professor. Out here, my name’s Bastian.”

Her eyes flicker like a Northern Blue butterfly in a mason jar. She can’t see the confines of her trap, can’t understand why she isn’t as free as she was only a moment ago.

Then she looks out her window, her head bobbing as I switch the Tesla into drive and head out the lot.

As my eyes go back to the road, her lips move like she’s repeating my name quietly to herself.

Lies are cheap. Lies are easy. I grew bored with them early in life.

I much prefer toying with the truth. Twisting it, bending it, pulling it till it snaps.

Logically, I would never risk my reputation with an unwilling student.

But the urge to toy with Haven is forcing me to change the narrative.

It’s called a compulsion for a reason.

Chapter 16

Haven

Why did I get in this car?

I heard the alarm bells clanging in my head like the building was on fire, but I ignored them and climbed in anyway. Yes, I’ve just done something wildly idiotic. And as much as I’d love to wallow in my stupidity, I’d have to stop crushing on my professor.

Bastian drives like an expert. Every move he makes is graceful and immaculate and scarily precise. He only takes his eyes off the road when we’re stopped at an intersection.

We’re as silent as his electric car as it speeds down the college’s tree lined driveway. I’m taking turns watching the trees blur, staring at the car’s gorgeous minimalist interior, and peeking glances at Bastian’s arm muscles as he steers.

He took off his jacket midway through class today. Coincidentally, around the time I began zoning out.

As if reading my mind, Bastian says, “How did you find today’s lecture? Was there enough context, even without reading the assigned chapters?”

The intersection at the end of the college’s drive is a four-way stop, one of them a blind rise. Bastian stops his car to check foroncoming traffic, making eye contact that I break with a nervous chuckle.

“Oh, uh, yeah, it was good. Actually made me more keen to go and read the book.” I hear what I just said and cringe as he pulls into the road. “I mean, not that I wasn’t keen already, just?—“

“Fuck!”

Bastian slams on brakes and swerves to the side. The Tesla isn’t going fast, but some kind of automatic braking system kicks in because we stop so suddenly my head jerks forward.

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