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Heat creeps up my neck and settles there, slow and unmistakable, and I nod once in acknowledgment, controlled enough to pass, even as something sharp and restless coils in my chest at the sound of my name in his mouth. There is no softness in the correction, no indulgence, and somehow that makes it worse. Better. He turns back to the class as if I’m just another student, and the shift is abrupt enough to leave me unmoored.

He begins to teach.

I should be taking notes. I should be listening. I should be paying attention to the structure of his argument, the way he dissects institutions with surgical precision. Instead, my focus keeps snagging on him in the daylight, on how the suit reads differently without shadows to blur the lines, sharper and more unforgiving. The fabric pulls at his shoulders when he gestures, clean and controlled, and his hands move with purpose, as if every motion is intentional. His mouth shapes certain words slowly, carefully, like precision itself is something he enjoys. I write things down that look like notes if anyone glances over, but mean absolutely nothing when I look back at them.

At some point, his gaze lifts and finds mine again.

I don’t look away.

The moment stretches, quiet and charged, and my tongue sweeps over my bottom lip without permission, a nervous reflex I don’t catch in time. His nostrils flare. Just once. A sharp intake, barely there, but it lands like a spark.

I drop my eyes immediately, pen scratching nonsense across the page while my pulse kicks hard against my ribs, too fast, too loud. I don’t look up again, not until the lecture dissolves into the scrape of chairs and the low roar of conversation returning to life.

“Class dismissed,” Alexander says, voice even. “I expect your reports on ethical language on my desk by Friday. Hard copy.”

As I shove my notebook into my bag, Wesley leans in close, far too close, his shoulder brushing my arm. Something cool slides against my skin as he slips a folded piece of paper into the neckline of my shirt with an ease that makes my stomach turn.

“Call me,” he murmurs, pleased with himself.

How fucking sleazy is it to slide his goddamn number down my fucking shirt like that? Has he completely lost his mind? The entitlement alone makes my skin crawl, the assumption that my body is just another place he can stash himself. If he weren’t the only thread I have left to figuring out what happened to my brother, I would have crushed him on instinct alone, because men like Wesley Carter don’t have balls, they have grapes, and they only feel big because no one ever squeezes hard enough to remove them from his fucking body.

Before I can respond, Alexander’s voice cuts cleanly through the noise. “Miss Cross, a word in my office?”

Every muscle in my body goes taut, and I swallow thickly.

Wesley grins behind me. “Guess you’re popular,” he says under his breath.

I straighten, smooth my expression, and turn just enough to give Wesley a smile that looks compliant from the outside. “Of course, Professor,” I say, pitching my voice perfectly normal.

5

ALEXANDER

I don’t hear the last question. I don’t hear the bell. I don’t hear the scrape of chairs or the shuffle of backpacks. I’m looking at a girl in the third row who has no business being in my classroom, because two weeks ago I had my hands in her hair, my name in her mouth, and this has been the longest two hours of my fucking life.

She was supposed to be a one night stand, even if I fucked my fist raw to her every night for the last two weeks. If I saw her again it was supposed to be at a party downtown, not in my fucking class, but she’s here, and everything I’ve been trying to cauterize with work and routine and cold showers bursts open. I have spent fourteen nights negotiating with the ceiling, bargaining with the darkness, replaying the way she smiled against my throat like she meant it. Obsession is too romantic a word for what this is. It’s a fever. It’s a wrong turn taken at full speed.

I blink, force the discussion to a neat close, assign an essay a week early, and dismiss the room. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone who sleeps well and makes measured decisions, unlike the monster I am, fraying at the edges. I watch as that slimy punk, Wesley, slides a piece of paper into her shirt, smirking like he is seconds from having what’s mine, and despite knowing I should let her leave with the rest of them, I call her in instead.

“Miss Cross,” I say, because formality is a rope I can still grab. “A word in my office?”

“Of course, Professor,” she agrees like the perfect good girl she is, and I have to swallow back the groan burning at the base of my throat.

I pack my bag with hands that feel a half-second behind my thoughts, the room emptying in a rush of noise and movement that finally fades into silence. She waits by the door, posture polite, eyes forward, as if she hasn’t already undone me simply by existing in my line of sight.

I head for the stairs without looking back, because if I do, I will stop being careful.

My office is tucked away on the upper floor, deliberately removed from student traffic, the kind of seclusion that used to feel like sanctuary. Today it feels like a trap I built myself. I hear her behind me, the soft cadence of her steps following at a respectful distance, and it does nothing to ease the tight, relentless pull in my chest.

She smells like vanilla and peaches and all it makes me think is that she is just as fucking sweet as one.

She’s deceptively sweet under all that attitude, and it threads straight into memory, into the back of my throat, into places I have tried very hard not to touch in the last two weeks. My mouth waters before I can stop it. My fingers itch like they remember the shape of her waist, the way she leaned into me without hesitation, like she trusted me not to drop her.

Get it together Alexander.

I unlock the door and step aside, letting her pass. The sight of her crossing the threshold, entering my space, flips something ugly and possessive in me that I clamp down on immediately.

“Sit,” I tell her, gesturing to the chair opposite my desk.