Page 163 of Twisting Beauty

Lorcan seized my other arm, his grip bruising as his glare cut into Deargán. “Let her go. Now. Or I’ll have your criminal record pulled in front of the whole faculty.”

Deargán’s jaw ticked once before his hand opened, releasing me.

I was forced to walk to class between them. Neither stepped away. Two men who had each decided I belonged to them.

Aoife was at the lecture hall door when we got there, her eyes going to Lorcan’s hand on my arm. Then to Deargán at my other side. Then to my face. Then back to Lorcan.

In class, Lorcan sprawled in the seat beside me so I was pressed against him, his thigh flush to mine, his arm slung across the back of my chair, his notes and books spread across both our desks like he was staking his claim.

Deargán glared at us as he started his lecture, his gaze never leaving me. “Today we turn to the neuroscience of forbidden desire,” he said, his tone smooth and clinical, yet edged with something darker. “Why does the human brain ache for what it is told it cannot have? Why do taboos inflame, rather than extinguish hunger?”

His eyes lingered on me. “Incest, for example, is considered a fundamental prohibition. Yet studies show how prohibition reshapes desire and how taboo can intensify attraction. So what happens when the forbidden lives under the same roof?”

Lorcan stiffened beside me, his body a wall of heat, his silence vibrating with fury.

I held my face still. Don’t flinch. Don’t look at Lorcan.

“Consider the Westermarck effect and how might it fail, resulting in siblings who inappropriately crave each other. Is that then a flaw in their neural circuitry, say, a maladaptive response of the insula and amygdala… or is it a disease? A mental illness?”

His gaze pinned me. The room shifted, students looking at each other, looking at me, looking at Lorcan.

Aoife was smiling at the edge of my vision. Not the cruel kind. The interested kind. I have something now. The rumor was being born. I could feel the shape of it taking form on her tongue.

“Miss Lasair.” Deargán’s voice cut across the hall. “Your brother looks determined to keep you all to himself. Perhaps you’ll speak for him, since he won’t let you breathe.”

Laughter rippled through the class.

Lorcan’s hand clenched around his pen so tight the plastic creaked.

Don’t flinch. Don’t give them the reaction.

When class ended, the room emptied with the scrape of chairs. Deargán lingered at the lectern, stacking papers, his eyes fixed on me.

Lorcan moved first, his body heat searing through my sleeve. His hand hovered at the small of my back, claiming me. “Let me take you home, Gray.” Loud enough for Deargán to hear.

“She can meet you at home, Mr. Lasair.” Deargán’s voice was smooth as glass. “I would like a word with her about her paper.”

He didn’t look at Lorcan. Only me.

As the last student left, Lorcan planted himself in the doorway, broad shoulders blocking the exit. “I’ll wait right here, then. Wouldn’t want to leave her alone with a convicted felon.”

Deargán crossed the room with calm precision, pressed his hand against my back, and guided me toward the lectern as though Lorcan weren’t there.

He tilted my chin, eyes glinting, not bothering to lower his voice. “Why waste yourself on that boy? You’re mistaking Rua’s crush on him for your own.”

A growl rolled from Lorcan at the doorway, feral and raw.

I held still under Deargán’s fingers. He wants you to react. Don’t.

“Do you have anything useful to say to me, Professor,” I said, my voice level, “or are you just trying to provoke him?”

Deargán’s gaze sharpened, his voice dropping low as he leaned in even farther. “There’s a way through this where you don’t have to end it with him. We get closer. Trust me.”

I frowned up at him. “What are you⁠—?”

“Step away from her.” Lorcan’s voice cracked the air like a whip.

Suddenly Lorcan was at my side, shoving Deargán away from me with one hand and pulling me into his side with the other.