Rooke drops his chin, eyes narrowing. “I need you to calm down, boy.” His voice has gone soft. It’s the same tone he used in the mausoleum right before everything went to shit.
“Stop fucking calling me that!”
I grab the first thing my hand touches—a glass award of some kind sitting on his desk—and hurl it at the wall beside the filing cabinet.
It makes a most satisfying crash as it shatters.
But even more satisfying is the way Rooke flinches when some of the shrapnel hits us.
We both stare at the fragments scattered across the floor.
“Do you feel better now?” Rooke asks dryly, a rueful smile ghosting on his mouth as he tugs the front of his shirt to dislodge a few shards of glass. “It won’t last. Violence never truly fills the void. It’s always temporary. A flash in the pan that leaves you wanting more.”
He pushes off his desk, glass crunching under his shoes as he steps closer.
I hold my ground. But barely.
“Stop lecturing me. I’m not your student. I’m not your fucking T.A. I’mnothingto you.” I force a swallow, and Rooke’s eyes slide to my throat like he knows exactly how close I am to coming apart.
“Stop,” I murmur.
His gaze moves lazily back to mine, eyes hooded. “You’re sending me an awful lot of mixed signals.”
My eyelids tremble as I struggle not to look at his mouth. It’s the way he’s speaking, for fuck’s sake. Voice low, rumbling, I have to strain to make out every word. “I’m beingcrystalfucking clear.”
He tsks me, tilting his head. “You say you want space, yet you can’t seem to stay away.”
His cologne fills every breath now. It should smell like the woods me and Haven got lost in our entire childhood, but it’s too sophisticated. Our woods were as wild and feral as me and Haven were back then.
“You say you hate me, yet here you are. In my office, standing inappropriately close to someone who’s apparently nothing to you.” His head tilts the other way. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Idohate you.”
“Hmm,” he hums. “Is that why you’re shaking?”
Fuck.
He’s right.
My hands, my shoulders, my whole goddamn body is vibrating.
With anger. Not?—
Withanger. Because I’m fucking pissed off.
Rooke leans in, but I’m frozen in place, subjected to his roving gaze. For once, I don’t feel like a specimen.
I feel…wanted. Needed.
“You’re trembling,” he murmurs, lips barely moving. “Your pupils are massive. And, more importantly…” His gaze drops slowly to my crotch, his voice slowing to a salacious drawl that makes my skin prickle. “Your cock is hard. It’s almost like…you want to fuck me.”
My face burns, but I can’t look away from his eyes. They’re just so fucking intense.
I manage a croaky, “Shut up,” but I might as well not have bothered, because he just keeps talking.
“That’s all you’ve been thinking about it, isn’t it? Every night. Every time you’re inside her.”
He steps past me, and my lungs hitch with a breath I should have taken hours ago. He turns, circling me as I stand rooted to the spot, caged in by…what?
