Chapter 14
Dr. Carter
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sharp, rhythmic snap of my manicured nails against the pristine glass of my office desk was the only sound cutting through the Monday morning stillness of the university.
I stared blankly at a half-drafted research proposal on my monitor, the text blurring into an incoherent mess of corporate jargon.
What are you doing? You utter idiot.
A cold, mocking reprimand echoed in the chambers of my own mind. I stopped tapping, my fingers freezing against the glass as my stomach did a slow, violent roll. The memory of Thursday night hit me with the force of a physical blow.
I had been nursing a single glass of neat single-malt whisky for over an hour in my usual seat at the back of that dark, unremarkable bar.
It was my sanctuary—a place where I could dismantle the administrative stress of the week, utilising the mundane chatter of strangers as a layer of white noise to anchor my thoughts.
But the exact moment my eyes had drifted across the room and landed on Alex, I had nearly laughed out loud.
It felt as though the universe was actively mocking me, constructing a bizarre, localised test of my restraint.
And testing me, it did. Watching that pathetic excuse of a man leering over her, crowding her space in the booth, had made my blood turn to ice.
When she finally broke away and slid into the seat next to mine—vehemently denying any association with him—a sudden, profound wave of relief had washed through my chest.
Suddenly, the white noise of the bar hadn’t been the thing keeping me settled.
It was her. Alex’s proximity, her sharp wit, the effortless way she occupied the space beside me.
If that wretched man hadn’t interrupted us, I knew exactly what would have happened.
My pride disintegrated at the admission: I would have abandoned every shred of my rigid professional code, remained in that seat all night, and matched her drink for drink just to stay within her gravitational pull.
Sinking my teeth into the skin of her neck had been a primitive, territorial instinct I simply could not—would not—suppress.
I was neither blind nor naive. I saw the way Alex operated on campus.
I saw the innate, unbothered flirt she was, the way her eyes never remained anchored, tracking every moving target in my lecture hall.
I saw how other women reacted to her, practically dropping into her lap.
The memory of that desperate woman scribbling her phone number directly onto the palm of Alex's skin when I arrived to collect her one night made my jaw tighten all over again.
I let out a heavy, fractured sigh, dropping my head into my palms and firmly massaging my temples.
Seeing her injured had been... triggering.
A deeply unsettling catalyst. The sight of her bleeding, cracked open by the violent carelessness of some nightclub reject, had caused something ancient and protective to snap inside of my chest. It bypassed my intellect entirely, replacing it with a consuming, feral need to protect an entity I had already decided belonged to me.
My medical directive had been entirely factual—she shouldn't have been left unmonitored with a head injury. But a dark, shameful part of my subconscious was deeply grateful that Alex was the stubborn, theatrical brat she was. Her refusal to let me cross her threshold had played perfectly into my hands. It meant I’d had a flawless, unassailable justification to bring her to mine.
It meant I’d secured the entire weekend with her.
Tending to her lacerations, washing the dried copper from her skin, had felt profoundly primal—a raw, instinctual frequency I hadn't experienced in years.
I took a deep, steadying breath, my chest expanding against the tailored fabric of my blouse as the trajectory of my thoughts shifted to Saturday afternoon.
I had carried the fresh lounge suit up to the guest suite, fully intending to leave the clothing on the mattress and immediately retreat to my office spreadsheets. But the low, fractured moan echoing from behind the ensuite timber had frozen my feet to the floorboards.
Alex’s broken, breathy voice—gasping a desperate “fuck” into the rushing water—had sent a scorching wave of arousal straight to my core so fast I genuinely thought my knees were going to buckle.
Driven by a complete mutiny of my own discipline, I had pressed my body closer to the door, listening to the wet, frantic rhythm of her hands.
And when she had cried out my name—shattering the steam with a raw, desperate plea for her professor—I had reached for the brass handle.
I had nearly opened the door. I had been a mere millimetre away from marching into that shower to ensure it was my fingers making her come like that, to force her to look at me while she unraveled. I had stopped myself only through sheer, agonising willpower. She was concussed. She was my student.
Who are you kidding? You regret leaving that room every single second of the day.
Then, the kitchen. Her dangerous, intoxicating bravery.
The direct, heavy press of her palms against the cashmere of my waist had made my skin burn as if it were exposed to an open flame.
I had never been pushed to the absolute precipice of my self-control in my entire existence.
But I was a woman defined by principles, and I refused to take advantage of her while her faculties were compromised by a brain injury.
My own parting words echoed back to me like a promise: We have all the time in the world.
I let out one final, ragged sigh, stretching my fingers out across the cool glass desk before drawing them back into a tight fist. Standing up, I smoothed invisible creases from my tailored trousers and retrieved my leather briefcase from the floor.
It was time.
I had a seminar to conduct. The exact seminar where Alex would be sitting precisely in the front row, looking up at me with that infuriating, knowing smirk—driving me utterly insane in a way the girl hadn't even begun to realise yet.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sharp, clinical strike of my heels against the classroom floorboards was the only sound breaking the heavy morning silence.
The room went instantly mute the moment I crossed the threshold, a familiar, submissive quiet settling over the rows of desks.
It was the exact atmosphere of absolute authority I had spent my entire career cultivating.
I strode straight to the podium, my movements efficient and practiced as I connected my laptop to the lecture system. Stepping over to the main desk, I lifted a thick stack of seminar syllabi, tapping the edges against the polished timber until they aligned into a perfect, uniform block.
For today’s session, I had selected a structured, charcoal-grey professional dress—sleeves tailored to terminate exactly at the mid-forearm.
It was a deliberate choice. Over the weekend, I had become acutely, violently aware of the way Alex’s eyes lingered on the line of my forearms whenever I moved.
I kept my gaze lowered for the first few seconds, adjusting the interface on the screen. I was intensely, physically conscious of her. Front row. Centre table. Seated exactly next to that bubbly, perpetually over-enthusiastic girl, Holly, just as she was every Monday morning.
Lifting my head, I reached up with one hand to brush a stray, dark strand of hair back from my temple—a piece that had escaped the neat grip of my tortoiseshell claw clip.
I let my eyes sweep across the tables, executing a cold, mental roll call, noting with a flash of predictable irritation which of the first-year undergraduates had already abandoned the discipline required for a 9:00 a.m. macroeconomic seminar.
Then, my gaze tracked down to the front row, landing directly on Alex.
I had fully intended to pass over her with the same detached, academic indifference that I afforded the rest of the room. But the moment my eyes met her form, my intellect failed me. I couldn’t halt the subtle, fracturing double-take that rippled through my composure.
She looked... entirely different.
Gone was the oversized, protective armour of her usual flannel shirts.
Today, she wore a sleek, midnight-black blouse, the top two buttons left deliberately undone.
It was tucked tightly into a pair of dark, high-waisted denim jeans, the fabric cinching sharply right at the precise, soft dip of her waistline—exaggerating the curve of her hips in a manner that made my chest constrict.
She had even applied a fraction more makeup than her standard baseline, darkening the outer corners of her eyes, defining the sharp line of her jaw.
My expression didn't alter by a single millimetre—my facial muscles remained locked in a mask of absolute, glacial professionalism—but beneath the tailored charcoal of my dress, my heart had begun to thunder with a terrifying velocity.
The internal panic only worsened a second later. Alex reached up, her long fingers absentmindedly sweeping one side of her brown hair over her shoulder.
The movement exposed the side of her neck.
Even in the sterile, fluorescent glare of the lecture hall, the faint, shadow-like bruise was visible.
It was significantly lighter than it had been over the weekend, a faded violet stain against her pale skin, but it remained an undeniable testament to the exact pressure of my jaw.
My mark. Exhibited in the first row of my own classroom.
Our eyes locked across the short divide.
The air between us instantly turned to glass, a localised vacuum of high-voltage static.
For a fraction of a second, the lecture hall vanished entirely.
Then, Alex’s teeth sank briefly into the flesh of her lower lip, a nervous, entirely provocative gesture before she abruptly dropped her chin, staring down at the blank pages of her notebook.
I swallowed hard against a completely arid throat.