Eternally Seduced(115)

Camille's brow went up. "What? You promised you'd help me a while ago!"

So that's what she agreed to, Mary realized with a grimace.

"---there's no other person I know who's better than you when it comes to impressing good-looking nerds."

Mary wanted to gag Camille. "Sssh! You make it sound like a skill I  practice." She explained earnestly, "I just don't see them as men." She  was painfully awkward with the opposite sex but not when it was clear  they saw her more as a colleague than a girl.

Camille snorted. "Darling, if you offered classes I'd be the first one  to sign up. The moment you open your mouth, all the smart men fall in  love with you." She looked towards the crowd again. "Do you see him now?  You know, a while ago I saw Krizia trying to chat him up and he was  completely unaffected. That's why I think he's one of those hot nerd  types."

Mary started jumping again.

Okay, he was indeed dark-haired and quite tall.

Deep breath, jump.

He was also … dressed in a pinstriped suit, making Mary think that Camille  was probably right. This was no college student and he seemed too well  dressed for a professor. So what did that leave him? A guest lecturer? A  rich patron?

Deep breath, juuuuump ---

The girl in front of her suddenly stepped back, the girl on her right  moved towards the left, and Mary found herself without a place to land.  The next second, she came crashing down, the topmost body on a human  pyramid and twisting her ankle as she did.

Mary gasped in pain.

There was chaos all around, and she gasped again when the girls  underneath her callously pushed her off them, causing her to roll down  to the ground. She landed on her injured ankle, and Mary cried out once  more.

"Let me pass," she dimly heard a familiar voice said in a commanding tone.

She looked up. A shadow fell over Mary, and her stunned gaze clashed  with a pair of startlingly blue ones. Mary's jaw dropped and she  whispered unthinkingly, "SERIAL KISSER."





Chapter Two





Rathe Wellesley had been mistaken frequently as a movie star, a supermodel, and a prince. But never had he been mistaken as a---

" … I heard she called him a serial killer," one of the movers whispered as he looked at Rathe.

That.

Lip curling at the way everyone was now thinking of him as a serial  killer, Rathe walked out of Saffi's bedroom. If he heard someone  describe him once more as a fucking murderer then he would really be  one, and his first victim would be the girl next door.

"Hey, boss? What do you want me to do about this?"

Rathe turned to face Carter, the head of the moving team he had hired to  transfer all of Saffi's stuff to Staffan's place. Carter was looking at  him with a confused expression as he lifted up a full-colored chart of a  fish's reproductive cycle.         

     



 

Doing his best not to wince, Rathe said in a remarkably level voice,  "Err, yes. It was the owner's explicit instructions that everything in  this room be carted off."

Carter scratched his bald head. "You sure, boss?"

The things he did for losing a bet, Rathe thought as he inclined his  head in response. He was the 5th Duke of Flanders, with Wellington no  less as an ancestor, and yet today he was being forced to treasure  posters that were better described as rubbish.

Rathe nodded. "Yes, everything must be properly packed and moved." He  stayed for a few more moments, merely observing to ensure that the move  would be completed within a day. Satisfied with what he had seen, Rathe  left Saffi's room and came to stand in front of the room he had once  entered a week ago.

There were so many reasons not to do this.

He was a duke. She was nobody. He was thirty-four years old. She was  eighteen. He would never love her. She might already be infatuated with  him.

But when he closed his eyes now, all Rathe could imagine was Mary Ashton's barely covered body and the way she felt in his arms.

****

"Come in." Mary failed to keep her voice from squeaking out as she heard  the knock on the door. She was hoping it would not be him, but when the  door opened and closed quietly at her visitor's entry, Mary knew it was  a doomed wish. Guys in college would have slammed that door open and  close.

"Are you all right now?" The voice was super polite, polished, and … British.

Yes, she thought glumly. That was definitely him, Mr. Serial Kisser. Her  cheeks burned at the memory she was still finding impossible to forget.  Even to this day, she couldn't figure out how it was that she had let  him kiss her like that. If not for her phone suddenly ringing, she  probably would have …

No, don't think that, Mary scolded herself mentally. The important thing  here was that she had escaped Mr. Serial Kisser. She had run away from  her room and only went back late at night, a few minutes past the dorm's  no-guests-allowed curfew.

Rathe was patient as he waited for the girl to answer, content with  using the time to simply look his fill of her. It was unfortunate she  was not dressed so sexily today, Rathe thought with a quiet sigh.  Instead, she was covered from head to toe in a white buttoned-up blouse  and jeans, with one leg propped up on the pillow to accommodate her  injured ankle.

She was wringing her hands on her lap, something Rathe found strangely … fascinating.

The seconds ticked by.

Mary stole a look at her visitor, making sure her glance did not stray  above his neck. He was arranging his cuff links like he had all the time  in the world to do so.

He was not saying anything, but for every second that he kept quiet, she  felt guiltier and guiltier. Unable to bear it any longer, she blurted  out, "I didn't really mean for anyone to think you were a serial  killer."

Her mumbled voice had a tone of torture to it. Rathe was not a sadistic  man, but for some reason he enjoyed a sense of satisfaction at the way  she was almost writhing on the bed with her lovely cheeks on fire. The  way she looked now, it was very much easy to imagine her face flushed  and her body writhing for a very different reason.

She still had her head bowed down, with dark tendrils of hair escaping  her rather messy twist. Once in a while, she would lift her hand to push  her glasses back up on her nose.

Nothing special about her and yet this girl had kept his cock aching for  nights, and it was the kind of ache that not even being in the company  of more beautiful women could assuage. They had all worked hard to tempt  him, using ingenuous tricks and dirty words, but they all left him  cold.

Rathe had hoped the time away would prove that his desire for Mary  Ashton was a novelty, but instead the time spent apart from Saffi's  friend had proved the opposite. She was an obsession  –  the kind that  could ruin him.

He should leave now, leave this bloody minute before it was too late and  he wouldn't be able to control the dangerous urge inside him to possess  her. Why was he so damnably attracted to this girl, Rathe wondered  moodily. As he tried to grapple with the reality of his near-bulging  erection, not one of his thoughts showed on Rathe's face, which was  almost classical in its hard-jawed beauty. His aloof exterior had led  many people to think he was cold and ruthless, someone who looked  gorgeous on the outside but had nothing to offer on the inside.

While half of Europe's media called him England's #1 Heartthrob, the  other half referred to him as a cold fish, the true modern-day  reincarnation of the Iron Duke  –  and they did not mean it as a  compliment.

Did Mary know that about him? Did she think the same and was that why she had run like hell after their first kiss?

It shouldn't matter. She should not matter. And right now, the only  thing that should matter was telling her whatever needed to be said so  he could get the fuck out of her life and they could forget each other  after this.

Rathe opened his mouth to speak the same moment he caught Mary sneaking a  look at him. Realizing she had been seen, Mary instantly looked away  and began whistling a Carpenters song out of tune.

A bloody Carpenters song.

And its title was …

We've Only Just Begun.

Her whistling stopped midway, as if she had just realized at the same time what that song meant.

Rathe heard himself saying, "You do know that the news about me being a serial killer could be making its rounds now?"

Mary gulped, completely forgetting her embarrassment as his words  penetrated her mind. Was he threatening to have her jailed? What would  happen to her piranha if she was behind bars? She said lamely, "I really  didn't say you were that kind of serial … kil … kis … guy." She pursed her  lips in desperation because she had this terrible urge to whistle again.  It was something she had used to do whenever Bartholomew locked her in  the darkness of the attic, a device her innocent child's mind had come  up with to keep herself from panicking.

Rathe struggled to keep his tone impassive. "I'm sure you didn't, but I may have to speak with my legal team about it."

She choked. "I t-truly didn't mean to---"