A few groups of people were milling around, waiting for their coffee orders, and the noise coming from inside the coffeehouse is a discord of conversations, clattering cups, dishes and country music. I easily picked Belle’s sniveling voice in the chaos. “…Katrina, I fucked up. I really need your help, but I hate to ask you to drive all the way back. So if you haven’t left Forest Grove already, please come over. I’m at this…Red Moon Café, a few blocks from campus.”
It wasn’t hard to know who she was talking to on the phone. I took several deep breaths to calm down the fury roiling inside. First it was the bloodsucker’s stench, now hearing Belle asking for help from the…
My head went blank when she lifted her eyes from the table and landed on me. The way her big eyes bulged made me fear for her health. Seriously, she had enormous hazel eyes; she’d make a cute lemur.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered between her teeth, her gaze wandering right and left. “Isn’t it enough what you’ve done already?”
I raised my hands up in surrender. “Uh…wrong twin. Kayden, not Alec. I come in peace.”
She looked like she was about to cry again. “That’s…”
“A little creepy that you can’t tell us apart?” I rolled my eyes as I grabbed a chair and sat at her table. “I know, right? Tell me about it.” Then I took off my jacket, showing her my full sleeve. “To make it easy for you, I have this, while Alec only has a tiny tattoo on his left shoulder.”
Here came the lemur eyes again. “You can’t sit here. I can’t be seen with you.” She shook her head. “Either of you.”
I rested my arms on the table and leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Professor, for the nuisance my brother must be causing you right now, but we really need to talk. Do you have a book?”
She scowled. “What?”
“I’m your student. You’re my teacher. If you worry so much what people will think when they see us together outside school, this conversation will look more than normal to them if we have a book on the table.”
She blew out a long sigh. The she bent to get her bag on the chair next to hers. Some…cleavage went on display. Even though I had full visual before, knew exactly what these beautiful tits looked like and would love to see them again and again, I was surprised my first instinct was not to look but to find out if anyone else was looking. And gouge their eyes if they were.
Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology textbook replaced the view and landed between us on the table. She opened it then buried her nose in. “Fine, you want to talk? Why don’t you start with why neither of you were surprised to see I’m your professor?”
That was a tough one to answer without revealing the whole deal. I should lie. I must lie.
Why was it so fucking hard to lie to her?
I was taking forever to answer. She must have noticed because she lifted her nose a little and fixed me with a death glare. “He knew who I was when he…”
Here we go.“You’re a national celebrity. The whole country followed your case. Everybody knows who you are, Belle. It’s—”
“Professor Ferro to you,” she hissed. “And even if you knew about the case, how did you know I was teaching at your university?”
“Your name is listed on the course.”
“No. They haven’t had the time to change it yet. Only Professor Asher’s name is listed for that course. I checked it myself.”
Fuck. Time for some reverse psychology.“Professor, you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re both adults. You weren’t his teacher last night. You’re making a big deal out of this for no reason.”
If I thought that glare she was giving me earlier was her death glare, I was wrong. This one was. “No reason?”
“I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”Tactically. It stopped her from asking about how we knew her. “With the case and just getting your job back, I understand what is at stake here for you.”
“No, you don’t. How could you understand? You’re just a boy whose brother tapped the teacher’s ass.”
What she said was legit, but it did hurt. I fought so hard not to tell her the whole truth so she would understand and put us all out of our misery. But it would only bring up a bigger misery, especially on her.
“Do you know how my ex-monster got me fired from the university?” she continued. “Without my consent, he had taken a video of me while I masturbated for his pleasure, under his commands, in his office. Then he coerced a student to fabricate the video to make it look like I was masturbating for said student.”
Disgust flipped my stomach. “What?”
“He gave the video to the faculty. They forced me to resign, and as a courtesy to Professor Montgomery, they kept it confidential provided that I’d never teach anywhere else.”
I should pay that fucker a visit at whatever dump he was at and punch a hole in his face.“I’m so sorry you had to go through this shit.”
“You want to know what’s really at stake here, Mr. Beastly? If your brother told anybody I was involved with him, the whole country that followed my case would turn on me in a heartbeat. Instead of being a victim of power abuse, I’d become the whore who slept with her teacher for good grades and professional gain, and fooled around with her students behind the poor guy’s back, then falsely put in him in jail so she could screw her own students.” She kept her voice low all the time, looking around to make sure no one was in a hearing range.
