Page 118 of Shattered Stars

“Rhi?”

“Dresses.”

“Dresses,” I say flatly.

She nods. Then inhales. “Tristan sent me a bunch of really expensive dresses.”

I blink. “I’m struggling to follow here.”

“Winnie thinks I should accept them. I want to send them back.”

I shake my head. “He’s trying to win you round. It’s hardly surprising. He’s your fated mate.”

“He’s not my …” She trails off.

“Rhi,” I say, “I think we’re past that now, aren’t we? He is and at some point we’re going to have to deal with it.”

“How? I hate him.Youhate him,” she says, pointing at me.

“I don’t hate him,” I say, a little taken back. Sure I think he’s arrogant, spoiled and self-centered. But so are most people in the academy. So are most people in Los Magicos. I don’t hate him.

“How could we ever make it work?”

“Fuck, Rhi,” I say, stroking my knuckles over her cheek. “I think I could endure hell itself for you.”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t want you to endure anything. And I don’t want to have to deal with him,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “I want him to leave me alone.”

“I’ll have a word with him,” I say darkly, then I chuckle, shaking my head. “Trust Tristan Kennedy to throw his money at the problem.”

“Yeah,” she says. Her eyes drop, and something flickers through her mind. Something to do with a classroom … and …

“What the fuck?!” I say.

“Huh?” she says, eyes leaping back to mine.

I take her chin in my grip again and twist her gaze back to mine. “Care to explain, Miss Blackwaters?”

Her eyes are all wide and innocent but the girl is a brat, a minx.

“Tristan Kennedy can make himself invisible? How the hell do I not know that?”

“I guess keeping it a secret works to his advantage.”

“Yeah, it’s one hell of an advantage,” I say, trying to deduce what I just saw in her mind. “He …” My eyes flicker over her face. I’m trying damn hard not to infiltrate her mind here. But I’m curious as hell and frankly whatever went down looked hot as hell too. “He made you …” I growl, “come.”

Her eyes widen with horror. “Are you strolling around inside my mind again, Professor?”

“Are you keeping secrets again, Miss Blackwaters?” She scowls at me and I scowl right back. In the end, it’s me who relents first. Of course it fucking is. I’m weak for this girl. “Sometimes, I honestly can’t help it, Rhi. When you’re not blocking me, I end up strolling in without meaning to. I see things I genuinely don’t mean to see.”

She looks at me with suspicion, then tweaks my fucking nipple.

“Ow!” I say.

“Don’t do it again.”

“I’m not making any promises,” I say, reaching inside her top and rubbing her nipple between my finger and thumb in retaliation, making her bite her lip.

“What happened?” I ask again. I rub the pad of my thumb around the hardening nub of her nipple and graze my teeth up her throat towards her ear. I nip the lobe, then whisper into the shell. “Tell me all about it, Miss Blackwaters. And then we can see if you need punishing at all. Misbehaving in class …”