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I cut to the chase. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a war with myself, and I’d like to blame you for it.”
He chuckled. “You can blame me all you like, but can you honestly say you didn’t enjoy what we did that night? Come on, Elijah.”
I shook my head. “There’s more to it, though, isn’t there, Noah? She’s our student. You know why we’re here at this godawful school, of all places. We have an agenda. And to get caught up with a student, of all people? It could come with serious repercussions.”
There was a minute of silence.
“I know we have an agenda,” Noah finally breathed. “I can never forget that. But that doesn’t mean we need to stop living, does it? And you know what attraction feels like, Eli. I don’t need to school you on that. So, if it’s there, and if it’s with Aurora, why fight it?”
Honestly, I had no good answer to that. All I knew was that it was supposed to feel wrong.
The problem? It felt very, very right.
I sat down on my study table and bundled up the bunch of poems to put into a leather binder. Like a lot of other things in this room, it was a gift from June.
The need to avenge her memory stirred something raw inside me. I closed my eyes, wishing I could just talk to her.
But if she were to ever communicate from wherever she was, I know she’d tell me to take a chance on my heart.
And then, there was the obvious conflict of how we were all invested in Aurora. There was no running away from this—Benji, Noah, and me. We’d all felt sparks.
If it came down to it, I would be content with sharing. Not because I was inherently polyamorous, but because I believed that wild things deserved to be left to bask in the free wind and sun.
Aurora was a wildling. She belonged in nature, and she deserved to explore her options. That was evident in her easy gait, the way she looked with those sultry eyes, those curves, and her sweet, soft smile.
I remained so lost in my thoughts that I hardly realized when my laptop screen started going off. It was a prompt from Naughty Lessons.
Member in chatroom 20. Would you like to join?
My heart in my mouth, I opened the chatroom after putting on a mask.
It was who I’d expected.
11
Rory
“Would you like to roleplay as a literary heroine?” the masked hunk behind the screen asked me, his soulful eyes gazing at me like I was the only thing that mattered. It was cute. He was gorgeous.
I nodded. I was down for an adventure this evening. I didn’t even know why I’d logged in—I just got a prompt from Naughty Lessons and wanted to see if any of the men from last night were online.
I wasn’t sure if he’d been there in the chatroom previously, but his form looked very familiar. I could have sworn I’d seen those chest freckles on one of the three strangers.
But maybe I was just playing myself. Whatever it was, the thrill felt very familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
“Who do you have in mind?” I asked, my voice throaty.
“Lizzie Bennet.”
I chuckled. “Only if you play Mr. Darcy.”
“How does she manage to disappoint and intrigue simultaneously?”
A gentle red flush crept into my cheeks at how the masked man in front of me quoted Mr. Darcy fromPride and Prejudiceso beautifully. He looked the type, too. Although I could not make out the particulars of his face, he was angular. Tall. Stunning blue eyes. Long hands with veins running through them.
And he looked older than the men I was used to being around. These days, I’d pretty much understood that I craved a different kind of intimacy. Young men weren’t my type any longer.
They could never understand the kind of love we women demanded. They needed to be taught. And hell, no. After all the work I was doing on myself, I did not have the time or energy to mother a twenty-something-year-old on how to kiss so his tongue would not feel like a dead fish in my mouth.
