Page 115 of Storm of Shadows

The door creaks ajar, and she hesitates in the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the gloom.

“You know it’s really bad for your eyes to be reading in the dark like this,” she mumbles, spying the book on my desk.

“My eyes are perfectly fine, Miss Storm.”

Perfectly fine because I can see the flush in her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes and the pulse dancing in her neck.

She steps inside the room and her scent follows in with her. It flies up my nostrils and smacks me right in the center of my brain; my stomach pangs more aggressively; my fists so taut now my nails cut into my flesh.

I hold my body in place and when I speak again, my voice sounds strangled in my throat.

“Take a seat.”

She does as she’s told, lowering herself carefully onto a bench, groaning under her breath as she does. The Edward professors had the students running circuits this afternoon. I imagine a wisp of a girl like her is feeling the effects.

She nibbles on her lip and waits for my next instruction. She’s nervous. The majority of students are scared of me – not that they could tell you why. I’ve never warranted that fear. Unlike Madame Bardin, I don’t mete out punishments left, right and center.

What does she expect I’ll do to her? I very much doubt she suspects the one thing I want to do. The one thing I can’t.

“What is this detention going to involve?” she asks with a little suspicion.

I rise to my feet slowly, and her head drops back and her gaze follows me upward. Casually, I stroll around my desk, trying my best not to betray the tension in my body. I pick a textbook off the top of the pile on the edge of my desk and toss it towards her. She reaches out and catches it between her hands.

“You can catch up on the lesson you missed.”

“That’s it?” she says with a relieved little giggle. “School work?”

“Miss Storm, I suspect you’d rather be elsewhere and not in a dungeon with me.”

“Well,” she says, smiling as she flips open the cover of the book, “it’s not like I had anything better planned.”

“Not partying with the Princes tonight,” I hiss.

She ignores that comment, making a show of pretending to be very interested in the first page of the textbook.

“Don’t you have something better to be doing yourself, Professor Tudor?”

I snort. “Anything would be better than this,” I lie, because there isn’t a single place I’d rather be than in her company,basking in her delicious scent, “so you’d better not skip my class again.”

She runs her finger down the first page, pretending to read the text.

“We’ve covered that material already, Miss Storm. You need to turn to page twenty-two.”

Blood rushes up to the surface of her cheeks, and my stomach moans silently.

She flips to the relevant page.

“Restrainments,” she reads out.

“Yes, using shadow-weaving abilities to restrain another person.”

“I don’t have shadow-weaving abilities,” she says, coldly.

“Doesn’t mean you get to skip my lesson.”

“It’s a waste of my time and yours.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” I lean back against my desk. “Read the text aloud to me.”