Furore (The Night Skulls MC #1)(15)

I don’t like it when you talk to other men.

My gaze froze on the words. The only person who had said something like that to me was Tirone. He’d invaded my world, intoxicating me, with the same jealous possessiveness these words of another man—a dangerous criminal and a stranger—held. Laius Lazzarini was nothing but a potential threat I needed to address and a student I met a few weeks ago and was bound to leave after a few more. Yet I was so weak and desperate for a reminder, for something to fill the hole that was ripped out of my heart, that I didn’t care about how inappropriate and ridiculous those words were or whom they came from.

Like an addict, I let them seep into my pores and give me a dark rapture, a fake euphoria that would numb the pain even for a few moments. With a warm sigh, I bit my lip on a smile.

Then it hit me. I might have made some decisions that truly questioned the level of my intelligence, and I was surely devastated enough to fill the void inside my chest with anything no matter how fake or Ludacris. But I wasn’t that stupid.

While it sounded silly for a man to be jealous for a woman he’d barely spoken to or spent time with, a woman he hadn’t touched or even seemed to like, it wasn’t impossible. It’d happened to me before. Prior that day at the library, Tirone didn’t exactly give me the easiest time in class. He was always mean and barely gave me any attention to the point I thought he hated me. It wasn’t strange for me to see the same behavior from another student. A show of hate on the outside, quite the opposite on the inside.

But…not from Furore.

He was forty-one, not a teenager who had an unhealthy crush on the teacher. The president of the Night Skulls most certainly had had more than enough women at his disposal for years. Women that looked million times better than I did and were ready to please him in ways I didn’t. I understood he was behind bars with no access to such entertainment, but he hadn’t been here that long to lust over the fatback teacher—yes, I heard what they called me—let alone become jealous or possessive of me.

Furore was playing me, thinking he could get me to believe he had intimate feelings for me so I’d trust him enough to tell him another one of my secrets.

I grabbed the pencil from his hand and flipped it to erase his deceit, resolve to beat him in his own game coursing through me. “But you haven’t even reached the minimum word limit. You only wrote two ridiculous lines. Write the whole thing, Laius. Stop caring about misspelling a few words and put more effort into writing down some in the first place.”

He snatched the pencil back from my hand, touching my finger in the process, sending a wild turmoil of tingling need in me, shaking my resolve for a split-second, and wrote something else down. “How about now?”

Stop talking to that schmuck and I will finish the stupid assignment.

I’d do anything to get him to speak, even if it was leading him to believe he was successful with his manipulation. “Fine. I don’t think that’s very creative, but it’s your assignment. I’ll allow it.”

He wrote something quickly. Good girl.

Despite myself, I twitched with a smile on my lips and a throb between my legs. What was it about those two words that floored us like that?

Fuck me for being that weak and depraved. “When you finish, you’ll read for the class.” And that was my fuck you to him.

He looked up at me as I straightened, surprise flicked in his eyes. Then he snorted a laugh. “No.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

Still laughing, he hunched over the notebook and shrugged.

I threw a subtle glance at what he wrote next. Take off your shades for me, and I’ll think about it. I’m tired of imagining the eyes I look into when I fuck my fist every night. I wanna know what they look like for real.

The crass expression penetrated my senses with fear and pleasure. A smirk curved his mouth as he lifted his eyes, taking his time with every curve of my body, darting the tip of his tongue and licking his lip. When he met my face, I was melting under his vulgar scrutiny.

Stop it. Don’t let him win. It’s all lies. He doesn’t care about you. He just wants you to drop your guards, to come out from your hiding and be easy prey for whomever is hunting.

“You know this is giving me a headache.” I set a hand on my hip and smiled at Murphy. “Maybe, I should have that coffee after all.”

Furore cursed under his breath. Then he jumped to his feet. Reflexively, I took a step back. While he wasn’t The Hulk, and his body and muscles weren’t bulging—painfully proportional and sculpted but not humongous like those of Laniakea Kelekolio, for instance, Furore was much bigger than me and would easily take me down in a fight if it’d ever come to it. He was capable of hurting me. In many ways. He incited a certain fear in me that was far more powerful than that of physical strength. His energy was the most dominant I’d ever encountered, and the rage that was bubbling up under it was enough to sink my heart down to my knees.

Murphy came toward us. “Lazzarini, back to your seat.”

Furore clenched one fist and with the other grabbed the notebook. For a second there, he looked like he was going to hit the guard with it. Oh no.

Murphy stood between me and Furore, pushing me back, clutching his baton. “Lazzarini, last warning.”

I felt all eyes on us. A state of high alert filled the room. Any second now, this could turn into a riot in the classroom.