Page 12 of Savage Surrender

I damn near shivered. Not only at his smoky, deep voice, but that he’d cursed. That his eyes narrowed with spite as he complained about seeing me. How? How could I be turned on? How could this… tension building between us be such a lethal turn-on?

“What is wrong with me?” I asked it. I didn’t only wonder it, but I lost my control over the moment to the point that Iaskedhim. I didn’t want to know why he was peeved with me. I didn’t need to know the reason he’d caused me to feel like this. He couldn’t work into anything my father wanted me to report on.

Or… maybe not.If he was here at this party, that was interesting in itself. This party was in a seedier part of town that no respectable member of the faculty would want to be seen in. Murders and rapes happened out here.

That added to the allure of him. He wasn’t acting like a stuffy, boring professor. Seeing him atthisparty lent a bad-boy aura to him. He became more mysterious being here, using profanity, and complaining about me as he tasted the hard liquor.

What is wrong withyou?That follow-up question hit me before he could speak. He didn’t belong at this scene. He shouldn’t have even known about this party.

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with you, Ms. Petrov,” he replied. “Just that I have this uncanny consistency of seeing you everywhere.”

“Likewise,” I bit out wryly. “And don’t call me that.”

“Ms. Petrov?” He arched one brow as he sipped his drink. “That is your name.”

“A formal name, Professor.” I lifted my finger from the neck of my beer bottle to gesture at the party. “And this isn’t a formal setting.”

“Then what should I call you?”

Oh, God.The filthy ideas that ran through my head weren’t right. It wasn’t right of me to lust for him, either.

“You—”

“Cops. Let’s go,” someone called out suddenly. The music was cut. “Cops are coming.”

I glanced up at Professor Remi at the blurted-out interruption. This wouldn’t only be an interruption, but also a complete halt to the evening.

“Get outta here,” someone else called out.

“Move it.”

“Dude, I’m leaving. Let’s go.”

The chaos of everyone rushing to exit rose to a confusing clamor of too much noise. Despite the fact that we had just been standing together and speaking to each other, Professor Remi and I split up, going opposite ways and getting separated in the crowd as people hurried to leave the party before the cops could come and arrest people for the drugs.

Obviously, I had to go too. I couldn’t be caught by any cops, and if that became an actual threat, the guards posted outside this place would get me out.

Just as I expected, they were on high alert with the exodus of people rushing out of the party. By the time I got out, they ushered me into a car and drove me away.

“What happened?” one asked.

I shrugged, still off-kilter from talking to my professor in the unlikeliest place. “Someone called the cops, and everyone was rushing out before they were caught.”

That wasn’t all that happened. I’d had a strange but not bad conversation with the man I couldn’t stop thinking about. And it seemed he was experiencing the same affliction.

As the car sped me away, I wished our exchange could have lasted a little longer—even if the time I spent in his intoxicating presence made me feel less sure about how to interpret his being here. At that party. On campus. In the lecture hall. Regardless of where I saw the insufferable professor who seemed to entertain a simmering resentment and suspicion of me, one thing was clear.

He wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

And I cringed at how much that thought excited me.

7

VIKTOR

The first two weeks of pretending to be a professor hadn’t gotten me anywhere with Irina. I saw her at class, where she continued to look like a bored diva. All of my students looked bored. I made the classes dull on purpose, all the better to watch them. When people were uninterested and had idle minds, they tended to let their thoughts show. Moods—other than boredom—were easier to pick up on. Maybe they let their minds wander to thoughts of things they were excited about. Or perhaps they scowled as they analyzed something they wanted to change or disliked.

Not Irina.

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