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“No, sir,” she replied, beaming a perfect smile. “Just admiring your suit today.”

Principal Ricardson loved Cici, and his red face was sure to say so a second later when he waved off her compliment like some sort of shy boy and not an over-fifty, twice-divorced man.

Gross.

The bell rang, and while most of the girls and sexually fluid boys, some who hadn’t the balls to say so, lingered to greet the new beast of a Biology teacher, I dragged my feet all the way to the front.

“I heard someone call you V?”

His smirk was beyond sexy. But his accent was something else entirely. German? Russian?

“V is my preferred name. Some accent you got there,” I remarked, internally cursing my thoughtlessness. “German?”

Something about the way his lips rose said repeat offender, and I would be the last to admit how much it appealed to me. “Austrian. But most don’t guess Austrian. To be fair, very few guess German. Color me impressed.”

I didn’t speak right away in order to fend off the unwanted desire to giggle and flirt in a way almost sure to get me dumped and detained.

Get it together, V. You’ve met sexy dudes. Loads. Heaps. What does he have that they don’t?

Only the sexiest everything and bad boy vibe I’d ever encountered outside of my work night.

“Guess that makes sense. I took Spanish all four years.”Just shut up right now, V.“I’ll show you around and then I’ve got to dodge out, Mr. Smith.”

“Call me Phillip. Plans?”

The text on my phone was like a ball of weight in my pocket as my gaze unintentionally dropped to it. “Something like that.”

Phillip rose from where he sat on the desk, a complete degenerate already. “Lead the way, V.”

I bit my lower lip, determined not to smile. “Yeah. Right. Follow me.”

*

“V?”

I looked up, barely registering where we were for a second.

My thoughts had been held hostage by a far too sexy to be legal Biology teacher nearly all day. Ever since our walk through the school, where he smiled way too beautifully, strolled much too close, and beguiled me with every bit of his Austrian charm, I’d been trapped inside my head. Me, the girl who fought evil daily, was ensnared like every other godforsaken student at that school.

I was going to Hell. I didn’t deserve to call myself Nigel’s girlfriend anymore. And honestly, I wasn’t far from burying my head in the sand and disappearing from the world out of pure shame.

“Nigel?”

“V?”

“If this is a game, I refuse to play,” I grumbled and offered the man crouched next to me on hands and knees a sly grin. “Sorry. Long day.”

“I told you to rest. Or is this maybe about that new teacher?”

I caught the uncertainty in his stare. How adorable.

That, however, didn’t ease the discomfort that resurfaced with the mere mention of a certain bad boy teacher who had bewitched me upon first meeting.

“Why, jealous?”

Nigel turned his face away, body tense. “Not really.”

“He’s pretty hot.”