Fred said something, but Ryland couldn’t listen right then.He closed his bedroom door behind him and leaned against it for a few seconds before he forced himself to move across the room towards his bed.
He hadn’t bothered with the light.In the darkness, his feet kicked against a discarded pair of shoes.Fumbling at the bed, he pushed all the clothes he’d changed into and out of before his appointment with the lions onto the floor.
He bit back a sad little laugh as he lay down.All that worrying about what he should wear had been a truly spectacular waste of time.Curling into a small ball, he pulled Arslan’s coat even tighter around him.The movement of the cloth against his skin brought his attention back to the scratches on his back.To the marks Arslan had left on him…
Biting down on his bottom lip, Ryland closed his eyes very tightly and did his best not to fall apart, not to give in to the sense of unaccountably deep despair that swirled inside him.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.It was supposed to have been a stranger.No one he cared about was ever supposed to know.He’d expected to feel like someone who’d made the difficult decision to take money off a stranger who he would never ordinarily have sex with, the decision to do sex-work for the night.But he hadn’t taken money off a stranger—he’d taken money off Arslan.And he didn’t feel like a sex worker—he felt like a whore.
And there was only one way to fix it.When he said yes to Arslan, he had to mean it.He had to be able to look Arslan in the eye when he said that he didn’t want a penny off him and see that Arslan knew it was the truth.Arslan deserved that.
Arslan would never have forgiven him if he’d said yes to him based on a lie, if he’d said yes while he’d been taking money to be there.Ryland knew that with a sort of certainty he couldn’t ever remember feeling before.There were things a lion would forgive and things he wouldn’t—just like there were things a family would forgive and things they wouldn’t.
Ryland hadn’t been able to fix things with his family after he went off the script they’d set out for him, but he could fix this.He could be the person that Arslan had thought he was when he invited him to join the pride.
Ryland tasted blood as his teeth cut into his bottom lip.No matter how logically he tried to think about it, something inside him still screamed that he needed to be back with the professornow.
He wasn’t where he belonged.He had to be with Arslan.Then, everything would be okay.It was like a stabbing pain in a part of his mind he hadn’t even realised existed a few hours ago.
He didn’t know where the lion’s den was.The breath caught in Ryland’s throat.A frantic scrawl through his memory of the journey back to his own home yielded glimpses of dozens of shadowy houses and scores of left and right turns.But there were no street names, no road signs, nothing that could help him make his way back there.Panic spiked inside him as the full implication of that sank in.He didn’t know how to find Arslan.
It wasn’t as if he could go there, it wasn’t as if he could just turn up on the professor’s doorstep and announce that he’d spent his first night with him as whore and simply beg his forgiveness, not without having first fixed all his mistakes.But he should still know where Arslan was.It was important.In that moment, it was vital.
Even if Ryland couldn’t go back to his family, he still knew where they lived.As the thought flashed through his brain, he couldn’t help but fall into thinking that it meant he had even less chance of being accepted back by Arslan than by his parents.
No.He shook his head against the pillow.The line of thought made no sense, but somehow, it still crept under his skin, sending another shiver down his spine.
No.Not knowing was a good thing.Anything that stopped him from running back to Arslan too soon was a blessing.When Ryland went back to him, he had to be able to tell him that he wasn’t the same man who screwed everything up last time he was there.
That was right.Ryland might not have felt like he had much of a clue about what was suddenly happening to his life, but he knew with an undeniable sort of certainty that he shouldn’t let himself set eyes on Arslan again until he’d worked out a way to fix the mess his life had spiralled into.
This was his chance.His family would have accepted him back if he’d been able to tell them he’d changed himself into the person they wanted him to be.Maybe Arslan would, too, if he begged hard enough.Ryland ran his tongue over the cut on his bottom lip.It didn’t help it heal—it just made it bleed more.
There was nothing he could do that night.Wrapping Arslan’s coat even more securely around his body, Ryland closed his eyes very tightly and just tried to keep his mind from shattering into a hundred different scared little pieces.
Chapter Three
“What do you want, Ryland?”Arslan asked.His voice remained perfectly level, entirely emotionless, but he didn’t rush to turn around and face Ryland.
Arslan was being sensible.He was giving his mate time to get his thoughts in order and his newly developing instincts under control.He was keeping his distance, no matter how much he ached to do otherwise.And, if Ryland wasn’t ready to join the pride as his mate, then the least the boy could do was to let him go back to his office and throw himself in his work in peace.
But, no, Ryland had to stay behind after a lecture he had never had any business attending in the first place—he had to make it even harder for Arslan to keep the lion side of himself under control.
Eventually, when it became obvious Ryland wasn’t going to answer his question until he faced him properly, Arslan turned around.It took every ounce of self-control he could muster not to step forward, catch hold of the boy and make everything very simple between them.
Ryland took a shaky step closer and put Arslan’s neatly folded coat on the desk.
Arslan looked at the coat, then back to Ryland.His mate… No, his pet, Arslan mentally corrected himself, at least until Ryland was ready to be more.
His pet was scared.Arslan could smell the fear in his scent, and every instinct made him want to wrap the boy in his protection.The lectures he’d been giving himself about allowing Ryland time and space faded from his mind.The only thing that actually succeeding in keeping him on his side of the lecture podium was over a decade’s worth of practice at never letting himself give in to the temptation to lay a hand on a student.
Admittedly, this was the first time he wanted to hold one of his students close rather than give one a sharp slap across the back of the head to encourage him to stop acting like a toddler, but the habit still held him in good stead.Arslan had never been so grateful for having dealt with so many brats over the years.
Ryland looked down, then away, then back to Arslan, as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing there himself.
“Is something wrong?”Arslan asked.
Ryland swallowed several times in quick succession.
