AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1: Waggoner
Iforced my eyes to scan past the gorgeous alpha as though he wasn’t there. It was harder than it should be. Normally, I was perfectly capable of ignoring any handsome men in my class but something about Liam Morelli always threw me off balance.
I’d had to spend the first term he was here completely ignoring him because I knew that, if I looked in his direction, my eyes would stay rivetted to him and refuse to move. That would have been both unprofessional and embarrassing, so I ignored him instead.
Which wasn’t exactly professional, seeing as he was a student in my class, but… it was the best I could do. All I had to do was deliver the lectures and mark the assignments – the other professors in my department did the one-to-one tutoring and I always felt nearly weak with relief that I hadn’t ended up doing that this year. I don’t know how I would have coped being in my small office with someone like Liam Morelli.
I paused, looked down to check my notes, and began to speak again. I could talk about advanced physics for days and not get bored. It was the one advantage I had right now because I could talk mostly on autopilot. I’d run this course for years. I could probably do it in my sleep.
“Despite the fact that Newtonian mechanics is largely accepted as the basis for all modern thinking in the field of Physics, it is not the last word in theoretical physics. There are variables within it, particularly the realm of the incredibly small…”
As I spoke, I realised my eyes had accidentally drifted towards Liam. Not that I should have known his name, seeing as he was one of a hundred students in front of me, but, yeah, I did.
And I needed to get my eyes off him quickly.
I looked down at my notes again, pretending to read them. It was incredibly annoying that half my brain always focused on that alpha instead of on my work. I’d had dozens – no, make that hundreds – of alpha men parading through this classroom over the years and none of them had made me so much as bat an eyelid. I wasn’t a particularly promiscuous omega, or a young one, or a handsome one, so my chances of catching the eye of hot young alphas was practically nil. And that had never bothered me in the least.
It didn’t bother me now, either.
Of course it didn’t.
I didn’t want some young buck taking an interest in me.
I didn’t want to be a notch on his bedpost.
My voice trailed off…
Had I been talking about bedposts?
From the looks on the faces in front of me, probably not. They had their usual range of expressions. Some were bored and I don’t know why they were even taking my course if they didn’t like it, but most of them were concentrating. Liam had a cute little frown line between his eyebrows, which was the only line marring his young face.
I mentally shook myself.
Yes, hewasthat young. He can’t have been older than twenty-one or twenty-two.Waytoo young for me.
My mouth started moving on autopilot again. I finished my lecture and left a few minutes for questions before dismissing the students.
By the time they’d all filed out, I’d packed up my things and I headed out of the lecture hall and across the campus to the physics department where my office was. It was still early evening but the nights were drawing in, meaning the offices were lit up and I was shivering from the chilly air by the time I got there.
As I stepped through the door, Alder’s voice greeted me.
“Forgot your coat again?”
“Yes. Have you seen it?”
“It’s on the back of the door.”
I found it under Alder’s coat and pulled it on to warm up. When I sat down, I looked over my shoulder at my colleague.
“Everything ok?” I asked.
“Yes, fine. Why shouldn’t it be?”
“It’s just that you’re looking a little too innocent, that’s all.”
“Me?”
He managed to say it as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, all wide eyes and hand on his heart.
