The Fall of Troy Read online

  “Léo?” Jack looked at me expectantly with an eyebrow raised.

  Shit. I was supposed to say something.

  “It won’t happen again,” I said with a low voice.

  “I’m counting on you to make sure of it,” he replied but looked at Giselle like she was my keeper.

  I knew what he thought. I knew after the other night he thought that Giselle could be someone for me—that she could save me or some other idiotic notion. I hated that he inflated those thoughts in her when I made it very clear that we would only ever have a professional relationship, no matter how many times we fucked.

  “I’m serious, Léo. We don’t tolerate that kind of shit here. If anything like that happens again, you’ll be on the first flight back to France.” His parting words held the threat tightly to his promise as he threw open the door and stalked from the room.

  “Get the sign-up sheets ready for Friday,” I said gruffly. My glare had her mouth snap shut and disappear from my office back down to the desk they gave her that was down the hall and around the corner.

  My shoulders sagged when she left. If she stayed, I would have fucked her. And that made me livid. It was never this bad when the thoughts of Amélie came; I’d never needed release this bad. Unlike some of my other emotions, desire had been a beast easily contained inside of me.

  Until her.

  Until Troian Milanovic.

  Groaning, I palmed my erection through my pants. The number of times I’d thought of her since Saturday… hell, since the day I’d seen her in the coffee shop… it didn’t justify the way I felt, the way her anger burned me back to life.

  With a muffled curse, I stood and walked over to the door and locked it. My whole body was rigid, like it was about to snap. I hated her for doing this to me, I thought as I unbuckled my pants to free my throbbing dick. I hated her for making me needy like a goddamn child who needed to masturbate every five minutes to get the unreasonable lust out of his system.

  Pulling my thick length from my pants, I bent forward propping one hand on the edge of my desk as I fisted myself with the other.

  I hated how she’d made me needy. I hated how Giselle, with her perfect lush curves, wouldn’t be enough to fulfill my craving for the scrawny shrimp of a girl whose eyes alone set my body on fire.

  Maybe that’s why I wanted her—because she had emotions buried underneath the surface. Dark and destructive ones. Just like I did. Only she did a better job at keeping them contained and I hated that. I wanted to fuck them out of her and make her just as broken as me.

  I stared at the purple head peeking out from my fist, swelling with each pull from my hand. I groaned as moisture beaded at the very tip. My eyes drifted shut as I pumped up and down the thick length.

  I thought of her at the bar, asking if I cared if she was too young. Non. I didn’t even care if I ripped through her goddamn virginity. The need to have her was indistinguishable from the need to claim her. To mark her. To defeat her. I remembered her moans, picturing those delicate hands rubbing foolishly between her thighs; she wouldn’t know how to even touch herself like I would. She wouldn’t know her body as well as me.

  My teeth clenched as I felt my release coming. And she would never… could never know just how perfectly that little pussy would stretch and rip around my cock and how she would be too consumed with pleasure to care as I filled her with my cum. Blindly grabbing for a tissue, her name tore from my lips like the devil himself was stealing it from inside my chest as my orgasm came. I breathed heavily as I tried to find my way back to reality.

  Reality where I needed every ounce of coldness and determination I possessed to stay away from her.

  Troian Milanovic.

  Troy.

  She was a fight of anger and lust. No. Not a fight.

  She was a battle.

  She was the kind of momentous, life-altering battle I had to win, because the loss would be the kind told as legend for centuries to come.

  And even though history told me that she would be the loser—that she would be the one to fall—my coldness and calculation, my determination to hate everyone and everything in this world, fizzled into fumes when I saw that hurt and lust flare in her eyes. It reached into a part of me that had never been touched before. It laughed at everything I’d felt for Amélie, pushing those emotions aside. It pulled from me something so intense it felt like she was literally ripping it from my DNA, from the pieces that made me human.

  For the first time in many months, I reached for my leather sketchbook that I almost hadn’t brought with me at all and let out onto the paper all of the feelings that I could never unleash on her. I would fight my attraction to her. I would fight my desire. I would even fight my need to possess her pain. But if I wasn’t careful, Troy would be the battle to bring me to my knees.

  I pushed my pen into my pocket at the risk of turning into Miss Tapper the way I was strumming it on my desk, waiting for Professor Baudin to arrive.

  Léo.

  Lion.

  ‘Regardless of how completely unprofessional it was, remember that this man doesn’t know you, Troian. He could have said the same thing to any other person in the class and it would have been no more true.’ Dr. Shelly’s words replayed in my mind. Her calm reassurances. Even the way she bristled when I told her what happened.

  I wasn’t sure why I told her what happened, especially since I’d already talked to Kev about it, but when I walked into that pristine white room, I felt like I had to come clean, too.

  Of course, I hadn’t told her about the art store. Or the poetry club. Definitely not about the poetry club. I was pretty sure that voyeurism and lusting after one’s professor—a married man—would graduate me to a whole new level of crazy that I wasn’t ready for.

  She listened quietly, unlike Kevin, whose smart-ass remarks interrupted my stories like Kayne interrupted Taylor Swift. Obnoxious. Rude. Entertaining.

  I think I surprised both of us with how willingly I wanted to share. I didn’t have to connect the dots. She knew the inadequacy I struggled and what a figure of authority, an intellectual who was as similarly unfeeling and distant as my father, calling me ‘unremarkable’ meant.

  ‘Sticks and stones’ was her advice—to not let this man who didn’t know me at all influence how I felt about myself. It was trite; and it would have been a good example of how completely pathetic this whole idea of therapy was. But at the same time, it was soothing; her words calmed the storm and put it into perspective. For the moment, at least.

  It lasted the day. Maybe a day and a half. Basically until I saw him again on Wednesday—slightly more put together and slightly more disconnected from what he was supposed to be doing. There were no insults. There were no broken pens.

  All class he didn’t look at me—or anyone- and so I couldn’t stop myself from staring. Hard. I stared like it would burn a hole through the callous shell that he wore like a disheveled shield to let me see the destructive secrets he held beneath. We went over the syllabus, went over what the studio hours would consist of—lots of naked people—and grading. Pure subjection. One grade at the end of the semester. One chance to pass or fail.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” Kev turned to me and asked.

  I opened my mouth to tell him I was working, but the words skidded and crashed to a halt in my throat as he walked through the door. My heart hammered against my chest like a chisel against stone. Chipping away at the resolve I kept trying to build up in private.

  “I have sign-up sheets. They will be here in a few minutes so I would take this time to decide which day you want to fight for, as studio sessions begin next week. Expect to be here the entire time. Not doing so will… affect… your grade.”

  The intonation of his voice made it clear that failure was a definite possibility if you didn’t attend.

  I watched him rifle through the papers he’d pulled out from his worn, leather briefcase. And then his head jerked up to mine and my breath ran for cover. Adrenal
ine pumped through my system because under his hungry gaze, I was sitting prey.

  The door to the classroom opened again and shock and pain stabbed through me when the blonde walked through it, dressed professionally yet provocatively in a pencil skirt and blouse that had enough buttons undone to make you want more.

  “Front row, you get first choice,” he said curtly. “It is why you sat in the front, n’est-ce pas?” He mocked them even as he gave them what they wanted: preference.

  “Troy.” Kevin hit my arm and I choked, dragging my gaze from him like it weighed fifty pounds. “Is that her?” At least he mouthed that one.

  I nodded jerkily.

  “Holy shit, she’s smoking. No wonder…” He covered his mouth with a chuckle.

  He was watching me—watching us. I felt his stare slither over me, and I was surprised that Kev couldn’t hear the hissing of his breath.

  “Second row.”

  My desk clattered as I stood quickly, hugging my large, black sweater to my body. I wondered what I would look like wearing something like that. I wasn’t tall enough. Anything that hit mid-calf made short people look even shorter.

  I tried to walk behind Kev as we approached the desk where the blonde woman stood, watching us all as we signed up.

  “So, what are your plans Saturday night?” he asked again.

  We were fifth in line. Professor Baudin’s gaze whipped to us when he heard Kev. Were we not allowed to talk? I arched my eyebrow.

  “I’m working at the bar,” I said steadily, a small smile tipping the corners of my mouth when I saw Professor Baudin’s eyes narrow.

  I don’t know why I said bar. I always just called it Rhymes. Bar and club seemed too hip for the dark and lazy speakeasy. Maybe I wanted to remind him of the night he’d come in and the battle I was itching to continue.

  “All night?”

  “Until midnight when it closes.” We were now second in line and even though his eyes left me, I knew he was still listening.

  “Alright, I’ll come visit you. Poetry, you said?” I could practically hear the tortured groan that he attempted to hide.

  “You don’t have to,” I laughed. I preferred to not know anyone.

  “Will you have a drink with me?” He winked at me and I knew that somehow Kev would have a fake ID even if he was asked—and he wouldn’t be. Gertie was never strict about checking. I guess, if you’re going to be underage drinking at a poetry bar, you are far more mature than your age lets on.

  I shouldn’t have answered. Not in front of our classmates and certainly not in front of professors who could report it. But I did. I did because I remembered how it irritated him that I worked there and I wanted to see that happen again. I wanted to spark his hatred after what he said.

  In the things we loathe become the things we love.

  “Maybe I’ll have two.”

  This time, when his eyes jerked to mine, I was the first to look away since it was my and Kev’s turn to sign up.

  “Which day?”

  I quickly scanned the sheets, seeing open seats in each session.

  “Not Monday,” he added before I could think, pointing to Miss Clicker’s name on the sheet: Lynn Kline. She will always be Miss Clicker to me.

  Wednesday or Friday.

  “Let’s do Friday,” I said. There was only one other person signed up on the Friday sheet as of right now.

  “Seriously? Friday night?” Kev balked at me and I understood why there was only one person on the sheet so far. This is what happened when you didn’t really have friends or go out. Friday nights only became synonymous with my mom and Paolo wanting to go out for dinner or dancing or a movie. And this would give me a good reason for why I couldn’t take the night to pretend that I was okay and that we were a normal family.

  “Yeah.” I signed my name before I could think twice.

  “Remind me again why I stalked you into being friends with me?” he grumbled behind me as we head back to our seats.

  “I have no idea. Clearly, I’m still trying to get rid of you,” I smirked.

  If I was being honest, I also wanted to give myself as much time as humanly possible before I had to spend four hours in his presence, staring at and drawing a nude male model, wondering what it would be like to draw him.

  “Troian!” I whipped around, my shoulders cringing, as Kev’s voice blared my name from across the fairly quiet and subdued bar.

  I groaned. I never should’ve told him about this place. He was like my own personal spotlight, drawing all sorts of unwanted attention to me.

  God, what a spiffy little stalker he was. Tonight, Kev had chosen dark jeans and a light blue button-down with a royal purple collar and cuffs. In the daylight, I was sure it made much more of a statement than down here in the dark.

  “Seriously?” I exclaimed, shaking the cocktail I’d been in the middle of making. Twenty-Thousand Leagues. It had been so popular that Gertie decided to keep it on the menu for the next few weeks. “What’s with the name calling? I thought we were friends.”

  His eyes widened as he made a show of scanning the room. “I thought we were friends, too,” he said, leaning over the bar once I handed the deep blue drink to the waiting customer. “You didn’t tell me there would be so many hot, gay men here.”

  “Well, it is a poetry bar,” I grumbled, not to be stereotyping or anything but it was the truth. I swear, Wes and his obnoxious buddies were the only straight guys who came in here regularly.

  “I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this place for an entire semester.” He continued to look around and I saw some of the other guys in the room raise their eyebrows at him like he was fresh meat. “And here I thought I was going to be able to use this as leverage to force you to switch our studio night from Friday.”

  “Thanks,” I shot back, turning to take a drink order from a younger-looking couple. “Alright, friend, what can I get you?”

  He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know. What’s good?” He barely glanced at the menu that was taped to the inside of a used book before deciding. “I’ll try one of those blue things you just made. We both should.”

  I sighed. Fighting with him over it was going to be more work than just having the drink. And honestly, with the week I had, this would help take the edge off.

  A few shakes later and we sipped and watched the first few readers perform, a mix of clapping and snapping after each finished their recital.

  “So, I know I came here to see you, but there are way too many hot guys for me to be shackled to your sweet, but still very female, ass,” Kev teased me with a smile.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Go. Good luck.” His grin widened as he raised his glass in mock salute and then slipped through the crowd; I watched him head for a table where a slightly more sophisticated Harry Potter-looking guy sat who’d been eyeing Kev for the past hour.

  Good for him.

  The thought barely had enough time to plant the tiniest seed of happiness before a chill washed over my body. Like the countdown to a rocket launch, my head turned slowly to the side, scanning the crowd. Seven, six… I hadn’t realized how busy it had gotten in here. Five, four, three… Great, I hadn’t realized that Wes was here, too, which meant I had all of three minutes before he was in my face again. Two, one…

  Professor Baudin.

  Léo.

  He stood in the doorway like an angry Beethoven who’d just spent the past seven hours composing a whole sonata, a gorgeous genius who was interrupted mid-thought.

  Fire coursed through my veins, making my breasts tingle and my body come alive. The bar and dim lights doing their job to hide the way my legs rubbed together to try and ease the ache between them. I was supposed to have a few days off from this. I was supposed to have a few days to recover. I groaned, seriously considering climbing up onto the giant block of ice and sitting on it to try to cool off my panties.

  Licking my lips, I watched as he walked toward one of the empty high-top tables in the far c
orner—far away from me. Why was I so attracted to him? Why? He was probably old enough to be my father. Okay, maybe not quite my father, but he was still at least twice my age. That alone should have squelched any attraction I felt after what happened with Lil. But it didn’t. And neither did the fact that he was still a mess. I was honestly starting to wonder if he knew how to do laundry or if that wasn’t something that they did in France. I heard they didn’t like to shower a ton… maybe laundry wasn’t a high priority either.

  Oh, right. And there was the whole fact that he was an asshole. He was rude and cruel—especially to me.

  On the other end of the spectrum, there was Wes. Wes was my age-ish. Wes went to my school. Wes even dressed all clean-cut and preppy like J. Crew had vomited all over him. Wes even flirted nicely with me when he could take a minute to stop talking about himself. Wes would have been the more logical choice. However, Wes was a douche.

  I lost his gaze when he began to move, but as I made drinks for more patrons who’d approached the bar, I felt it on me again. Stalking me. Judging me. Reminding me that I wasn’t just his student, I was his prey.

  “Hey, Troian.” My gaze jerked to Wes who was standing in front of me with a cocky smile on his face, the bar thankfully separating us.

  “What can I get you, Wes?” I asked politely, even as my body shifted uncomfortably underneath the distant stare.

  “A date,” he said casually, like he hadn’t tried something like this a thousand times before. “And a vodka. Double.” I could have asked for his ID just to be a bitch, but he was actually twenty-one and it was already taking everything in me to control the humming of my body, I couldn’t focus on anything else.

  With a tight smile, I quickly whipped together his drink, not even thinking when I held it across the bar instead of setting it on the wooden barrier.