4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
He’ll do whatever it takes to get what he wants. And so will you.
The undeniable truth of Malcolm’s words haunted and taunted me.
I’d been so desperate for cock that I’d not only fucked a vampire—without screaming at the top of my lungs, “Holy shit, vampires are real!”—but I’d fucked the guy who’d sexually assaulted me and threatened my life days before.
And damn, I’d enjoyed it.
You’d think, as twisted as it was, that a girl’s first threesome would keep her sexually satiated, but nope. After last night with Malcolm and Kade, I felt like a pumpkin who’d had its guts scooped out. Empty. Desperately empty.
Addiction ran in my veins. I’d discovered my drug of choice, and I was in need of my next fix.
I raced back to the apartment, the blessedly empty apartment, between classes and did what I’d like to think anyone in my situation would do—I snuck a cucumber from the fridge, hightailed it to my bed, and crawled under the covers.
I was wiggling out of my panties when—
A phone rang.
For an irrational second, hope surged through me. A phone! My phone? Could it be—
But no.
This was an old-school, attention-demanding jangling.
Once, twice, three times.
Incessant and persistent and trill as fuck, nagging at me like an ignored chore.
I willed it to stop so I could…continue my less conventional method of veggie consumption. Damn it all to hell. I needed something inside me now. But the noise was relentless, hacking through the silence of the apartment with the persistence of a woodpecker on the world’s last tree.
“Fine!” I groaned, throwing the covers off in a dramatic flourish with one hand, still clutching my organic dildo in the other.
I got out of bed and stomped out of my room, my feet slapping, agitated, against the gleaming hardwood as I traced the irritating noise to its source—a landline. An actual, from the 1980s, rotary relic in Connor’s room.
Connor.
Where was Connor?
He hadn’t been in the apartment last night, but…
Why did I give a fuck? I shouldn’t, but something about his absence troubled me, tugging at me like a dream I badly wanted to recall slipping just out of reach.
I snatched the receiver up and barked into the mouthpiece, agitation lacing my voice, “What?”
Then I inhaled and was instantly nose-drunk from the scent of him. Smoky cedar, rain, and sin.
I glanced at his bed but pushed the thoughts out of my head. My life was already in danger, without me fucking myself with a cucumber in Connor’s bed. But damn, the thought of getting off while wrapped in his sheets, his intoxicating scent suffusing the air, pretending it was him inside me…
I sniffed again, growing heady. Why do jackasses always smell so good, like it’s a law of physics or something?
And…why was every cell in my brain suddenly working together to envision an anatomically possible position for me to take Malcolm, Kade, and Connor at the same time?
Can a person be eaten alive by their own horniness?
“Are you there? Hello? HELLO!” a voice shrieked into my ear.
I recognized that voice. This was a horror flick, and my entire libido was the first victim.
Ms. Tissdale.
“Tuesday, are you there?”
“I’m here,” I sighed.
Unfortunately.
“Dean Bennett requires your presence in his office immediately,” Ms. Tissdale informed me.
And, just like that, my libido was alive and thriving again.
For a second, I actually smiled. Xander’s office meant Xander’s scent, his voice, his maddening ability to be both infuriating and irresistible. A fresh hit of whatever the hell he was made of.
“On my way,” I said.
Memories of the last time I was in Xander’s office flared in my mind. My knees slung over his shoulders, his face buried between my thighs, his tongue making me writhe…
I hung up the phone, dropped the cucumber into the refrigerator, and all but sprouted wings and flew out of the apartment.
I found myself running to the administrative building, blowing past Ms. Tissdale’s desk in the reception area, and bursting into Xander’s office without waiting for anyone to tell me it was okay to go inside.
I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to beg for me.
But I couldn’t wait.
His mouth, his hands weren’t enough.
Malcolm and Kade weren’t enough.
Today was going to be the day I fucked my man.
I deserved that much, didn’t I? One thing in this godforsaken mess of a life to go my way.
“Good, you’re here.” He rose to his feet, looking sexy as ever in his gray suit and speaking in a stern tone I couldn’t wait to hear bossing me around in bed.
His bed.
I shut the door behind me, quickly flicking the lock. The blinds on the hallway window were already closed, saving me a few seconds.
I strode over, leaned provocatively over the side of his desk with my ass in the air, and flipped my skirt up.
“Oh, Dean Bennett. Is this a disciplinary meeting because you’ve heard what a bad girl I am? Why don’t you give me the spanking I so obviously—”
He was not amused. Or at least, he pretended not to be. With an almost theatrical clearing of his throat, he pointed to the chair across from his desk. The chair I’d sat in while he ate me out, his facial hair rubbing oh-so-nicely against my inner thighs.
“Sit down, Ms. Dare,” he barked, his blue eyes flashing.
“Ms. Dare, huh? Somebody’s feeling kinky.” I reached out to tease his arm with my fingertips, but he grabbed my hand and tossed it away.
“I’m not playing with you, Geulia.”
I smirked. “Well. That’s a damn shame, isn’t it? You’re so good at playing with—”
“Geulia,” he said, and his voice had a bite in it that kept me from doing what I wanted to do.
Marching across the room, through the third door, the door I now knew led directly to his apartment. Displaying myself for him on his bed and refusing to get up until he gave in and railed me raw.
Panic surged through me. Was he going to say what had happened between us was a mistake? Even worse, was he about to declare that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen again?
No.
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Reluctantly, I straightened up, letting the fabric of my skirt fall back into place, and plopped down into the chair, crossing my legs and arms.
“What’s up?” I asked as casually as possible, but whatever he said next, I didn’t hear it.
It was like a memory had grabbed me by the neck and was choking me. The memory of the last time I’d sat in this chair.
Not of Xander’s skilled tongue making me come so hard I’d blacked out, but before that…
“What time was it when you ate me out?” I blurted.
He blinked at me. “For starters, please lower your voice, and I don’t, as a matter of fact, know the precise minute, but—”
“What time of day was it, Xander?”
“Late afternoon. It was late afternoon,” he said.
I nodded. That made sense.
Afterwards, he’d taken me to his bed, where I’d slept all night and woke the next morning.
Except…
It hadn’t been late afternoon. It had been morning.
I didn’t know how I knew or why it was important, but I was certain of it.
I’d come to Xander’s office in the morning.
Which meant I hadn’t just slept all night afterwards… I’d lost practically twenty-four hours.
“Geulia?” he prompted.
You came by to check the lost and found for your phone and just popped in to say hi, I think. But things…escalated, he’d told me.
But that wasn’t right either.
I hadn’t wanted him to know I’d lost my phone. If he knew I’d lost my phone, he knew I’d lost all my leverage over him, so why the hell would I have…
You didn’t, a little voice in the back of my head whispered.
Trust no one, Mom’s note had said. Not trust no one except Xander.
Trust no one.
When had I come to his office and, more importantly, why?
And how exactly had things escalated?
And why, for fuck’s sake, couldn’t I remember?
“Geulia!” Xander’s lips pressed into a tight line, his knuckles whitening as they clenched the edge of his desk.
The heat in his gaze wasn’t the lustful kind I’d been hoping for when I raced across campus. No, this was pure, cold anger—the sort of intensity that promised no mercy if I stepped too far out of line.
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Tell me what happened in the library.”
I hesitated because a lot had happened in the library, and I wasn’t sure what he was—
“Connor told me. You were sexually assaulted on my campus, and you didn’t see fit to report it to me immediately?” he demanded.
Connor.
“Well, I…” I faltered.
The library.
Standing outside the library.
Talking to Connor.
No, not just talking…
We’d been arguing.
My gaze landed on the bruise on my knuckles.
Had I hit Connor?
My pulse revved in my chest.
Had I hurt Connor?
“Why didn’t you report what happened to me, Geulia?” Xander asked again, both the way he worded the question and the tone in his voice softer.
“I…I don’t know,” I admitted, because the only truth I could think of was that Connor had vowed to protect me.
Connor had been following me around like a shadow ever since it happened, making sure I was safe.
Except…
He wasn’t anymore.
When was the last time I’d even seen him?
“You didn’t think, as the dean of this college, I needed to be informed?” Xander asked. “It’s my duty to protect the students here. There are procedures that must be followed and—”
“Could you not just, I don’t know, hug me and ask me if I’m okay?” I clenched my fists, feeling the heat of my own frustration rising to meet his.
“You’re not okay!” He slammed his hand down on the desk, making me jump. “From this moment forward, you are not to leave that apartment without an escort. Either Malcolm or Kade will accompany you at all times. Everywhere you go.”
I shook my head. “No…”
“This is non-negotiable,” he said through gritted teeth.
“But Malcolm… Kade… They’re…”
“They’re what?”
“Obnoxious,” I said. “They’re obnoxious.”
And dangerous, I thought. Kade was the one who’d attacked me. Malcolm was a fucking vampire.
But the words stuck in my throat like they were wrapped in barbed wire.
Trust no one. Trust no one. Trust no one.
“What about Connor?” I asked.
Connor had already been doing what Xander was now mandating Malcolm and Kade do. But why had he stopped?
Xander’s fierce expression didn’t change. “Connor has other responsibilities.”
“Other responsibilities?” I repeated. “Like what? Flirting with Ms. Tissdale?” I shook my head before he could reply. “Then you can be my bodyguard. It’s your duty to protect the students of Whispering Ivy, isn’t it?”
“You’re dismissed.” He pointed at the door. “Wait in the lobby until Kade comes to fetch you.”
I stood, but before I could make it to the door, his voice stopped me.
“Geulia.”
I turned back, my heart thudding against my ribs.
He held something in his hand, something I didn’t recognize at first.
My phone.
Or what was left of it.
The case was missing, and it looked mangled, the shattered screen a mosaic of cracks and jagged edges.
“This was turned into lost and found,” he said, his tone carefully neutral. “It’s completely destroyed, unfortunately.”
Completely destroyed.
My texts from Mom destroyed.
My voicemails from her destroyed.
My pictures of her destroyed.
Everything I had left of her…just as gone as she was.
My eyes burned, but I forced back my tears. Even though it was utterly useless, I took my phone from him and turned it over in my hands.
“Was it like this when it was turned into you?” I croaked out.
His bright-blue eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you asking?”
I’m asking if you’re the one who smashed it.
I shook my head, unable to trust myself to speak, because of the other thought in my head, the unbidden warning that if I wasn’t careful, I would be destroyed as thoroughly as my phone.