“The monster in me calling to the monster in you.”
…the dark in you craves the dark in me…
His words warp and transform to those he whispered to me in Laramie’s dressing room. Right before he told me to control myself.
Me, controlmyself?
Me?
The motherfucking hypocrisy.
But he’s right. He’sfuckingright, and I hate him all the more for it.
I can’t control myself.
Iambroken. Iamdamaged goods.
The dark in me doesn’t justcravethe dark in him.
I hunger for it like a starving beast.
That’s why I haven’t stood up and denounced him in front of everyone yet. Why I spent the whole of yesterday—according to Melissa—asleep in bed, when I should have been down at the sheriff’s office, laying a case of assault against my professor.
I shudder, biting down so hard on my lower lip that pain radiates through my flesh.
Bastian looks away, snapping the ghostly cord between us. I sit motionless as he reminds everyone of overdue assignments, required reading, and midterms coming up before dismissing them.
I hear everything, but register nothing.
I’m too busy willing my clit to stop tingling.
I should have escaped. Instead, I’m still planted like a fucking flag when my professor looks over at me and beckons with a flick of his hand.
“Miss Lee? A moment, please.”
Around me, students gather their things, chattering as they file out of the lecture hall. Melissa gives me a curious look.
“Want me to wait?” she asks quietly.
“No,” I blurt.
She hesitates, then nods stiffly. “Alright. See you later, I guess.”
I steel myself as I stand, but my legs still quiver under me when I approach Bastian’s desk. My legs feel wooden, my movements mechanical. Jeans I don’t remember putting on rub against my inner thighs, my tank top too tight, my cardigan scratchy.
From the corner of my eye, I notice Kai shuffling the papers he brought into class with him like he’s sorting them, but he’s watching me under lowered lashes.
Is he checking on me?
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Bastian says when I reach his desk. “Too busy studying to reply to my messages?”
The casual way he says it—like we’re in some normal relationship where he has the right to expect responses from me—makes something snap inside.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hiss, keeping my voice low.
Not because someone might hear—Kai’s the only one left in the room—but because I don’t feel like going on a fucking rampage right now, and yelling will set me off.
When Bastian just tilts his head at me, my voice grows a little louder.
