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I was clearly losing my mind. Maybe that was why I was here. Maybe I’d taken some test and gotten the extremely rare result of ‘unhinged crazy’ and here I was about to have my ass kicked out of college straight into some psych ward upstate.

A real-lifeAmerican Horror Storyin the making.

Psycho and paranoid. I was really the whole bag of tricks.

“Please, sit down,” the president told me, and there was something about his voice that seemed strained.

Had I annoyed him somehow? Not come fast enough or maybe I’d arrived at a bad time, and he was in the middle of some big merger meeting or whatever bigwigs like him did as the president of a college? I didn’t really see him around campus much. He generally kept to himself. I assumed he was here in his office much of the time, but who could know for sure.

“I can come back at a better time,” I tried, and I glanced up and got my first good look at the president up close. Sure, I’d seen him from afar a few times, but never like this. My mouth went dry like I’d eaten a bunch of saltines and hadn’t had a drop of water to wash them down. I licked my lips, trying to wet them, but it was like licking sandpaper.

Why the fuck was I here?

The president’s piercing blue eyes met mine, and with that single look, my heart began to race, and a wary shiver coursed down my spine. His gaze held a graceful and predatory darkness, and I took a step back, unable to shake the feeling that he was going to pounce and eat me for breakfast. He was drop-dead gorgeous. His dark, expressive eyebrows only added to his intensity, and I had to quiet a cry of alarm. His raven-black hair, always impeccably tousled, was just as perfect as it was from far away.It fell in an almost artful disarray, like he’d just gotten out of bed and run his fingers through it before he ran out the door.

Lucky bastard. I wish I could do that.

There was a slight aristocratic air to his features. He had the perfect nose, straight and refined, the kind of nose that both men and women would pay thousands for at a plastic surgeon. His lips were full and well-defined, but right now they were downturned in what seemed like a permanent frown. That seemed like a bad sign.

Was that because ofme?

“Sit,” he demanded again. With a flourish of his arm, he indicated that I was to sit in the large brown leather armchair in front of his big executive desk.

I froze.

I glanced back up at him, my gaze dragging along his chiseled jawline and then back to his picture-perfect high cheekbones. His face was so elegantly structured that a part of me was a little jealous of whoever’s bed he slept in at night. Was whoever he was sleeping with also a fucking ten?

Had she run her fingers through that perfect mane this morning for him?

The president cleared his throat. The man had this uncanny ability to appear menacing and charismatic at the same time, and I opened and closed my mouth, wanting to say something but having no idea where to even begin.

I didn’t even know his name.

“Sit, Kaci,” he demanded for the third time. His voice held a harder edge to it this time, but the same strain was still there in the undercurrent of his tone.

I sat down.

The leather creaked noisily, echoing throughout the room and making my heart pound even more fiercely in my chest.

He strode over to his side of the desk and pressed his palms against the wooden surface, leaning over it as he appraised me with resolute coldness. I kept my gaze downcast, not wanting to make eye contact, just like they warn you not to do with grizzly bears, although at this point, I’d prefer a bear to him right now. I wasn’t certain on the survival stats on that one was, but it had to be similar to when they tell you to play dead.

Would playing dead help me right now?

I was grateful for the polished oak monolith between us, distancing him from me, although I would bet money on the fact that it would only take him half a second to leap over that desk and pounce on me like a cheetah on top of a gazelle.

Especially when he was looking at me like that. Like I’d just been served up on a silver platter and he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

I shook my head, trying to shake out my crazy. Why did I feel like there was a sort of intensity, like I was going to be chased? I’d never felt that way before in my life. I swallowed heavily, waiting in the perpetual terror of the calm before the storm.

Continuing to not look directly at him, I chose to glance around his office instead. Everything was meticulously placed. There was a stack of papers on his desk that were perfectly square, not a single sheet out of place. He had a few pens lined up besidethem, all precisely straightened. The books on his shelves were organized strictly according to size. OCD much?

Several antique lamps bathed the room in a soft glow, casting intricate shadows on the walls. One of them looked like Dracula, his arms outstretched, and his mouth gauntly drawn open, pointy teeth and all.

Hopefully I wasn’t here to lose a pint of blood.

The walls were sparsely decorated, nothing save for a few framed degrees, several of them from well-respected Institutions. My gaze glinted over each one, his bachelor’s from Loyola University New Orleans, his master’s from Tulane University and holy shit, he had a PhD too from the University of New Orleans, or as the locals liked to call it, UNO. Yeah, just like the card game.

Well, someone was a smarty pants. Guess you had to be to run an institution like this one.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com