Page 108 of A University of Betrayal

I was a fool.

An arm lifted in the corner of my eye and I looked up, grateful for the distraction, and nodded to Amber.

“How much time do we have, Professor?”

I didn’t let on that I didn’t like that title at all, especially coming from her, even though this goddamn title was one of the few things in my life I didn’t have to lie about. But with these girls in the room and the ones who were annoyingly stalking me all over campus, it always sounded like they were flirting. And the last thing I was here for was to be a sex object for some spoiled girl’s daddy issues.

“Forty-five minutes, Amber,” I answered her tersely, returning Amber’s smile with inner distaste.

This girl had put the most effort into the application phase so far, and since I wasn’t blind, I knew what her goals were. She was no better than all the other hormone-driven girls in this course who made me feel like I’d landed on an episode ofThe Bachelor. To make matters worse, it didn’t stop when I left the seminar room. They wereeverywhere,and over the last few years I had needed to develop tactics to protect my privacy from these nasty little stalkers.

The worst were those girls on the football field who knew no limits and wouldaccidentallywander into the men’s showers or slip their letters under my office door because my mailbox, which existed for study-related exchanges only, was already full.

I was glad that they hadn’t found out my address yet, because there wasno wayI wanted to be greeted by naked freshmen in my bed, as had been the case in my third year.

Once again, my fingers wandered to the gold ring that looked like it was made of two rings welded together.

There was only one woman for whom I would throw all my principles overboard, and this woman, of all people, no longer wanted to have anything to do with me.

The need to unlock my iPad and send her all the hundred messages I had suppressed until today made me grip the ring tighter until it became warm, and I could clearly feel my heart beating.

I didn’t know what to do, because every wrong message would be another stone thrown at the heavenly glass castle that housed the garden she had made a retreat for me.

I pressed my lips together and suppressed a dry laugh as I stared at the ring on my finger.

At that moment, this allegoricalgardenseemed to me like that ofKing Tantalus.Tantalus had been a mortal king who had tried to fool the gods and had therefore been cruelly punished by Zeus. He had been sentenced to stand in a garden with fruit and water floating right under his nose, but always out of reach.

Was this the punishment of the gods of Moenia for turning against them?

When I felt a stare on me, I looked up reflexively, and it only took a few seconds for my eyes to meet her aventurine-colored ones.

Love is a Bitch – Slowed

ImXgine, ONIBI

Like every time, something inside me tensed, and I didn’t just mean my jaw. My whole body went on alert, ready to make her forget everything I’d revealed without thinking twice.

It hadn’t been wise to let the feeling of power that shot through my veins after each injection guide me. Now I had a witness and, on top of that, she was one of those whose existence would soon be history.

She stared at me, as she always did, before looking back down at her table and placing the tip of the silver ballpoint pen on the page again, as if she hadn’t just been watching me. As she did, one of her platinum blonde strands fell into her face, and I immediately felt catapulted back to that evening with J.

Her hair had been just as light. White gold that I would have loved to claw my fingers into one more time.

I felt myself getting hard and took a deep breath.

Thiswas definitely the wrong place to be thinking about this woman’s delicate body, the soft curves that would probably press perfectly against my body when I took her hard from behind and showed her what it meant to be worshiped by me.

Fuck.

Just the thought alone had been enough to make my cock so hard that it strained against my pants.

That was what the thought of her had done to me ever since the line betweenfriendshipandmore than friendshiphad shifted between us, and she’d fucked me without restraint in my car.She had made me addicted to her,to her clever nature, her flattering humor, her hidden beauty and this divinely hot body that I hadn’t even begun to explore.

In the corner of my eye, I noticed something black scurrying past the window and a glance at the statue-adorned courtyard told me that another flock of ravens had settled in front of the window, as if they were looking for something. Just like in yesterday’s seminar lesson.

I noticed that the Blair girl was also looking out of the window whilst brushing the loose strand of hair behind her ear.

She must have followed my gaze, which reminded me that she had been watching me since the first lesson, as if she couldreadme, as if sheknewwhat I was up to.

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