Page 46 of Winterveil

Julian’s blood turned to ice.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, crossing the room in brisk strides.

Carter turned slowly to face him. A languid smile stretched his lips thin. “I told you she needed to be put in her place. Since so far you’ve failed to do it, I’ve taken it upon myself instead.”

Klaudia struggled against the grip of Carter’s lackeys. All the coldness of her gaze, the set of her jaw—gone. Fear pulsed behind her gray eyes, turning them shiny and wild, and her mouth opened with a stuttered sound of protest.

Julian felt like retching. “You hate her because she’s better than you, and whatever you do to her now won’t change that.”

But Carter didn’t bristle at the slight. Instead, he stepped forward and grasped the front of Klaudia’s blouse. With one swift tug, he tore the fabric open. The buttons scattered all over the floor, exposing the white lace of her bra and the pale cleft of her breasts.

Klaudia shrank back, trying to cover herself. Julian had to force himself not to look. His face was burning.

As he turned to Carter, his heart thumped with rising panic. He considered his options. Fighting? That was a nonstarter. The only time he’d been bodychecked in lacrosse, he’d had his father write an incensed letter to Andover’s dean and the other student had been suspended. He was bigger than Carter and both of his lackeys, but there were three of them.

But cleverness, maybe. Carter had all the transparent guile of a child, and the chip on his shoulder made him vulnerable.

“Dr. Iver sorts the professors’ reports and updates the rankings list himself,” Julian said. “You’re an idiot if you think he’d reward you for assaulting his top student.”

“She won’t tell,” Carter said.

“She won’t,” Julian agreed. “But I will.”

Carter’s gaze flickered. “Crying foul over petty slights isn’t the way things work around here. You’ll look dishonorable.”

Julian almost laughed.

“I took bribes from a private prison magnate and used my constituents’ tax dollars to rent a private jet to Turks and Caicos,” he said. “I don’t give a shit about looking dishonorable.”

Carter didn’t reply, but he didn’t make another move toward Klaudia. After a moment, he smiled again, slightly off-kilter and more manic than before.

“Come on, Julian,” he said. “Don’t you want her?”

His cheeks grew white-hot. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ll hold her down for you,” Carter said.

Julian glanced down at Klaudia. Her chest heaved as she drew quick, panicked breaths, straining the lace of her bra. He felt himself stiffen. He couldn’t help it. He turned his gaze pointedly away, digging his fingernails into his palms until blood leaped to the surface.

“Leave her alone,” he said, straightening and setting eyes on Carter again. “Clearly you don’t understand the stakes of this game. If I fail at Valeran, do you really think it’s the end for me? My father could pay my weight in hard cash without even noticing his bank account had been bled. And even if my life amounts to nothing, I’ll get to drink myself to death with hundred-year-old Macallan at a forty-acre estate in Martha’s Vineyard. Whereas you—I’m guessing that ‘drinking yourself to death’ is something of a family tradition, only your father probably did it with cheap beer in some two-bedroom ranch in Worcester. If you fail at Valeran, you will need a bailout, and to me it doesn’t look like you have the cash to spare.”

Carter’s face went pale. His lips quivered, but he didn’t speak a word. He took a step back, putting distance between himself and Klaudia, and then nodded to his accomplices.

“Let’s go,” he said. “She isn’t worth the trouble.”

His lackeys released Klaudia’s arms, and the inertia sent her tumbling to the ground. Carter fled through the door, accomplices following. Only when all three were gone did Julian dare to look down at Klaudia.

She had pushed herself onto her knees and was grasping at the fabric of her torn blouse, trying to pull it closed over her breasts. Julian took a tremulous step forward, extending his hand.

Klaudia ignored it, rising to her feet without his help.

“Are you okay?” he asked hoarsely. “Did they—”

“What are you doing here?” she bit out.

The angry quavering in her voice terrified him. Klaudia wasn’t supposed to quaver, and she wasn’t supposed to be angry, either.

It occurred to Julian, with a sense of horror, that maybe she thought he had been part of this, that he had helped Carter stage it. The notion turned his stomach.