In and out. In and out.I tried to do as he said and regulate my breaths, but they were still too fast and shallow as the fuzziness on the edge of my brain indicated I was about to pass out. As darkness filtered through the last of my consciousness, I heard, “Fuck.” And then Ethan was fisting the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair as he pulled my head back and crushed his lips against mine.
As I tasted him, our breaths mingled until his breathing slowed mine. The dark spots retreated from my mind and those fuzzy tendrils faded away. I would have fallen into a heap on the floor, but there was a professor wrapped around me, keeping me standing.
No—more than that, he kept me grounded.
The triggering event seeped from my essence, and Ethan absorbed it into his own, taking away the painful memories. I’d never found anything in all my time after the attack, not through therapy or drugs or desperation that could bring me out of a full-blown attack the way Ethan just had.
Take that, Dr. Graystone. Counting to five and grounding myself in what I could see had nothing on Ethan Sullivan.
“What thefuck?”
Connor’s exclamation was like a bucket of ice water dumped directly on my head, and I leapt out of Ethan’s arms as though he was electrified.
“Eth…dude…” Brodie said with wide eyes. “I don’t think?—”
Holy shit.Holy shit. I'd just kissed myprofessorin the middle of the kitchen with all four guys front row and center. Or had he kissed me? Sort of irrelevant, I supposed.
“Put the fucking gun away, Connor,” Ethan snapped, making me jump a little.
The gun. That was what’d sent me into a panic attack. Connor pulled a fuckinggunon me.
“Not until she signs the NDA,” Connor snapped, stubbornness radiating from his every pore. The gun inquestion was no longer pointed at me but held loosely at his side. It was all I could focus on. Now that I’d been reminded, I couldn’t look away, couldn’t even blink as, over and over in my head, I heard the deafening sound of shots.
Brodie stepped between Connor and me, breaking my line of sight with the weapon as he snatched the document from the table. “She’ll sign it, bro. Put the gun away. Can’t you see what it’s doing to her?”
My tunnel vision blurred out everything except Brodie and the paperwork in his hands. Connor muttered something aboutsensitive snowflakesand the surge of anger nearly eclipsed my panic. Nearly but not completely.
Andrew cleared his throat, rising from the table and moving to Connor’s side. I dimly paid attention as he murmured something to the dark-haired asshole, his voice low and his lips close to Connor’s ear. Then Connor spat a curse and stuffed the gun out of sight in the back of his pants.
“That would have been relevant information a little sooner, Drew,” he hissed, then abruptly stormed out of the room without even so much as an offhand apology for pulling a gun on me. At least Haze had said sorry for the explosion, and that hadn’t even been deliberate.
“Sit down, Evie babe,” Brodie coaxed, giving me a very gentle push toward an empty chair.
I did as I was told, because I was in shock. What the fuck waswrongwith Connor? Who pulled a gun on someone without provocation?
A warm hand stroked my spine, and I leaned back into the touch. Ethan. His magnetism was damn near supernatural with how drawn to him I was.
“Evelyn, this was a disastrous idea. I’ll speak to Dean Attworth and—” Ethan began.
“You can’t,” Andrew snapped.
Ethan’s soothing hand on my back stilled. “Why the fuck not? Evelyn isn’tsafehere so?—”
“Oh, but she’s safe under your watchful eye,Professor?Do I need to report what we all just witnessed as irrefutable inappropriate conduct with a student?” Andrew’s voice was like fucking ice, and his glare was even harder. My jaw dropped as I looked from him to Ethan and back again, wondering if they’d come to physical blows if I didn’t intervene.
Quickly grabbing the pen from Brodie, I scribbled my signature on the paperwork without even skimming it first. “There. Done. Signed. Okay?”
Andrew relaxed ever so slightly, and his expression thawed as he shifted his gaze to me. Then he nodded tightly and took the paper from my outstretched hand. “Thank you, Evelyn. I’ll speak with Connor and ensure this unpleasantness won’t happen again.”
Ethan’s hand dropped from my back. “No, I’ll speak with him. I trust you’ll provide Evelyn with a copy of that NDA so she understands what she’s just agreed to?”
“Obviously,” Andrew drawled, and Haze slid a duplicate contract across the table to me.
Ethan gave a small grunt. “You could have handled this a lot better without involving Connor.”
“No shit,” Brodie agreed, running a hand through his messy, blond hair. It did nothing to detract from how handsome and alluring he was.
“Are you okay now?” Ethan asked me the question quietly, crouching beside my chair to meet my eyes with his own concerned gaze. “That’s the second panic attack I’ve seen since you arrived.”
