43. CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
SAWYER
I was getting that fucking A.
Even if I had to burn Evermourne to the ground and piss on the ashes.
Faculty row was dead at 03:47 a.m. Ivy choking the walls. Korolev’s house looked miserable enough to belong to him. One light on. Not a single sign anyone inside had ever enjoyed themselves.
Vivi told me to stay away. He was too dangerous. Blah, blah, fucking blah. Moon was too busy getting wrecked by that Irish bastard to answer a single text. Fine. Solo it is.
Noah could get me past whatever sad little security Mr. Sunshine had on that laptop. He just didn’t know that was the plan yet. Details. Someone had to introduce him to a little recreational crime.
One quick swap. A for the B-minus.
Just like the perfect Whitlock boy I was supposed to be.
Fail this class and the old man would finally have an excuse to put me back in that room.
All I had to do was not die first.
Forty seconds. I was getting faster at lock-picking. The side-door lock clicked open. I slipped in, shut it softly, and turned on my phone light.
Kitchen first. The counter was clean. One bowl sat under a cloth, dough rising slow. Drawers. Nothing.
Who the fuck bakes bread at midnight? Does he live with his mother?
The study was just as useless. Desk buried under papers. No laptop. Bookshelves that looked like they hadn’t been touched for pleasure in years.
My pulse was being a real bitch about it while I searched. Exit through the kitchen. Window to the left—too small. Three seconds to the side door if he woke up. Where the fuck does an ethics professor hide a laptop when the whole damn desk is already buried under his own hypocrisy?
Something growled behind me. Oh. Shit. A massive Doberman stepped into the beam—ears flat, teeth bared, eyes already measuring which piece of me to take first.
“Good doggie,” I whispered, hands up, giving it the full Whitlock charm offensive. “Very good doggie. Let’s not eat the gorgeous intruder, yeah? I’m delicious but highly toxic.”
It lunged. I yelped, spun, boots skidding on hardwood. “Fuck. Nice dog! Friendly! Treats next time, I swear on my unfinished will—”
Heavy footsteps.
Stairs.
A deep, accented voice cut through the dark. “Taya. Zhdat.”
The dog dropped mid-lunge. Still growling. Still watching my throat.
Professor Leonid Korolev came down the stairs slowly. Stupid tall. Bare feet silent on the wood. Black joggers hung low on his hips. Black t-shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. Tattoos on his knuckles, up both forearms, disappearing under the sleeve and climbing his neck.
My eyes dropped. Joggers. Fucking seriously?
I dragged my gaze back up before he caught me. Black hair mussed. Dark stubble. Scar cutting through one eyebrow. He stopped on the last step. Those eyes landed on me as if he’d already decided I wasn’t worth the effort.
Night made him worse. He looked ready to bury me under the floorboards and keep teaching in the morning.
I flashed the smile that usually got me out of worse and raised the kitchen scissors I’d stolen from his drawer.
My hands were already shaking. I ignored it. “Evening, Professor. Lovely home. Very… chic. Thought we could discuss my completely unfair B-minus. Privately.”
He took one step. I lunged and swung the scissors at his ribs.
He caught my wrist mid-swing, twisted, and slammed me into the wall hard enough my teeth clicked.
Fuck. Up close he looked like the Russian they’d send after John Wick.
His massive hand crushed my wrist above my head. The other took the scissors as if they were a child’s toy. Blade skittered across the floor.
I twisted, knee driving for his balls. He blocked with his thigh and slammed his forearm across my chest, pinning me with the kind of ease that said he’d done this to bigger men and simply… stopped them.
Heat punched low in my gut anyway.
Perfect. Something else fucking wrong with me.
“I wondered how long it would take.” His gaze dropped once to my mouth, then to the scissors on the floor, then to the open drawer. “You break into houses the same way you do everything else. Loud. Messy. Weeks of this, Whitlock. The grade stands.”
I bucked. Useless.
“Jesus, okay, dramatic.”
I slammed my forehead toward his nose. He jerked back a fraction, then drove his knee into my thigh hard enough the muscle screamed, locking my leg.
Joke first. Always joke first.
“Christ, Professor. At least pretend you’re going to buy me dinner first.”
Panic punched up my throat. Why couldn’t he just see the smile. The pretty eyes. The charm. Give me the fucking A already.
Very on-brand.
Maybe the man was dead below the waist.
“Do you have any idea who you’re looking at?” I snarled. “I’m a solid ten, Professor. The least you could do is pretend to admire the view.” My voice cracked.
Great. I sound twelve.
Fuck.
“Say something,” I begged. “Or do you just get off on watching pretty heirs squirm?”
“If you applied half this energy to the actual work, the grade would already be fixed.”
His hand fisted the front of my shirt and yanked me off the wall like I weighed nothing. The room lurched. My back hit the dining table hard enough the wood groaned.
He loomed over me, broad shoulders blocking the dim light from upstairs.
Metal flooded my mouth.
“What the fuck are you—”
He reached down, unbuckled his belt with one calm motion. Leather hissed through the loops. The sound punched straight through my skull.
No. Not that sound. Not again.
My body locked before my brain caught up.
I jerked against him.
Korolev stilled.
His gaze flicked from the belt to my face.
He didn’t move.
One second.
Two.
Long enough that my lungs started to burn.
I froze harder.
Wrong time to freeze. Do something.
“Great, so you’re into bondage too? Kinky—”
The belt wrapped my wrists before I could finish. He cinched it tight. I drove my heel into his ribs. He grunted. I twisted like a feral cat, rolled off the table, and bolted up the stairs.
Go. Go. Go. Three seconds. Three seconds and I’m gone.
The bedroom door hung open. Laptop. Right there on the bed like a fucking gift from a merciful god.
I lunged for it.
Heavy footsteps right behind me. Too fast.
A hand fisted the back of my shirt and yanked. My feet left the floor and I slammed face-first onto the mattress, the laptop bouncing away.
“Do you ever close that mouth?” Apparently, that was Russian for death sentence.
Next to the laptop sat a stack of paperwork. Grading papers at night like some sad, sexless robot. Of course the bed was made with hospital corners.
Wait. That wasn’t graded papers. Something else.
He shoved the stack off the bed with one hand before I could get a better look.
One thick thigh pinned my hips to the bed. His forearm pressed across my upper back, crushing me into the sheets that smelled like him.
I twisted, breath sawing. “Fuck, why are you so obsessed with me? Just give me the fucking A already—”
The weight of him. The sheets smelled like him. My brain screamed run. The rest of me stayed.
“I said no.”
He yanked my arms above my head hard enough that I actually yelped, then tested the restraints with a firm tug. I bucked once. The bedframe slammed the wall. The hood came down fast. Black. Suffocating.
“No—wait—get the fuck off me—what are you doing—” My voice pitched higher than I wanted. I thrashed against the mattress. “Professor. Professor. This isn’t funny. I was joking. I—”
He hauled me up like a sack of laundry and threw me over his shoulder. The world spun. Blood rushed to my head. My bound wrists dug into my spine.
Air wouldn’t come.
“Seriously, put me down. You’re making this weird, Professor. Really weird. I have a reputation to uphold—”
“Shut up, Whitlock.”
He started descending. Stairs. Down. Each step jolted through me. I heard claws on wood. Taya. The dog was following.
The air turned colder. Damp. Basement smell. He stopped. Dropped me. I hit the floor hard, shoulder first, air punched out of my lungs. The hood stayed on.
The smell was the same.
The dark was the same.
I scrambled back until my spine hit the stone wall, legs kicking out blindly.
“Untie me,” I snapped. “Right fucking now.”
“Stay quiet. For your own good.”
Footsteps retreated up the stairs. The light clicked off. Total black. I heard the door shut. Then the low, steady click of claws circling somewhere in the dark. A low growl rumbled close. Too close.
I pressed harder against the wall.
Couldn’t catch my breath.
“Your father has terrible hospitality,” I called out, voice cracking on a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “Just saying. I’ve had warmer welcomes.”
The growl deepened. I shut my mouth.
The dark pressed in.
The belt bit my wrists.
Concrete cold against my back. Bleach in the air.
Just like the old room.
Just like when I wasn’t good enough.
“Seriously… fuck you, Professor.”
Claws clicked slowly across the concrete, circling closer in the dark.
The dark pressed in harder.
Same dark. Same quiet. Same certainty that I’d already fucked this up.
Upstairs, three slow knocks.
Someone else was already here.