Professor Keaton leaned in and brought his hand up to my face. He softly cupped my chin, his thumb grazing along the line of jaw. His eyes dipped down to my mouth before skating their way back up to meet mine. It had been nothing more than the barest of glances, so maybe it’d been the startling brightness of his blue eyes, but it felt as though it’d lasted a lot longer than it had.
It felt like, when he looked at me, he could see every little flaw on my face the way I could his.
“You look scared, sweet thing,” he murmured.
Defiantly, I raised my chin, and his grip went with it. I focused on the way his long, dark eyelashes skimmed this skin. Like that would dull the intensity of him.
“What I look like and what I feel are two very different things, sir.”
“I don’t like your attitude.”
“I don’t like yours, either. So I guess we’re even.”
His grip tightened, his lips thinning. A hard glint replaced the amusement in his eyes, but I refused to back down.
“Remember what’s at stake next time you run your mouth.”
I narrowed my eyes to glare at him. I understood his ploy for exactly what it was. Provoke me into sassing him and then verbally beat me into submission with the reminder of what he had on me.#p#分页标题#e#
I hated him.
In that moment, it became a real, tangible feeling that picked up speed and pounded around my body like adrenaline. Hatred. Pure, untouched hatred. And he had every single bit of it, so in a way, he did own a part of me. That horrible part of ourselves we keep buried deep down, hidden from the rest of the world. The things that make us roll our eyes at ourselves and scream into a pillow or throw a pen at the wall.
That. All the bad stuff. He owned that hatred-tinged bullshit.
Once again, his mouth curved to the side, and he released my chin. He sat back in his seat and turned the key in the ignition. When he turned the steering wheel, I realized I’d walked right into his trap.
He was taking me somewhere… And my car was right there.
Shit.
Well played, asshole.
Well fucking played.
Dear Professor, what the hell? Xoxo, Darcy.
That somewhere was his house.
At least, I assumed it was. I was shocked when we made the turn into a small town outside town. I’d lived there for two years and had no idea this place even existed. As we drove, I figured that it was probably because there were all of ten houses in a pretty vast area. It didn’t even constitute a town. It was more like a few houses on a couple of roads that just happened to be linked.
He pulled up outside one house that was set back from the others. The car’s headlights illuminated a black, metal gate that was open and the trees and shrubbery beyond it. My grip tightened even more on my phone as he drove up the gravel pathway leading to a decent-sized Victorian-style house. It was nothing to phone home about. I wouldn’t gasp in surprise any time soon, but I did find myself drawn to the shutters that were by every window.
He’d clearly gone to great lengths to keep this house pretty close to the original. Or maybe he’d bought it like this. How did I know? I knew nothing about the man.
“Come,” was all he said as he shut off the engine and got out of the truck.
I took a deep breath and got out. The shutting of my door seemed to ring through the silent air, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say that I was walking to my death. Certainly a kidnapping scenario. The dark trees barely illuminated by the crescent moon blocked out its hazy light, rendering the driveway almost pitch-black.
I almost sighed in relief when a security light came on.
Professor Keaton—was I supposed to call him that outside of school? I didn’t know. Maybe that needed to be cleared up. Was I supposed to call him Jordan? Professor? Sir? Master? Lord Fuckhead?
Yep. That sure needed clearing up today. I couldn’t keep referring to him as “he” inside my head, although I wanted to.
Professor Keaton opened the wooden front door and flicked a light on almost immediately. I hung back a second as he stepped into a relatively spacious hallway with mahogany wooden flooring and a giant staircase in the middle of it. He looked at me expectantly, and I stepped inside.
The house was deceptively big. Once again, I licked my lips. I was going to need start carrying Chapstick with me, at this rate.
The man in front of me cleared his throat and held one hand out. I glanced at his roughened palm with one eyebrow lifted, and he stepped forward and took my phone right out of my hands, along with my car keys.
My jaw dropped, but there was nothing I could say. He set them carefully enough into a glass bowl on a coffee table in the living room and disappeared from view. I assumed I had to follow him, and clearly, he was being stingy with his words tonight.