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She looks up at me in surprise, but does as I say.
I tap my lap and she sits down, allowing me to wrap my arms around her and cradle her against my chest, forcing her to wrap her arms around my neck. “What can I do to help?” This odd powerless feeling I have at seeing her hurting makes me feel almost unwell.
I’ve never felt this way before.
She nuzzles her face against my chest and breathes in deeply. “Just hold me, sir.”
My chest aches. “Of course, malishka.” I kiss the top of her head, because it feels right. An oddly gentle and intimate gesture that freaks me out a little after the fact.
“What about you, sir? Do you have any family?”
The question feels like a sucker punch to my gut. “No,” I reply more abruptly than I intend.
I don’t think about my family back in Russia. In fact, a lot of my childhood is hazy at best, and I haven’t been back since I escaped to Toronto when I was fourteen years old. Twenty years ago, to be exact.
She straightens to look me in the eye. “Oh, I’m sorry. What happened to them?”
I clench my jaw. “I don’t talk about my past. That’s another ground rule.”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she wipes her tears away. “Okay.”
I kiss her softly, enjoying the feel of her thick lips against mine. “Now, what other rules do I have?”
She shudders against me as I kiss her neck. “I don’t know, sir.”
“We need to be more careful now that your brother is here, who is an asshole, by the way.”
She stiffens in my arms. “What’s wrong with Luca?”
“He sat in my seat in the staff room and then proceed to be a dick after I told him to move.”
Her sweet laugh reverberates through the room. “Sounds like Luca. He’s alright once you get to know him.”
I breathe in her sweet scent, enjoying this oddly calm moment with her. Up to now, we’ve been driven by desire every second we’re together, but right now we’re at peace, comfortable in each other’s presence.
It’s a sensation I’m not used to feeling with anyone, not even my two closest friends, Oak and Arch.
“You forget I know him well enough. He attended this school just like you.”
She nods. “Yes, but that was as student and professor.”
I arch a brow. “A bit like us.”
“I think we’re kind of surpassed the normal student and professor relationship, sir.”
I tighten my grasp on her. “Is that right?”
“Unless you often fuck your students and I don’t know about it?”
I kiss her again softly. It’s tender and the complete opposite to what I’m used to. “No, you are the first.” And last, I want to say, but it feels too finite. The kind of thing you say to someone you want to be with long term, and there is no long term for us.
Camilla will graduate at the end of this year and that will be the end of it.
I’m a monster. I have no heart. And that means that there’s nothing I can give Camilla.
She will go on to find a man who will treat her well and love her.
Then why does the thought of her ever finding another man make me hot with possessive rage?
