Living in Shadow(5)

Such a little thing to notice and yet he did, fascinated by the dichotomy of her. The way she could be cool, not a hair out of place, one minute, then laugh like a phone-sex worker and dangle one heel off her foot the next.

“Hey, Luc, are you listening to me?”

“Not really. Sorry.”

“Who are you looking at?” Beside him, Maddie craned her head and he forced himself to look away from Eleanor, focusing his attention on the woman beside him.

“You,” he said and smiled at her.

The smile had its usual effect. Maddie rolled her eyes, but he knew she wasn’t offended. “You’re impossible.”

Across the room he could hear Eleanor laugh again, but this time he didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He already knew how her face lit up.

Why were you looking at me?

He’d told her he was looking at her because she was the lecturer, fucking liar that he was. He should have told her the truth.

Because you’re the most beautiful, fascinating woman I’ve ever seen. Because I want you.

“Ugh,” Maddy said, complaining already. “I’ve got Harris this afternoon. Anyone got anything to keep me awake?”

The conversation turned into the usual round of complaints about the boringness of Prof Harris and his criminal law classes, then diverted into what was usually a more interesting topic, such as which club they were going to that night.

Luc didn’t much care where they went. He’d gotten himself to the point where he could fit in with what normal twenty-somethings did on a Friday night without trying too hard. Sometimes booze and loud music even made him forget he wasn’t a normal twenty-something.

Of course there would always be a part of him that knew otherwise. That understood no amount of booze or sex would make him normal. He was too different. There was too much darkness inside him.

He’d learned to ignore that part.

As his friends argued over the choice of bar, over on the other side of the café Eleanor was standing, her jacket slung over one shoulder, high heels now firmly on. She was smiling at one of her colleagues, continuing to talk. And even though he’d seen her glance around just about everywhere in the café, she hadn’t once looked in his direction.

Like she didn’t look in his direction during class.

Something stirred in him. Something hungry he’d been suppressing ever since he came back to New Zealand—there wasn’t any need for it in the life he’d come back to. The instinct of a hunter.

Fuck that. He was going to make it his mission to get her to look at him. See him the way she had in the lecture hall, as if for one split second he was a man not a student. Get her to look at him like that every damn time.

She’s your professor. That sort of shit isn’t allowed.

Yeah, but it wasn’t breaking any rules. An acknowledgment. That’s all he wanted. And then perhaps he’d get back to thinking about his degree and not what lay behind that cool gray gaze of hers.

He sat back, waiting as she and her colleagues came toward the doors. He was sitting right by them; she wouldn’t be able to miss him unless she was deliberately avoiding him. But he wasn’t going to resort to a cough or anything else attention getting like last time. She would look at him because she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

She continued talking, smiling at something Professor Devon had said to her, and he thought that perhaps she’d keep on ignoring him, which was a kind of acknowledgment all on its own.

And then her attention flicked to him as she approached the doors.

He held her gaze, silently willing her to see him. To really see him. And shit, there it was again, that flash of silver in her eyes. A reaction she couldn’t hide.

Helpless desire tightened its grip. So, he hadn’t imagined it yesterday. There was something between them. Very definitely something. And God, he wanted to know what it was.

Her gaze dropped, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of his stare, and he found that perversely thrilling. Was she trying to hide her reaction again? Collect herself? Had he affected her so much she didn’t know what to do with herself? God, he wanted to take that determined chin in his fingers and force her to look him in the eye. While he told her exactly what she’d been doing to him for the past month…

Since when did you force women to do anything?

A thread of unexpected cold wound through him at the thought. No, shit, he didn’t force anyone to do anything. Especially women. That was one of the rules he’d given himself back in the squad. It was the one thing that kept him from becoming one of them. The only thing…

“Anything I can do for you, Mr. North?” Eleanor May’s cool voice cut through the ice and he realized that, far from continuing to ignore him, she’d stopped beside his table, looking down at him with one pale brow raised in enquiry.