Page 107 of A University of Betrayal

I looked from her eyes, shielded by thick lashes, to her plump lips.

That had been a mistake, because I could feel all the blood in my body rushing downwards.

Shocked at myself, I stared back into her widened eyes, streaked with fine-fibered yellow galaxies, letting my jaw work to distract myself from the overwhelming hardness of my cock.

Then I heard the door burst open nearby and jumped back. And without hesitation, I disappeared down the spiral staircase.

Chapter 20

Quentin

Criminal Investigation Files

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“Good morning,” I said, clearing my throat and putting on the smile I’d been trained to wear so well as a child, before looking at the innocent faces of my experiments and an inner satisfaction spread through me.

Sitting in front of me wasmolecular biology course number three,the one in which I had sorted all the supernatural inhabitants of Blairville who were attending molecular biology. None of them knew that each of them was a guinea pig, an essential piece of the puzzle in an elaborate experiment.

“I’m glad so many of you applied for the internship at the DLSC.”

Of course, I didn’t care in the slightest who had applied for the free spots, because it was already a foregone conclusion that David DeLoughrey would get one place and the incompetent Quatura girl next to Amber Smith would get the other.

The two of them would give me what I needed without ever knowing what I’d taken from them. And even though I feared David would be harder to outsmart, I knew neither of them stood a chance against me.

I rolled up my sleeves, leaned against the massive lab table of the seminar room, and tried to ignore the greedy looks of the human girls I unfortunately had been obliged to include in this seminar.

Noneof them seemed to be interested in molecular biology, but if I had let the class consist of just the Ruisangor, the Senseque and the three Quatura girls, someone would have taken notice sooner or later.

It was enough that I had to play thecrazy human professoron the internet as well as in this seminar room just so I could get on with my private research without causing too much of a stir and of course it would have been wiser to vanish completely from the radar, but my approach had its advantages.

“Please, put your laptops away. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen,” I continued, looking at the students’ tense expressions. “Today you’re going to create a protocol plan for the experiment we talked about in the last lesson.”

Everyone obeyed, and I walked around my desk to the file containing my research papers. Until today, I had used the time the course was working to go through my own research documents and check for errors, but today the new surveillance system was in place, so three hours ago I had had to watch as two janitors installed a camera in this room.

To blame wasProfessor Rebecca Harlow,sent by the goddamn Councils.

Just the thought of that scum made my blood boil.

I would destroy them all.Without exception and without mercy. But I had to wait patiently. Because even if I didn’t follow all of my boss’s instructions, he was the one who had the resources to carry out the overthrow of the Councils.

I was pursuing my own plans, but nobody needed to know about that. Including those stupid cameras.

I suppressed the urge to look up at the ceiling, pushed the binder aside, and sat down to open one of the folders containing the protocols of the other seminars.

Instead of sighing because I was wasting my time here, I focused on the chemical formulas in front of me.

Of course, I would have preferred to focusentirelyon the work at DLSC, as well as on my own little experiments. I had to keep the two experiments separate, because although the DLSC gave me space and resources to work with, they didn’t grant me full access to everything I needed there. Also, my boss was monitoring me, just like the DUIO was doing with the research project.

I had spent a research year at DLSC after my field trip to the Mediterranean before officially starting this semester as a professor here. And now it was as if I was interweaving two parts of my life. One was the academic side, the university where I had already spent half of my life, and then the research, the project, the big thing that would changeeverythingin this town.

The DLSC was plan A. And if that didn’t work out, I still had my job as a professor at Vanderwood: plan B.

And so it was that I had come to see Vanderwood as a retreat rather than an annoying alibi. This university was a goldmine for what I was looking for, a place full of fascinating architecture, buried history, and I felt like that wasn’t all there was to it.

I didn’t like listening to my gut, because it was feelings, not facts, that guided me at times like this. Things that hadn’t gotten me far in life. On the contrary.

Almost by reflex, my fingers moved to the golden ring on my right hand and began to play with it, and inside I fought the urge to give the ring control over my feelings.