Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Time in hell was nothing.
It went by in a blink.
Time on the human realm, though?
Each moment could be fucking torture.
“You look like you might need a break,” she said, her voice taking on a bit of an authoritative, but kind, tone. Maybe that was the voice she used with her students when she thought they were overwhelmed with a topic. “Maybe we should continue this tomorrow once you’ve had a chance to reevaluate your story for the app.”
I didn’t want to go.
Which was exactly the fucking reason I needed to.
I wanted to tell myself that I only wanted to stay because I was learning so much, because there were so many other things I needed to figure out.
Because there was no way that the truth was that I just… enjoyed Charlotte’s company.
A human.
It made no sense.
Maybe it was simply that I was enjoying being away from the house, from the others and their clear annoyance of my curmudgeonly attitude toward the humans and their world.
If that was the case, though, wouldn’t I just want to be on my own in my rented room instead of with the professor in the library?
Maybe I just needed to… stop fucking thinking about it.
“That’s probably a smart idea. I can gather my notes, maybe do some more of my own research, then get back to you. If you’re free tomorrow,” I said, gathering my notebooks and getting to my feet.
“I am always free. I am usually here if you are ever looking for me after class hours,” she said, waving at the table, and not getting up from it, making it clear she was planning on staying.
“Tomorrow then. Same time,” I said, having this overwhelming urge to reach out and slip some of the hair that had fallen out of her bun behind her ear.
I mean… what the actual fuck was that about?
“Same time,” she agreed. “And same coffee,” she added, giving me a saucy little smirk over the rim of the travel mug. “You’re not getting this back, by the way,” she added, tapping her nails on the side of it. And I absolutely did not think about how those fingers of hers would look wrapped around my cock. “It’s too pretty,” she added.
Yeah, yeah, she was.
Too pretty.
Too smart.
Too sexy, in a hot librarian kind of way.
And too fucking human.
“Tomorrow,” I said, grabbing my shit and moving off.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charlotte
I’d kind of flirted with him.
Okay, there was no kind-of about it.
I’d absolutely flirted with the man.
I didn’t really even know I was capable of that.
I’d always admired the vivacious or coquettish girls who knew what to say or how to move around men in ways that made them instantly interested.
I’d never wanted to be one, though. It just wasn’t how I was wired.
Men were great.
But more so in theory than practice.
What could I say, though? Sometimes we were helpless but to go with the whims of our biological drives. Hell, even history told us that. So much death and heartache all over who someone was—or wasn’t—sleeping with.
I wasn’t against a casual fling.
I wasn’t even against a casual fling with the very attractive, almost disarmingly intense Professor Bael Than.
Just, you know, after all the app research was done. I was a little too invested in it now to screw that part up. It was taking everything I had not to tell my students about it. I was even considering making playing it and writing a short report on what they learned from it part of their grade or extra credit or something.
Sure, I knew I was getting ahead of myself. The app wasn’t even done getting researched, let alone built. Still, I was excited.
Which was why I was going to make sure I didn’t keep accidentally getting flirty with the attractive app creator. Until my part in the process was done.
I actually caught myself half-standing up to watch him as he walked out of the building before I sat back down and shook my head at myself, reaching for the book about Ariadne to try to get myself lost in.
Which was exactly what I did.
Until my eyes gave up on me and I, yet again, passed out at the table using my own arm as a pillow.
The only thing that was different about this night, though, was the fact that I didn’t dream my usual, uncomfortable, fitful dreams. The ones where I was lost in a seedy area in the middle of the night with shady characters watching me, sometimes while—for some inexplicable reason—I was desperately seeking a bathroom. Or the ones where I got up to speak in front of a new class of students and they laughed at me or booed me. Not even the ones where I was back in grade school and the other kids were bullying me for being a couple grades above where I was supposed to be at that age.