Page 207 of Castings & Curses

MY WARLOCK PROFESSOR

CARA NORTH

CHAPTER1

It wasmy first day in my new role and I was ready to swallow my tongue and go to the infirmary rather than walk down the hallway and knock on his door. This was not supposed to happen. I had spent five years here avoiding this particular professor like he was patient zero of a magical plague meant to obliterate my kind.

I turned around. My intention was to exit the building and go directly to the administration and beg someone to change my assignment. Again. I was originally supposed to be working in the lab as an assistant for a rather quirky witch doing research on potions.

“Peach?” One of my favorite people in the world, Professor Larson blocked my path to the exit. “Are you lost, Dear? You should be heading that way, no?”

“I.” I gulped. “I uh.”

She looked at the note and then indicated the direction. When I turned again, we were at the other end of the hall in front of the man I was actively avoiding’s door.

“But I uh.”

“Professor Roark.” Professor Emily Larson, head of the entire department tapped on his door. “Your TA for the semester is here and looking for you.”

I closed my eyes and wished I had a different kind of magic. I would just make myself invisible. Cast a spell that would transport me to another building. Something. Of course, if I did have that kind of magic instead of being made from the magic of my species then…I wouldn’t have to worry about being assigned to the most powerful creature I had ever been around. I could catch his scent if he was across within two miles of me. I could taste his magic—

“Miss Wilder.” The warlock of my dreams stood in the doorway. “I’m right here.” Yes. Yes, he was. Right there. Right within reach. Right in front of me so I could no longer avoid him. I could feel the fight within me. My instincts to feed were never this strong around anyone else. I didn’t know why they were insatiable around him. I just…couldn’t let myself give in. No matter what. Not even a sip. No. Not one little—

“Have a wonderful semester, Peach.” Professor Larson tapped my shoulder, pulling me back to the moment. She smiled and then began moving along the hallway and through the wall she just tapped with her wand.

“That’s her office.” Professor Roark moved back a step and indicated I should follow him inside. He left the door open, and I was grateful for that. I could focus my breathing to pull from the hallway. I was dizzy in his presence. Overwhelmed by his…everything. “At least one of them. I think she has three.”

Made sense. She was always around and never seemed troubled by the weather. I imagined she had a means of moving through the buildings the rest of us did not. She was probably more powerful than this professor, but I never had an urge to so much as sip from her energy. She smelled like nothing to me. Hence the way she could sneak up on me like that without my knowledge.

He took a seat behind the large, dark oak desk and settled his fingers together in a bit of a steeple as his elbows moved to rest on the old-fashioned paper planner that was held down by four leather triangles on each end. I tried to just stay focused on his arms, his hands, but the steepled fingers were covering his lips. Lips that were framed by the mustache and short beard that extended along his jaws to his ears. He had werewolf style hair, meaning it was thick, perfectly coiffed without any effort on his part to make it so. Deep grooves formed between his dark eyebrows and his blue, no green, no grey, no—

“Miss Wilder!” The sharpness of the tone made me jerk back in response. “Are you all right?”

“What a strange question to ask.” I was…not all right.

“What’s strange is your behavior.” He leaned back in the chair and looked at me.

“Excuse me?” I blinked, trying to pull myself together and at least pretend like I had the ability to focus. I looked at the pencil cup on the desk, not the professor, and that helped.

“I’m trying to form an excuse right now and can’t. Did you hear anything I just said?” he asked.

I went through a series of sounds, but settled on the truth, “No.”

“Why aren’t you looking at me?” he asked.

“I uh. Can’t.” I knew that sounded lame, but looking at him was like looking into the abyss. I got lost so quickly and nothing else mattered. It was freaking me out.

“Can’t?” he asked. “Explain yourself. I don’t have time for games, Miss Wilder and I didn’t want a TA to begin with, so if you want to keep your job and complete this semester—”

“I do!” I looked up at him then and then looked beyond him at the books on the shelves lining that wall. “I…I’m not like other students, Professor. I—”

“I’m fully aware of what you are.” He seemed frustrated and exasperated. “Just spit it out for crying out loud. This is exactly why I don’t like—”

“It’s you.” I blurted out and then followed it with more truth he needed to understand and handle since he was insistent on me figuring this out right now in front of him rather than later when I could process, ask for a spell, something. “You are distracting me. I…have the deepest instinct I have ever felt before in my life to feed off your dark energy. Like you’ve been hiding—”

“Stop right there.” He stood up and the door to his office closed at the swipe of his hand through the air.

I was at war again. My internal monster seeking to pull from this man now more than ever before. “Professor.”

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