Corvina felt her lips tip up in a smile, stroking over the cards. ‘They were my mother’s. She taught me how to read them.’
She took the cards out and began to shuffle.
‘And you believe in what they say?’ he enquired quietly, his deep voice laced with curiosity. ‘In destiny?’
Corvina shrugged, leaning back on the rock, relaxing with the familiar weight of the cards in her hands and the motion of shuffling them. ‘I believe they’re good as guides, not as manuals.’ One card fell down. She continued, ‘They can guide and give a sense of direction about something, but not the precise details about how and when and what. That depends on our choices.’ Another card.
‘Interesting,’ he muttered, the white streak in his hair stark against the dark in the moonlight. Corvina studied him for a long minute while continuing the shuffle, at the way his prominent brows slashed down his face in concentration, at the square outline of his jaw littered with scruff, at the regality of his straight nose, at the tightness in his full lips.
‘You have a very interesting face, though not conventionally handsome,’ she spoke before suddenly realising how the words sounded. His silver eyes clashed with her violet ones, the brows that had been slashed going up in silence.
‘I meant that as a compliment,’ she clarified, feeling her face heat, grateful for the darkness that hid it, focusing on the action of her hands. ‘You have a very arresting face. Beautiful but unconventional. That’swhat I meant. I’m sorry; I probably shouldn’t be speaking to you like this.’
He ignored her for a few moments afterward, the sides of his jaw working as he went back to his tinkering. Corvina closed her eyes in embarrassment and blew out a breath. This was probably the reason why she should keep her mouth shut, especially with men who made her stomach flutter with just one look. She was sure there would be another on the campus. And she was a young woman finding herself. Strong lust was something she was experiencing for the first time, and she owed it to herself to explore it. She should find someone.
‘Who would you consider conventionally handsome?’ His words came to her.
She hadn’t expected him to ask her that. Corvina mulled on that for a minute, wondering if she should even say anything. Probably not.
‘You think Jax is handsome?’ he asked softly, too softly.
Corvina swallowed. She had a feeling any answer would be a wrong answer. ‘My roommate thinks so.’
He didn’t look at her. ‘I asked what you think.’
‘Yes,’ Corvina admitted, feeling something tense between them. ‘He is conventionally handsome, I would say. I didn’t mean for my comment to be rude. Sorry, I’m not the best at conversation.’
He simply bent over the piano, his hand aggressively pulling at a chord, the action igniting something visceral inside her. Corvina shut up, watching him work, and bit her tongue. She probably shouldn’t have said anything.
‘How well do you know Jax?’ he asked after a long second.
‘Um…’ He wanted her to dig some kind of hole. Why the hell was he asking about Jax? She frowned at the question. ‘We’re friends, I guess.’
‘Friends that hold hands?’ His question was quiet but loud in the silence that followed.
Corvina paused in the shuffling of cards, looking down at his hand, her heartbeats tripling in speed, knowing he’d seen them come out of the woods. Jax had still been holding her hand, the same hand this man had held in the library, right before he’d taken a little taste of her.
She stayed silent.
All of a sudden, he put his tool down and shot up from the bench, his long, lithe body closing the distance between him and her rock in three quick strides. He came to a stop in front of her and leaned over, his arms coming to the rock on either side of her, caging her in place as Corvina looked up at his thunderous eyes, her heart slamming in her ribcage.
‘Whatever this is, it cannot happen,’ he told her quietly, clearly, his voice low but firm. ‘You’re my student and I’m your teacher, but worse, I’m dangerous. Girls I interact with dance with death much sooner than they should. If you value your life, don’t look at me like that. Not with those eyes.’ He leaned closer, his warm breath and burning scent washing over her. ‘It makes me want things, little crow.’
‘Things like what?’ she whispered, her heart in her throat, her gaze locked with his.
‘Things like my fist in your hair and my tongue in your mouth,’ he told her harshly, the lines of his face strained. ‘Things like fucking you in front of the boy who held your hand, just to tell him you’ll never be his. Things like bending you over my desk after class and telling you to wrap your lips around my cock like you do with your pencil.’
Her body, her heart, her face felt on fire. No one had ever talked to her like that. She’d read words like those in books, said with vigour and passion, but had never imagined what they would feel like focused on her.
He hovered over her, his face the only thing in her vision, her chest heaving at the picture he painted. She wanted it. She wanted it all. She wanted to belong to this man who looked at her with such mercurial, ferocious eyes. But he was dangerous, unknown, mysterious.
‘This is lust,’ she whispered, trying to validate it, excuse it.
‘No, Corvina.’ The side of his lips twitched. ‘I’ve known lust. This is something worse. This is a barbaric need to possess, to eliminate, to own. This is madness.’
Madness.
It felt like madness, didn’t it? A different kind of madness than she was used to but madness, nonetheless.