Page 7 of Bewitched By the Mountain Man
I know I’ll never see her again. I can’t. I don’t let anyone see me. I’m too fucked, too far gone.
And she’s the only woman who’s made me lose control in years. Years since…
No. Don’t go there. Don’t fucking go there.
I shut it down. Focus. Drive into her again and again, and she scratches down my back, whimpering that it’s too much, that she can’t take it. But I know she can. And I need her to.
“I’m not done claiming you,” I rasp.
She moans for me, her body shattering again and again until she’s boneless beneath me, ruined and wrecked, marked in every way a man can mark a woman.
And me?
Still broken.
But for the first time in years, not entirely alone in the dark.
I strideacross the campus quad, the autumn wind slicing through my coat.
I can’t shake her from my mind. The woman who let me have all of her. The way she took me, moaned for me, came completely undone beneath me.
Fuck.
I had her, until the knock on the door. Her worried friend came to collect her. She gathered her things, hurried out without looking back. I scared her off. Like I knew I would. And then she vanished.
Not that we could’ve been anything in real life. I don’t know her name. She doesn’t know mine.
She’s never even seen my face.
The university buildings rise around me, all ivy-covered brick and self-importance. A world away from the pulsing underbelly of the club where I lost control.
A mistake. A revelation. Both.
It’s been years since I’ve set foot in a lecture hall. Adjunct professor, a temporary gig, filling in for Professor Harlan, who bolted for a family emergency. His loss. My reluctant gain.
The dean called yesterday, practically begged. Said my “expertise in criminal psychology” made me the ideal stand-in. He didn’t mention where that expertise came from. Before I consulted for law enforcement, Iwaslaw enforcement. Sheriff in a small town no one had heard of until the human trafficking case broke wide open. Girls disappearing. Locals looking the other way. A sting operation that turned into a national headline. My name was on the news for weeks. Hero. Whistleblower. Trauma survivor. Depends who you ask.
What they don’t say is how it gutted me.
How it still does.
I said yes to this stand-in professor gig mostly because the real world’s knocking louder these days, and because hiding behind masks—literal and otherwise—can’t last forever.
Especially not after last night.
I broke my one rule: don’t touch.
The club isn’t my playground. It’s my vigil where I watch and protect. I make sure the wide-eyed girls dragged in by reckless friends don’t end up prey. No names. No faces. No entanglements. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
The psych building appears ahead, students swarming with coffee cups and backpacks, scattered like ants. I adjust my tie, smooth down my hair, and mold my expression into something neutral and professional.
This is the real me they get. Professor Lachlan Cain. Not a survivor—just a man who saw too much. A witness to the worst in people.
Still haunted by what I’ve seen.
No one here knows what I do at night. No one knows how badly I failed at detachment last night.
I push through the double doors and step into the classroom. Stale air hits me. Thirty-some students. Grad-level seminar: Deviant Behavior and Societal Controls.
