Page 14 of Corrupt Vows

It’s embarrassing, especially when I was so optimistic last week.

Maybe if I could get a halfway decent night of sleep, my muse would return, but rest and relaxation is not happening, not with the future hanging over my head.

Three days. My parents will announce my engagement to Nico Russo in three days. I’ll move out of my childhood home to live with an egotistical, ruthless asshole. And in four months, I’ll walk down the aisle and take that insufferable jerk as my husband.

I jump as my cell vibrates in my apron pocket. With a curse, I wipe my left hand, which is relatively cleaner than my right, on my apron and fish my phone out of the pocket. After checking the caller ID and seeing Alfonso’s name, I pause with my thumb over theend callbutton and tell myself not to be a coward.

I won’t have the strength to talk to him after my peers verbally eviscerate my pathetic attempt at art tomorrow, and I’m not cruel enough to let him hear the news from someone else, so I answer the call.

“Hey, Alfie.”

My attempt at sounding cheerful falls flat even to my ears.

“That good, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Not ready for tomorrow, I take it?”

“Not at all, but… there’s something else, too. Hang on, let me wash up and go somewhere quieter,” I say.

The frantic bustling of students in the studio won’t calm until next week, after group critiques end.

He hums his understanding, so I press mute and drop the phone back into my apron before heading to the sink at the back of the classroom.

Weaving through the chaos, I dodge Calvin as he steps out of his station with his arms overflowing with a dozen different materials, barely miss a collision with Becca as she stretches, and clip Donald’s shoulder when he unexpectedly turns around. I bounce off his much taller frame and knock into the nearby table.

Hissing in pain, I reach for my hip, knowing it’ll bruise, but curse and dart forward as Ralf’s sculpture wobbles. He turns. We both reach for it, but I get there a millisecond before he does. His massive hands wrap around mine and guide the piece upright.

Unease creeps down my spine as his hands linger on mine. I swallow and scoot away from him, but he’s so close his body heat seeps into my side.

“I’m so sorry, Ralf,” I say, truly apologetic.

With shoulders as broad as a mountain, eyes as blue as a clear summer sky, and hair as blonde as the golden halos drawn over angel’s heads, Ralf is the school’s only exchange student from Russia. He’s gathered a fan base—groupies, if you will—who follow him around outside of class, but I’ve always kept my distance. He has an edge of menace in his aura, something I learned to recognize at an early age, and the scowl he wears when he thinks no one is watching unsettles me.

I pull my hands out from under his and wipe them on my thighs. The motion reminds me of Nico’s warning, and I blush.

Leave it to that asshole to embarrass me in front of my entire class without even being here.

“It was accident,da? No bad thing happen, so is okay,” Ralf says in his accented English.

I open my mouth to thank him, but the mess my dirty hands left on his sculpture catches my attention.

“Oh god, I’m sorry!” I say as I push past him and grab the roll of paper towels off his desk. “I’ll be right back.”

I tear off a big wad, rush to the sink, rinse my hands, and wet the paper towels. After wringing them out, I hurry back to his station and plop half of the towels into his hand before gently wiping the biggest clump of clay off his work.

“I didn’t mean to. Don’t worry, I’ll get it all off before—”

I freeze as his thick fingers close around my wrist, directly over where Nico grabbed me a few days ago. After heat flashes through me at the memory, worms crawl in my belly. His grip covers more of my arm, and a surge of panic rushes through me. I don’t like it. At all.

I drop the wet paper towels with a plop and push on his arm. For a horrible moment, he squeezes hard enough to make my bones ache, but he releases me and steps away with his hands at shoulder height in the universal gesture of surrender.

“I am sorry, but I do not want you to touch again,” he says.

Embarrassment streaks through me.

“Oh, well… actually, I don’t blame you, so—”

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