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“I want to walk back to my room alone,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with throttled tears. Oh my god, I needed to get out of here. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I didn’t wait for his response, I just started walking as quickly as I could in the direction of my dorm, tears now fully streaming down my face. I didn’t even look back because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see anything anyway. Self-pity was swallowing me whole.
As I approached my dorm, I quickly wiped away my tears by taking out a water bottle from my bag in order to wash away some of the evidence of my crying jag. I took some deep breaths in order to calm myself and gave a quick look around to make sure nobody saw me acting like such a drama queen.
I was startled to find Ivan behind me. He stood there with his arms crossed, the same closed expression on his face.
A dart of pain zipped through my chest. I should have gone into my dorm, but I couldn’t. I just stared at him feeling hollowed out. I wanted to walk away, but my feet were glued to the ground.
To my surprise, he was the one who started to move. He walked to stand in front of me, his emerald eyes roaming my features. His thumb reached out and wiped under my eyes, then cradled my jaw.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said gently, avoiding the issue sitting between us like a time bomb.
“Why are you making this so hard?” I finally asked, torn between anger and despair.
“It’s just how it is,” he said.
Tears of helplessness welled up and spilled over my lower lids. I covered my hands with my face, eager to hide my embarrassing display of emotionality.
Instead of saying something, he pulled me toward him and wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in my neck, just as he had over and over on Friday night.
I tried to move my arms to hold him, but his tight embrace had pinned my folded arms to my chest. Even now, he restrained me. I was left to rub my face against his shoulder and breathe in his familiar, reassuring scent.
He slowly released me, gave me a hard kiss on the mouth that had my eyebrows shooting up in shock, and pushed me toward the entrance of my dorm before I could say anything.
“Go,” he said softly, but firmly.
I went.
Chapter 22
Ivan
Well, that was a fucking disaster.
It happened exactly as I feared. When she walked up to me, her blue-gold eyes searching, silently begging me to show her something, I felt sick to my stomach. I was fucking her up, making her cry.
This was the exact thing I had been trying to avoid my entire adult life.
Intimacy. Expectation. Emotional need.
My gut still churned as I remembered her damp eyes staring up at me, pleading with me to make it better, to fix it, to reassure her.
I knew this was how it would play out and I couldn’t even fucking blame her because I was right there with her, pulling her clothes off, marking her, coming all over her. I was just as fucking bad, I just had a better poker face than she did.
All weekend, I vacillated between pacing my apartment like a caged animal and looking at the video feed from outside her room. Thankfully, she’d hardly left all weekend and Vadim was around if she went out.
During that time, I built up my resistance to her. I had been determined to keep my distance when I saw her. It hadn’t been easy because all I could think about every time I looked at her lush, full lips or saw her pulse fluttering under the pale, soft skin at her throat was stripping her naked and finishing what I’d started on Friday.
I’d actually managed to resist her, even as it twisted my insides watching her cry. I was a damaged, emotionless asshole. She deserved so much fucking better.
Instead of continuing to focus on what an asshole I was, my mind drifted to the other thing that was bothering me—Drew and Belshaw.
That shit with them had me fucking rattled. I was going to have Anya check into them again even more extensively. I thought Drew was just some college dickhead, and maybe he was, but I didn’t like the way he was talking to her. Her professor had me ready to rip his head off, whether he was Orlov or not.
Suddenly desperate for information on Delaney's shithead boyfriend and professor dickhead, I jumped in my car and texted Drago.
Ivan: I need you to run that deeper dive on Emmy's professor. He’s making some kind of move on her, touching her. It’s fucked up. I also need you to look more into the roommate’s boyfriend. I don’t like how he’s talking to her either.
