Chapter One
Cece
I tensed my shoulder to hold the phone closer to my ear so I could hear my little sister’s voice. The only time she got this quiet was when she thought she was going to get into trouble with me. Not that I was a hardass toward her. But she had always been horrible at confrontation, which usually forced me to take up the mantle of sticking up for her. Usually, I don’t mind at all; however, this was the third time she called me to speak to her Ethics and Morality professor.
Apparently, she was late on another assignment, and the man was not known for his mercy or patience. Odd for an ethics professor in my mind, but I wasn’t one to question him about it. No one really questioned him. The man was like a Greek god statue, hot as hell but with the emotional well of marble. Every time he looked at me over those dark glasses, a shiver went down my spine, and I wanted to run away and hide. But I couldn’t do that, not with Thalia’s education on the line.
“Please, Cece. You know I didn’t mean to miss the deadline. I got stuck on the assignment, and I was—”
“I know, Lia, you were scared to ask for help. But seriously, sis, you gotta get over that,” I replied, with the patience I had been holding on for years.
Our parents died a little over three years ago, and since then, I have been doing everything I can to raise my sister and support her as best I can. It was the night of my 18th birthday, and we had been traveling to the coast for a weekend getaway that I had been begging for since the beginning of the year.
I swallowed hard as the guilt swamped me again. Thalia had only been sixteen at the time and sleeping in the back of the car when the driver had hit us. She had been thrown from the vehicle and seriously injured, and ended up in a coma for a week. By the time she had woken up, our parents were gone, and I was barely starting to recover from my own serious injuries. A considerable length of metal had pierced my thigh, shattering the bone. It had taken me months to learn how to walk again, and I was still in physical therapy.
Ever since that night, Thalia had been different… I had been different. And while I don’t regret leaving my childhood responsibilities behind to finish raising my sister, I sometimes feel a sense of longing for the ability to make crappy decisions and the memories that came along with them.
“I am so sorry, Cece,” Thalia’s voice whispered through the phone. “I’ll do better.”
Pain slammed into my chest so hard I almost dropped the massive pile of papers I was carrying. I struggled a bit to hold onto the files, only to drop my damned phone.
“Fuck,” I snapped and juggled my arm load to reach down to pick up my phone again.
“—I really, really need this. Please,” I caught as I put the phone back up to my ear.
“Shit!” I growled as the files threatened to spill. “Fine! I’ll do it, Thalia. But you owe me! And I’m talking about home-cooked dinner WITH dessert.”
“Absolutely! You have a deal, sis!” Thalia exclaimed, the relief giving her sweet voice a light quality that almost made all the frustration worth it… almost.
I shuffled my armload to one side and let my phone drop into my free hand, feeling a stupid sense of triumph as I caught it and hit the end button. Sliding it into my pocket, I took a breath to try and calm down before I made it back to my desk. To say I was an assistant was to say that a fast food worker was a professional chef. I was more like a fetcher of whatever items that anyone in the office wanted. I was the lowest rung on the ladder, and that usually meant that I was stuck running around like a chicken with my head cut off.
I was so stuck in my thoughts that I didn’t see the tall form before I bounced off of it. The files I had diligently been trying to keep in place flew out of my hands and fluttered to the floor like the feathers of a bird being tossed into the air. Unfortunately, the way my ass hit the ground had little to do with grace and nothing to do with feathers. I felt the pain of the floor radiate up through my back and down into my thighs. All the air in my lungs slammed out of me, and I couldn’t breathe as I stared up at a face that was carved from the smoothest marble man had ever known. But the coldness that set in the hard lines pierced through my skin and froze me to the floor. There was a hard, unfeeling look in his black eyes that sent a shiver down my spine. I wanted to look away, but nothing short of a fire could make me look away from the freezing depths of this man’s eyes. Maybe not even that.
“The world would be a much safer place if you would look up while you are walking, Miss Samara.”
Professor Hayden Anerian’s voice flowed across my skin like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day. His refined, upper-class English accent contributed to his composed, impartial demeanor. I would have taken his condescension personally, but I knew he used that same tone on everyone. I wouldn’t call the man a bully because you have to care to bully. He simply looked at everyone as if they were beneath him; my sister and I were indeed included in that.
His eyes traveled down my body, much like a scientist would study a bug under a microscope. Like that bug, I found myself unable to move under his perusal. As he got to my legs, his eyes slowed and took their time, almost mapping out every inch of my skin that was showing. My lips parted in shock when I saw an inkling of what looked like warmth in his expression. However, as soon as I named the emotion, it was gone, and his eyes snapped up to mine, and the indifferent attitude was back; this time, a slight disgust came with it.
The sight of his disgust snapped me out of my stupor and filled me with justified indignation. How dare he look down on me as if he were a god and I a mere mortal?! Gods, I have to stop comparing this man to the Greek gods. I was becoming no better than my mother.
“I apologize, Mr. Anerian. It was not intentional to run into you in such a way. Had I known to expect someone in my own office, I would have looked up,” I retorted, sliding my knees under me to try and stand up.
A flush rushed up my cheeks when I caught sight of what he was looking at. My black garters were on full display as they held up my knee-high, nude stockings. A flush bloomed across my cheeks as I tried not to think about how much I showed off when I was sprawled out on the floor in front of him like a pagan feast.
There I go again with the stupid analogies. I really need to knock that shit off and start wearing pants around the damned professor, apparently. I really should be used to a scant amount of clothes in front of random men. It’s not like it’s unusual with me with my other job. This assistant job was to pay the bills; the other was to pay my sister’s astronomical tuition to this prestigious, elite college. Even with the discount I get for working for the dean at the college, I still have to do something more to make ends meet. My parents had left a lot of debt, including the other half of the mortgage on the house, and I would be damned if I let my sister suffer for my mistakes. So, if I have to use my body to make sure she gets what she needs, then I’ll do it with a smile on my masked face.
