Page 87 of In Control

She looks at me with sympathy – an expression I’ve always hated. Look at me with lust, with fear, perhaps even admiration, never fucking pity.

“The pressure here at Crestmore can be hard for us professors,” she says. “It’s a step up. I remember feeling it acutely in my first term.”

Professor Chan is a decade older than me and she’s been here for three years. Usually, I like her. She’s one of the more open-minded, forward-thinking of the faculty, not like some of the other professors stuck in the past.

But today, I find her concern irritating.

The work’s not the problem. The pressure neither. I can cope with both of those easily.

It’s the temptation that’s eating away at me.

I look down at her face. She’d be one of the first queuing up to report me if she found out I was sleeping with one of the students.

Yeah, I won’t be confessing my troubles to her anytime soon.

Snatching the plastic cup brimming with jet black coffee, I step to the side.

“Thanks, Maggie, but I’m fine. All I need is a good night’s sleep.”

She smiles flatly and I stomp off down the corridor before she can halt me again.

As I round the corner, I smell a familiar scent.

Not Sophia.

Roman.

What the hell is he doing here?

I ask him as I swing open my office door and find him sitting in front of my desk.

“As you’re never fucking home, I figured this was the only way to see you.”

“I have a meeting,” I say, throwing my jacket on the hook on the back of the door.

“Don’t be an arsehole, Esra.”

“Me, the arsehole?” I snort. “That’s rich.”

“Sit down,” Ro says. “We need to talk.”

I consider turning around and walking out. What’s there to say? We’re at a stalemate here. I don’t want them seeing Sophia, and they don’t want to stop.

But then he says, “I was going to ask her to leave us alone.”

I slump into my chair. “But instead, you decided to join Liam and Gabe and fuck her instead.” He raises his eyebrows obviously surprised I know. “I could smell it, mate.”

He shakes his head. “Shit, you have it bad.”

I rub the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. “This rupture in the pack is killing me.”

“It’s killing us all.”

“Really? Doesn’t feel like it from this end of the bond. You’re all behaving like lovesick, giddy fools.”

“She’s special,” he says simply.

I rub my eyes harder. Behind Ro, the office clock ticks the passing seconds.

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