Page 23 of Broken by my Bully (Lessons in Cruelty Dark Academia #1)

Haven

Bastian stares at me with a mix of concern, determination, and something else. Not pity—I’m hypersensitive to that.

Curiosity?

Hunger?

I take a nervous sip of my cocoa. “What are you talk?—“

Irritation narrows his dark eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, turning to the fire, shaking his head. He snaps his head back to look at me. “I know who you’re protecting. If you don’t speak to me, I can’t help you.”

The change in him is instant, and almost as unsettling as the way he was just comparing pain and pleasure. I already have way too many inappropriate thoughts in my head about my professor.

Like how his hands would feel around my throat. Whether he’d be respectful like a true gentleman, or rough like I secretly want. Whether a thirty-four-year-old man would know exactly how to make a nineteen-year-old girl fall apart.

Answer is yes.

Fuck.

There’s a flush of heat on my cheeks that’s steadily creeping downward. I press my thighs together under the blanket, but that only makes things worse. I shouldn’t find his frustration attractive, but something about seeing Professor Rooke lose his composure is doing things to me.

He leans closer, cradling his mug in both hands, voice calm and collected again. “I want all my students to be safe. It’s obvious you’re not. Whatever you’re dealing with, I can help.”

He’s gentle with his cup. I’m not. I throttle it like I want the ceramic to shatter and slice my palms into ribbons.

Sure, Professor, let me break it down for you.

I fought tooth and nail to get a grant to AHC, because my life was a shit show and I was about two steps away from jumping off a cliff.

Literally.

Like, literally , literally.

But my ex-best friend has decided to hate me so much for leaving town when I was sixteen that he’s making my new life as hellish as the old one. He wants me out, but I refuse to back down, because my entire life changed when I was awarded that grant.

Now I finally have hope. I finally have a purpose. My misery suddenly feels like a precursor of something great. Not a portent of an awful life.

“Telling you won’t change a fucking thing,” I mutter, dropping my head to glare into my mug.

This fucker lures me in here with false promises, and all I get is awful-tasting cocoa and him prying into my private life.

Where the fuck are my marshmallows?

“Haven…” He says it in that tired voice people use when they’re trying to talk sense into someone young, dumb, and full of?—

Ha! Almost, but not quite.

“I’m going to miss my next class,” I tell him, standing so fast that the blanket slides to the floor. But I leave it there, because fuck him.

“Please sit down. I just want to?—”

“Are you taking me back, or should I get an Uber?” I stand there, arms crossed, staring at the door, trying not to notice how dangerous and beautiful he looks in the firelight. Like some ancient god that could devour me whole.

“Haven.” His low, commanding tone makes me want to sink back onto the couch. To let him pry every secret from my lips while his hands do terrible, depraved, wonderful things to my body.

I’m bluffing about calling an Uber, of course. Don’t even have the app installed on my phone. And if I did, they’d need a credit card.

Hate to inconvenience you, Professor, but you’re the one who brought me here. Should have known I was a loose cannon. Don’t they teach you that at professor school?

He rises, sets his cocoa down next to mine, and walks silently to the bookshelf. Plucks out a slim volume, presses it into my chest as he passes on his way to the door.

“It’s a fascinating read,” he says, voice dropping to that professorial purr that makes my mouth dry. “Zimbardo explores how circumstance and authority can reveal the monster hidden beneath someone’s civilization and restraint.”

I can’t breathe. Can’t think.

Because I know he’s not talking about the book anymore.

“Some people need permission to embrace their inner villain. Others...” His eyes flick to the bruise on my jaw. “Others just need someone to show them they were never heroes to begin with.”

He steps back, leaving me clutching the book.

“You’ll especially enjoy the chapter on willing victims.”

Clouds have gathered en masse on the horizon, throwing the entire town into an eerie premature twilight as we drive back to town.

The silence in the Tesla is suffocating.

I can smell his expensive cologne, and something darker beneath. My thighs are still pressed together, and I hate that I’m wet. Hate that my body responds to him like this when my mind knows better.

“You don’t have to drive me all the way back,” I say when we pass a bus stop, because I need to get away from him before I do something stupid.

Like climb into his lap and beg him to hurt me the way I need to be hurt.

“I’d rather make sure you arrived safely.”

He stops right at the entrance of the college.

A few students glance over casually as my car door opens.

Bastian doesn’t seem to care if anyone sees him dropping me off. That should make me feel better, but all I can think about is the way I shriveled up inside when he gave me that soul-fucking stare.

…I know who you’re protecting…

Bastian doesn’t know shit.

I slam the car door a little harder than I’d wanted to, and cringe when I walk past his driver’s side door, expecting him to lean out and yell at me.

But he has more self-control in his little finger than I could ever muster.

I watch him drive away, and wait for regret to slam into me like it always does. But it only comes later that day, when I’m back in my car after an exhaustively boring Urban Studies class.

Professor Rooke invited me into his home, and I spat in his face. Sure, he provoked me, but he was just being kind. When was the last time someone was kind to me?

That’s when the regret hits.

But it’s not aimed at Bastian.

All I see are Kai’s frowning, concerned eyes. I hear his nineteen-year-old self whisper, “Last chance, Heavenly. There’s no coming back from this.”

That I regret.

My hand slams into the steering wheel. Then I do it again, because the pain isn’t intense enough, and I can still see Kai’s eyes, that deep eleven between his brows.

Again.

Again.

Breathing out slow and steady, I take my phone out of my tote bag and balance it on my thigh. Then I hesitate and push the button to open the glove box. It falls down, scattering a few things into the passenger-side footwell.

I ignore them.

The good shit is buried deep.

Deep, deep, deep .

I take out an envelope, fold it open, and slip out the page folded up inside.

Smooth it out on my other thigh.

The paper is soft from years of handling, stained with tears.

Emotions I thought I’d annihilated years ago pour back inside me like they never left.

Shock. Guilt. Shame.

I blink back the tears. Inhale a shuddering breath.

Don’t need to read the note. I’ve committed it to memory years ago.

I WISH I NEVER MET U

I FUCKING HATE U

BURN IN HELL

Bastian loves speculating about the nature of cruelty?

This is right up his alley.

Swallowing, I unlock my phone and hold it up over the piece of paper, waiting for my hand to stop shaking. Then I zoom in so the words scrawled on the bottom like an afterthought aren’t visible in the shot.

Click.

I carefully fold up the paper and slide it back into the envelope. But I don’t put it back in the glove box, because what’s the fucking point?

If I had a lighter, I’d burn it.

But until I get a wallet, I can use the envelope to store my cash.

I take a breath, wipe my nose on the sleeve of my sweater, and DM the pic to my professor.

No context.

No explanation.

No ‘caption.’

If Professor Rooke’s as clever as he thinks he is, he won’t need any.

I’m giving him exactly what he wants.

My pain. My secrets.

And the sick part is, I want to give him more.

I want to see that look in his eyes again, that heady mix of fascination and hunger.

I want to be the puzzle Professor Rooke can’t stop trying to solve.

I want him to take me apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left but pain and need.

I want him to rebuild me into something new.

His.