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CHAPTER VIII
Eva
“Everyone knows you’re my woman now.” Micah’s words after our kiss in the entrance hall echo in my head, making me drunk with pleasure.
“I’m sorry, Professor Brannan, did you hear me?”
I blink, and my vision clears to see a young student with a notepad clutched between her hands. Fuck, I must have been daydreaming.
“Yes, Cecilia, of course, but I’m afraid the lost thinkers of Alexandria are only a myth.” I attempt a smile, though I’m not famous for them among my students. “Believe me, I shared your fascination with them back in college, and dug wherever there was a hint. Most hints were dropped by creeps from the pub who were trying to get into the girls’ pants.” I even wink at her. What’s wrong with me today? “Don’t fall for those. They pretend to share your intellectual interests in order to worm their way between your legs.”
She blinks at me, and I know she recognizes the scenario. Men must have already tried this on her because of course they would. Cecilia is a petite brunette whose natural beauty could rival one of those k-pop idols’. Of course boys would try everything under the sun to get her naked. Pink spreads over her perfectly smooth cheeks, and her knuckles turn white as she clutches the notepad harder.
“Speaking of more intimate matters, Professor, may I ask you something?”
Any other day, my answer would be a direct stare meant at dissuading her from it. It’s clear by how nervous she is that she’s going to ask something beyond delicate, and I never welcome those questions. But now I just wait, without glaring.
“Are you and Micah Royales together?” she inquires timidly, bending closer to me over my desk. “As in—” She glances over her shoulder to make sure we still have privacy from the other students who are lining up at the door for my office hours. “As in together, together?”
I straighten my back, surrounding myself with the forbidding air I’m known for.
“And that information is relevant to you because?”
“Well, because—” she fidgets on her feet, tucking a strand of black hair behind a small elvish ear, “it’s common knowledge that the Kings are set to marry heiresses. There were rumors about a scandal when Sade Royales broke it off with Gertrude Fairfell in order to be with Justine Pracht.”
Cold needles run through my body.
Taken with all of this, I never stopped to think about it.
Micah is a promised man.
His marriage with someone else is already decided.
Sade was supposed to enter an arranged marriage too when he got involved with Justine, and he only got out of that arrangement because his brother did some really nasty shit to manipulate the heiress into breaking off the engagement. But a similar arrangement for Micah is sure as hell in place.
I didn’t think about it until now because none of the rich heiresses the Kings are set up with study at Norton King’s. The boys’ families decided campus should be a playground for them, which means that all I can ever be to Micah is a toy.
But then again, it’s not like a relationship was ever an option. He made me his whore in this very office, in the lecture hall, he fucked me against a locker, and what he put on display today when he held my hand and kissed me in public was to claim me as his possession, not a commitment.
A claw of anger squeezes my heart—a reaction to save myself from grief. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let him charm my senses and even get my hopes up?
