Page 21 of Tempt Me

“Sir?” she said, clearly confused but unable to see my real sins.

“Yeah?” I replied, my anger at the situation biting through my tone.

She shrunk back a bit, shyly standing by the end of the aisle.

“What are you doing back here?”

I rubbed my hand against my face—the question on my chest. Staring at the place where Fallon ran off, I growled.

“I don’t fucking know,” I said aloud, gesturing to the books above me that were holy bullshit. “Tempting a goddamn angel to sell herself to the devil.”

Ten

Possession: The state of being controlled by a force too powerful to resist submission.

I’d die before I’d submit to anyone again.

I didn’t think I had ever ran so fast in my entire life, but as I took off out of that library into the corridor and continued into the parking lot and out into the fucking forest, it was like I was possessed by a fucking track star.

Possessed…

I certainly felt possessed. That infuriating man made me feel unhinged, like I couldn’t control my thoughts and emotions.

That irritated me more. I was sure, based on his looks, that women were always falling all over themselves for him, but I wasn’t that kind of damn woman. He just caught me off guard. That was all it was, and that was one time. It would never fucking happen again. Ever.

“Stupid fucking asshole,” I spat, stopping by a tree finally to kick the bark and steady my racing heart.

What made him think he could manhandle me in a fucking library?

I knew I shouldn’t have come to college, but my sister was getting suspicious of how my hair dryer magically ended up in my room every time I got a fever.

The bruises were still pretty fresh, and even being pushed against the shelf made the marks smart. The pain had been completely forgotten at that moment…but now it ached, and I welcomed the pain to punish me for my stupidity.

“Way to fucking go, dumbass,” I said to myself and the tree.

The breeze was blowing my hair around, and the smell of him wafted up my nose. Even his scent fucking branded me. When I first ran into him, he smelled like cheap perfume. I was probably the twentieth dumbfuck he had up against those damn shelves.

Hell, the librarian was probably there now, filling my place.

I growled. The thought made me angry, and the fact that it made me angry made me even more furious.

What was wrong with me?

“I need to read the fucking books on that floor, I guess.”

Speaking of, the whole reason I was in the library was to sleuth into Professor Masters. He looked, smelled, and felt like danger. I knew there was something about him that didn’t add up.

I dug into the pocket of my plaid skirt, digging out the crumpled piece of paper.

I tried smoothing it out on the tree, but it made it dirty.

Ugh.

The paper was a news article from about a year ago. It read in bold letters:

“Exoneration or a cover-up? Today, Pharaoh Masters was exonerated for all crimes committed. His stay at the previous Hospital Twelve for six years after a guilty verdict of murdering his wife in cold blood magically disappeared, along with the very walls that housed him and many other insane individuals. Rumors are floating that Pharaoh Masters’s sudden exoneration and the mystery behind the killings at Hospital Twelve may be linked. With the government officials’ consistent denial of any claims of knowledge about the truth of the massacre at Hospital Twelve, the world maynever know what those walls will forever hide now.”

I read over the lines, my eyes widening as I absorbed the information.

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