Eyes narrowing, I shoved at his shoulders and when he didn’t relinquish his hold on me, his eyes only narrowing in irritation if anything. I spat, “I work here. You either let me go or I call on a bouncer.”
“Not sure they’ll hear you,” the douche retorted, his hands dropping down to cup my ass all the more. When he squeezed my butt cheeks, I raised my leg and kneed him square in the balls.
When he howled, people around us snickered, but when I rushed off, I let him get caught up by the tide.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been propositioned here, and it wasn’t the first time I’d had to defend myself against unwanted groping, but damn, it was the first time I’d found satisfaction in kneeing someone in the balls.
Was that a good development?
Or a bad one?
And, when it boiled down to it, why hadn’t Professor Maclean’s repeated intimidation inspired a similar reaction in me?
Was it because he was beautiful when the guy on the dance floor was passably attractive?
If so, how much of a hypocrite was I when Maclean had made me do—
What had he made me do?
Forced me to masturbate in front of him.
He hadn’t touched me. Not once. I wasn’t even sure if he’d watched, for Christ’s sake. While he’d seemed more aware than Wednesday, that was like saying a koala was more on the ball than a sloth.
Uneasy, I headed up the steps toward the VIP section. Here, the lights were lower, and there was a private dance floor actual celebrities were known to frequent—not that I’d seen any, and not that I gave a damn.
Aiming for the bar, I froze when I saw Professor Maclean tucked in a corner booth.
My eyes widened at the sight of him.
What the hell was he doing here?
Was he keeping an eye on me or something?
It took everything I had not to walk over to him, to demand his purpose for being here, but then I realized how fucking stupid that was.
This was a club.
A popular one.
And though a college professor, he was the exact opposite of an old fuddy-duddy. Why wouldn’t he be at a club that was modern, trendy, and overloaded with women who shook their nonexistent asses on the dance floor?
Still, though the reasoning made sense, it didn’t cure me of my apprehension.
Him being here was weird. Weird that, in two days, I’d seen him in both my places of work, right?
I bit my bottom lip then decided to push thoughts of him aside.
If he was messing with me or if it really was a coincidence, either way, I had a job to do.
When I reached the bar, I was hustled behind it, given less than two minutes to acquaint myself with the space, and was relieved to note the booze was stored in the exact same layout as downstairs, just on a smaller scale and with a heavy focus on the higher-priced labels.
Up here, those weird glowing shapes were more of a feature—they were sofas, uncomfortable ones, and tables too. Those were the only sources of light, making it darker than usual, oddly enough, when I was already used to working in a nightclub where the major source of illumination was a laser.
I got to work, managed to shove aside thoughts of Maclean for the moment, and was staggered by a huge tip I got from someone who came up to the bar rather than waiting on being served.
When the same guy came back three times, with a massive tip on each occasion, my cheeks burned when I realized he was doing it for a reason—not because he was attracted to me, but to make his girlfriend jealous.
“It’s working,” I told him flatly, after I’d taken his tip. My eyes flickered over to the woman I’d seen him sit beside earlier. She was shooting daggers at me like I’d danced off with him into the sunset or something, and hadn’t just served him his drinks.
“Good,” was his gleeful retort, before he grabbed his order and returned to his date.
She shot me a triumphant look—like I gave a damn—and the second he was seated, almost knocked his drinks out of his hands in an effort to straddle his lap and kiss half his face off.
The tableau actually disturbed me on a base level. Made me wonder if she’d not been willing to put out or something, and his flirting with me—even though it had gone unnoticed in the face of my joy over his tip—had been used to manipulate her.
Men were douches, weren’t they?
Grunting under my breath, I focused on the busy shift, and realized that though the tips were way better up here, I preferred the mania of downstairs.
Maclean waited in his booth the whole time I was there. He didn’t dance. Didn’t even make eye contact with me. Just stayed there. Silent. Present without being watchful.
It was weird, and I knew I was making it so but hell, he had me on edge.
He was using my stupid mistake against me, and with no expiration date except for graduation? My options were limited.
When, an hour before my shift was over, the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, I knew who it was.
It was him.
I didn’t even have to turn around to see him to know he was there.
My heart started pumping, and I could feel adrenaline surging through my veins. It was as though my body was viscerally aware of the threat he posed, and though he was danger walking, that wasn’t my sole response.
Sure, I felt like I was in the middle of a race, with my lungs churning and my heart pounding, but my belly was tingling like someone was touching me. My core throbbed with a heat I couldn’t deny.
At that moment, my body wasn’t aware that he was the enemy. That he’d blackmailed me. All I remembered was how he looked that morning after I came, those beautiful brown eyes narrowed slits as he studied me, watching me like I was his own personal movie, as he demanded I suck my fingers clean.
Wednesday, I’d been terrified. Today, I’d been angry.
But now?
So shortly after he’d extorted his way into my life, I seemed to forget all that.
How could my body betray me like this? How could I be viscerally aware of this monster?
I turned around and saw him standing there, and when I saw the utter lack of anything on his face, just that calm studious expression that made me feel even more like an experiment, I realized how odd his behavior had been tonight.
He hadn’t left the booth once.
Hadn’t danced with anyone even though women had come to him and tried to entice him out—because yes, I’d noticed.
As he’d watched me earlier in his office, I watched him tonight.
And what I’d seen was just as perplexing as anything the man did.
He’d come to a nightclub to sit and read something on his phone? To ignore the hot babes who wanted to dance with him? Not even to hear the beat, evading it so successfully that he didn’t even tap his foot?
No.
He’d come for me.
When I took in his handsomeness, a beautiful masculine face that belied the cruelty he was capable of, my breath was taken away from me all over again as I took in the look in his eyes. Dear God, the intensity there? It set my nerves alight. He saw me, I realized. He saw me, and that was the most terrifying thing I’d ever noticed.
When he looked at me, his attention was nowhere else but on me, and it made no sense just as so much of what he did was actually illogical.
He hadn’t touched me. Seemed to loathe me. Talked to me like trash. Treated me like shit.
And yet?
I lit up like a fucking bonfire now that he was here.