“In no less than fifty words, I’d like you to revisit your first assignment. Do you remember that one?” I stood at the back of the class for the announcement, where the guard was, preparing for the worst.
“The swearing thing?” Laniakea guessed.
“No,” I chuckled.
“Damn. The why you’re here assignment?”
“We all know why you’re here. You stole a goddamn TV,” Ren Sanchez said. “Ain’t you learn fucking nothing from Shawshank, man?”
Laughter hummed in the classroom. While I enjoyed the banter, I didn’t appreciate bad grammar or ignoring my rules. “Haven’t you learned anything from this class, Ren? And remember what I said about swearing?”
“Sorry, Miss M. I shall write it down in the most creative way to the best of my abilities.” He snickered.
“Apology accepted.” I ignored the mockery to the best of my abilities. It came with an eye roll, though. “Now back to the assignment. Yes, it is the one where I told you to write your ultimate goal you hoped to achieve by enrolling in this class.” Which Furore had dodged with his bravado and intimidating tactics. “Now, write down how after four weeks of education you’re getting closer to your goal. The skills you’ve truly learned, the difference you can feel, the measures you’ll take to be better and achieve your goal, and most importantly,” my gaze drifted to the back of Furore’s head involuntarily, “what truly motivates you to keep going.”
Heads tilted toward me, but my focus was with the one that didn’t turn.
Say something. Challenge me. Smirk at me. Warn me with a stare. Throw a tantrum. Anything.
Without so much of a pause, Furore was the first to open his notebook and start writing.
“All right. You have fifteen minutes. Any questions, I’m right here.” My lips twisted with inexplicable irritation. The whole point of the assignment was to get him to write. To spill his secrets about his son and how my class was going to help with whatever his real goal was. To get leverage. Why was I angry? Why did it bother me that he was ignoring me? Why would I be irritated if a student stopped provoking me and started working on his tasks? Because that was what Laius Lazzarini was. A student. No matter how hard it was for me to ignore the intoxicating dominant presence of the man who had been driving me crazy for days, I must not see him in any other way.
“Miss Meneceo, a word please,” the guard said.
I rolled my eyes over to him. He’d never spoken to me before other than to emphasize security instructions. Now, he had something to say me? Could he not see I’d sharpened my emotional and intellectual claws, and it was all for nothing? I was in the middle of a psychological war game I had to win. What could be so important? “Yes…” I realized I didn’t even know his name.
“I…I just want to say that…” His mouth twitched with a smile, which would have been beautiful if it wasn’t nervous. “Um…am I allowed to say you look lovely today?”
My lashes fluttered for a second, and then warmth touched my cheeks as his eyes—which I’d noticed for the first time were blue, by the way—wandered to my hair. I didn’t do the usual ponytail or bun and put my hair down today. “Oh.” I touched the back of my hair, averting my gaze. “Thank you…” I didn’t know what else to say. Was he flirting with me? I understood nothing in this department. Should I return the compliment? He was wearing his usual uniform, and he had a buzz cut covered by a cap. I didn’t even know his name, so I glanced up at the tag. “…Guard Murphy.”
“My name is David.”
Oh my God. He was flirting. Fuck. “Pleasure. My name is Jo.” Fuck.
He laughed quietly. “I know.”
“Of course you do.” I looked away, hoping a student would ask a question and give me an excuse to end this awkward conversation.
“Hey, I was…wondering if maybe you…wanna grab a cup of coffee sometime.”
No.
The answer popped in my head on autopilot, out of fear I should no longer have, and was about to jump out of my tongue if I hadn’t curbed it on time.
There was no reason for me to be rude. He was just a nice person asking me out. There was no reason for me to be afraid. The jealous, possessive, borderline psycho boyfriend—the only boyfriend—I had dumped my ass months ago without even bothering to break up with me. Even if I hadn’t been over him yet, even if I’d been spending my mornings thinking about him and my nights crying and longing for him, I shouldn’t have been rude to a guy who seemed to be interested in me or afraid of what Ty might have done if he’d known.
I was a single woman now. It was completely fine to receive such requests. It’d be absolutely fine if I chose to accept them, too. Ty, obviously, didn’t care anymore. He wouldn’t have left if he had.
“Um…I…” I forced a smile out, even though I wanted to cry, my cheeks burning now. How pathetic was I? A man was telling me I looked nice and was asking me out, and I was about to burst into tears because I couldn’t get over the boy that broke my heart. The one I should have never been with or wanted back. The one I still waited for his return like a sad, pitiful, stupid woman with no dignity or shame.
“Miss Meneceo, I have a question.”
My whole body shifted focus toward what was painstakingly the sexiest voice I’d ever heard and the man who owned it. Oh, so his tongue wasn’t cut off or no one hit him on the head that he forgot how to form words or anything that would stop him from returning a simple good morning to his teacher? “Yes, Laius.”
He’d finally looked at me, his eyes a heating menace. “Could you be kind enough to come check the spelling of this word for me?”
And look at those words. How so polite of Furore. Is he a gentleman now? “It’s not a spelling bee competition.” I didn’t know why I said that. Why I had to provoke him, when I should pacify him. In my defense, it was the only act I was used to. Do anything to keep people away. Be cold and distant. Intimidate. Irritate. The more I was afraid the worse it got. It was no secret I was afraid of Laius Lazzarini, for reasons more than one.
Inmates started the usual sneering whenever I came back at one of them. I gave them the stare. “Just write the paragraph. Same goes for all of you. I won’t deduct any marks for spelling mistakes.”
Furore narrowed his eyes at me, hard. “But for this word, the wrong spelling could lead to a different meaning. I want to make sure you understand me correctly with no confusion, Miss Meneceo.”
I swallowed at the tone of his voice, at the command in it, at the threat it held, at the seduction it carried whenever he drawled my name like that.
Glancing at Murphy, I gave him a tight nod to excuse me for the interruption. Then I took a deep breath and went over to Furore’s desk. “What word?”
He stared at my breasts when I bent to see his notebook, so blatantly sweat hit my armpits and waves of heat flooded my neck. I glared at him, even though he couldn’t see my eyes. I was sure my face conveyed the message. His jaw twisted and shook his head once as if he was the one who should be upset, as if he had the right to undress me with his eyes without a single complaint on my side. He pointed his pencil to a line he’d written. “Here.”
I took another deep breath, convincing myself to ignore his misconducts for now to go on with my plan and get what I needed. I rolled my eyes toward the notebook.
Stop talking to the guard. I don’t like it.
My brow shot high in my forehead, and fury—along with surprise— surged in me. “Excuse me?”
He gave me a menacing stare. A warning so I’d keep quiet and play his game without exposing him. I shouldn’t heed his warning. I should call for Murphy, who was eyeing us like a hawk, ready to pounce.
But I wouldn’t. Not yet.
“That’s a very inappropriate word to use,” I said. “The whole argument is.” Who was he to make such demand? Who was he whether to like when I spoke to the guard or not? And above all, why did he not like it? “Why are you inclined to make it?”
His jaws clenched, and his eyes returned to roam my body with something I recognized. Something that had once burned in similar eyes and scorched me with its intensity. Something that had drowned me in searing sin beyond absolution. Something dark that exceeded the limits of simple lust and trespassed to a dangerous territory one didn’t tread unless was ready to be altered by fire. Something I’d long missed and craved but would never have back. “When you read the whole thing, you’ll know.”
I don’t like it when you talk to other men.
My gaze froze on the words. The only person who had said something like that to me was Tirone. He’d invaded my world, intoxicating me, with the same jealous possessiveness these words of another man—a dangerous criminal and a stranger—held. Laius Lazzarini was nothing but a potential threat I needed to address and a student I met a few weeks ago and was bound to leave after a few more. Yet I was so weak and desperate for a reminder, for something to fill the hole that was ripped out of my heart, that I didn’t care about how inappropriate and ridiculous those words were or whom they came from.
Like an addict, I let them seep into my pores and give me a dark rapture, a fake euphoria that would numb the pain even for a few moments. With a warm sigh, I bit my lip on a smile.
Then it hit me. I might have made some decisions that truly questioned the level of my intelligence, and I was surely devastated enough to fill the void inside my chest with anything no matter how fake or Ludacris. But I wasn’t that stupid.
While it sounded silly for a man to be jealous for a woman he’d barely spoken to or spent time with, a woman he hadn’t touched or even seemed to like, it wasn’t impossible. It’d happened to me before. Prior that day at the library, Tirone didn’t exactly give me the easiest time in class. He was always mean and barely gave me any attention to the point I thought he hated me. It wasn’t strange for me to see the same behavior from another student. A show of hate on the outside, quite the opposite on the inside.
But…not from Furore.
He was forty-one, not a teenager who had an unhealthy crush on the teacher. The president of the Night Skulls most certainly had had more than enough women at his disposal for years. Women that looked million times better than I did and were ready to please him in ways I didn’t. I understood he was behind bars with no access to such entertainment, but he hadn’t been here that long to lust over the fatback teacher—yes, I heard what they called me—let alone become jealous or possessive of me.
Furore was playing me, thinking he could get me to believe he had intimate feelings for me so I’d trust him enough to tell him another one of my secrets.
I grabbed the pencil from his hand and flipped it to erase his deceit, resolve to beat him in his own game coursing through me. “But you haven’t even reached the minimum word limit. You only wrote two ridiculous lines. Write the whole thing, Laius. Stop caring about misspelling a few words and put more effort into writing down some in the first place.”
He snatched the pencil back from my hand, touching my finger in the process, sending a wild turmoil of tingling need in me, shaking my resolve for a split-second, and wrote something else down. “How about now?”
Stop talking to that schmuck and I will finish the stupid assignment.
I’d do anything to get him to speak, even if it was leading him to believe he was successful with his manipulation. “Fine. I don’t think that’s very creative, but it’s your assignment. I’ll allow it.”
He wrote something quickly. Good girl.
Despite myself, I twitched with a smile on my lips and a throb between my legs. What was it about those two words that floored us like that?
Fuck me for being that weak and depraved. “When you finish, you’ll read for the class.” And that was my fuck you to him.
He looked up at me as I straightened, surprise flicked in his eyes. Then he snorted a laugh. “No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
Still laughing, he hunched over the notebook and shrugged.
I threw a subtle glance at what he wrote next. Take off your shades for me, and I’ll think about it. I’m tired of imagining the eyes I look into when I fuck my fist every night. I wanna know what they look like for real.
The crass expression penetrated my senses with fear and pleasure. A smirk curved his mouth as he lifted his eyes, taking his time with every curve of my body, darting the tip of his tongue and licking his lip. When he met my face, I was melting under his vulgar scrutiny.
Stop it. Don’t let him win. It’s all lies. He doesn’t care about you. He just wants you to drop your guards, to come out from your hiding and be easy prey for whomever is hunting.
“You know this is giving me a headache.” I set a hand on my hip and smiled at Murphy. “Maybe, I should have that coffee after all.”
Furore cursed under his breath. Then he jumped to his feet. Reflexively, I took a step back. While he wasn’t The Hulk, and his body and muscles weren’t bulging—painfully proportional and sculpted but not humongous like those of Laniakea Kelekolio, for instance, Furore was much bigger than me and would easily take me down in a fight if it’d ever come to it. He was capable of hurting me. In many ways. He incited a certain fear in me that was far more powerful than that of physical strength. His energy was the most dominant I’d ever encountered, and the rage that was bubbling up under it was enough to sink my heart down to my knees.
Murphy came toward us. “Lazzarini, back to your seat.”
Furore clenched one fist and with the other grabbed the notebook. For a second there, he looked like he was going to hit the guard with it. Oh no.
Murphy stood between me and Furore, pushing me back, clutching his baton. “Lazzarini, last warning.”
I felt all eyes on us. A state of high alert filled the room. Any second now, this could turn into a riot in the classroom.
“Get out of the way.” Furore’s voice dripped with malice and threat.
“Back to your seat,” Murphy said firmly, getting the baton out. “I won’t say it again.”
Furore shot him a death glare before he switched it toward me. “My teacher wants me to read for the class. I’m only respecting her wishes.”
Finally, I could breathe. “Yes, Guard Murphy. I asked Laius to read his assignment to the class. Thank you, Laius. Please, head to the front,” I said, even though the allocated time for finishing the assignment wasn’t up. I didn’t want any fights to disrupt my class. And strangely, I didn’t want Laius to get hurt.
Murphy’s tension didn’t ease out, but he put the baton back in its place and escorted Furore and me to the front of the class.
Furore shot me a glance I understood without the need for words. I stood behind my desk and tilted so that my back was to Murphy and my attention solely was to Laius.
Just like the foreign feeling of fear for him and not of him that had snuck up on me and hadn’t made any sense, an urge, despite the tension and fright of the situation, nagged me so irritatingly it couldn’t be contained.
I gazed at him, and mouthed, “Good boy.”
