“How? You took that deal for a reason, right? Because of Shreveport?”
“Yes, but I can get an out-of-state job.” I tilt her chin up and kiss her, smiling against her lips. “Or I can become a pirate.”
After the shit with Prescott tonight, however, my resignation brings new complications for Ivory.
She caresses my jaw. “The dean will just replace you with another deal. She hired you under wrongful terms and wiped Mrs. McCracken’s recommendations from my file, so clearly, she’s on a devil’s mission. Why does she want her son to go there so badly?”
“It’s the best school with the wealthiest endowments. Prescott’s admittance is her shoe in to elevate Le Moyne’s power and status. Or who knows? Maybe she aspires to sit on the board there someday.”
She nods, her face furrowed in contemplation. “If you quit, Prescott won’t have enough incentive to keep his mouth shut about me. After tonight, he can give his mother all the leverage she needs to get rid of me.”
Exactly where my head is at. Just like that, I know with absolute certainty I won’t leave Le Moyne or Ivory. I’m smarter and meaner than Beverly Rivard, and I have a few months to decide the method and level of cruelty I’ll use to beat her.
“I understand why you did it. Why you took that deal.” Ivory trails her fingers across my chest, watching the movement. “Even after what Joanne did, it’s hard to let go. To move away.”
My breath catches at the accuracy of her statement. She’s right, but she doesn’t know the real problem, the one I’m working to resolve with Joanne. And my feelings for Joanne? Those have dulled enough that they no longer drive my actions.
Ivory’s eyelids flutter heavily, her limbs slackening around me, as she mutters under her breath, “Everything is possible.”
“Such as?”
“I’m going to Leopold.”
Her stubbornness is inconvenient. And painfully admirable. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I’m going to do about it.
I hate to postpone her sleep, but there’s one more thing I need to know. “Where is your brother’s friend?”
Her eyes flash open, and her voice catches in her throat. “What?”
“Did he disappear after he raped you? Or is he still around?”
Her complexion turns bloodless in the dim light, her cheekbones pressing against her tightening skin.
Everything inside me goes still, strangling my throat and thickening my voice. “Tell me.”
She throws back the covers, rolls on top of me, and rests her forehead against mine. “No more punching tonight.”
I grip her firm ass beneath the shirt and try to focus my energy on her body and not what’s been done to her body. “When was the last time he touched you?”
She drops her knees to my sides, straddling me, as she holds my face in her hands. “He hasn’t raped me since August.”
August? I jackknife to a sitting position, my vision blurred by red fog. “This past August, as in two months ago?”
She clings to my chest, holding on to my head as she mashes her mouth against mine. The moment her tongue seeks entry, I kiss her back, angrily, possessively, tangling my hand in her hair and yanking her hips against mine.
I bite her lip. “His name.”
She rocks her * against my cock, thrusting her tongue and, goddammit, distracting me.
I rip my mouth away. “His name.”
She slumps, her whisper hollow. “Lorenzo Gandara.”
Latino? The same motherfucker lurking around her house that night?
“Does he ride an orange sportbike?”
Her fingernails dig into the back of my neck. “How do you know that?”
“Go to sleep.”
That’s the only response Emeric gives to my endless questions about Lorenzo. Eventually, my worries dissolve beneath the weight of fatigue.
I tuck close against the rigid wall of his chest, sheltered by the bulk of his arm around my back, and guarded by his vigilant gaze. I fall fast into sleep, lost in a great timeless space where forever isn’t long enough.
I’ve never felt this weightless, like a strange airy sensation has replaced my bones and skin, and there’s nothing left but my breath. Soft, floaty breaths of ether. Each exhale forms a cloud that joins the others drifting around me in a vast blue sky.
I’m dreaming. I try to hold onto the enchantment. It’s so safe and gentle here I don’t want to leave. Don’t wake up.
I blink against flashes of sapphire haloed by lamp light.
“Good morning.” Emeric’s blue eyes fill my horizon, so deep and majestic, glimmering with all the colors and stars of heaven.
I stretch my arms over my head, delighting in the softness of his bed. “I’m dreaming.”
He stands over me, biceps bunching as he plants his hands on the edge of the mattress. “Still dreaming?”
“Well…I was in heaven.” I reach up and caress the day-old scruff on his jaw. “Until the devil showed up.”