It shouldn’t do anything to me. But it does.Fuck me.
I feel it—the shift.
The careful, clinical mask I wear every goddamn day fractures, and the darkness underneath begins to seep through the cracks. I don’t stop it. I can’t. Not with her staring at me like that—like she knows she’s poking the beast andwantsto see it move.
Her eyes widen, just slightly, when she catches the way my pupils dilate. The way the air grows heavier, sharper, like the moment before a blade sinks in.
She inhales softly—like instinct. Like her body’s responding to the danger around her before her mind can make sense of it.
And now I’m thinking about her pulse—her heart—beating just beneath that red bra I can’t unsee. Wondering how fast it’s hammering now, how close she is to feeling what I’m fighting not to show.
My gaze drifts—slow, measured—down the column of her throat. I watch it flutter.
She knows. Shefucking knows.
I step back, just enough to breathe again.
“Good,” I say, voice rougher than I intend. “Then we understand each other.”
She nods, but there’s fire in her eyes now—curiosity, interest, something more dangerous.
And I know I should leave. I should say nothing else. I should forget the way her voice sounds when it dips low and submissive around my name.
But I don’t . Instead, I reach past her—closer than I should be—and grab the syllabus from the other corner of my desk. The one she missed because she was late and I hand it to her without ceremony.
“You’re dismissed, Jasmine.” It comes out rougher than I intend. A snarl, not a statement. My voice—usually cold and sharp—rolls low between us, coated in the dark growl of my natural voice.
Her fingers snatch the paper like it burns her, and for a second—justa second—I almost pounce.
“Thank you,” she breathes, and the moment she turns on her heel, I feel her absence like a vacuum. She practically bolts, boots echoing against tile as she races out the door like I might chase her down and pin her to the wall.
And thefunnypart?
I had to grip the edge of my desk to stop myself from doing exactly that.
Thebadpart?
When the door finally swings shut behind her, sealing the air between us with a heavythunk, I look down?—
And realize the desk is splintered in my hand.
8
JASMINE
The weekof classes was as shitty as I expected.
It started off with Landon being pissy because he couldn’t charm his way into my classes, or on campus for that matter given that he’s not a student. Resulting in not only a tracking device in my phone, bags and for some reason the sole of my three pairs of shoes as he and Cast find a legitimate reason for him to be on campus other than the vague ‘for my protection.’ While I was ecstatic about getting some space from him, Landon has been on my ass every day about suspicious activity and being aware of my surroundings.
And I will never admit this, even under perjury or even death, but I kind of needed him this week. I thought redying the streaks in my hair to red last night would give me superpower or confidence, but I was dead wrong. I went to the wrong campus—like full-on wrong. Not just the wrong building. No, I pulled up to West Haven, which is apparentlynotthe main campus, and wandered around like a lost freshman with a trust fund and no internal GPS. By the time I realized my English 101 class was inDrake Halland notDrakos Hall(which, by the way, is thedormitory that holds the all male invite-only society,The August Order), it was already over.
Lunch was a cold tuna sandwich eaten in the corner of the Free Meal Hall because I showed up six minutes before they closed to prep for dinner. The bread was wet. The mayo was questionable. And the girl across from me asked if I was a commuter student in the tone people reserve for homeless cats.
But the real highlight? The absolute icing on my garbage fire cake?
I think Conner Kilgore—THE Conner Kilgore, my literal academic idol—wants to eat me. And not in the fun, tongue-on-thigh, ruin-my-life kind of way. No, he wants toeat mein the"Let's turn Jasmine Rivera into jerky and hang her in the woods like a warning sign” kind of way.
The man looked at me like I was a problem hecouldn’t waitto solve. Like he was doing the math on my blood spatter pattern just for fun. And the worst part?
