Page 56 of Marrying My Professor

She nods frantically, tears of desperate pleasure at the corners of her eyes.

I pull out completely, leaving her empty, clenching around nothing. A wounded sound leaves her lips. I turn her roughly, pressing her front against the cool mirror. Her breath fogs the glass. I yank her hips back, entering her again in one deep stroke from behind. The new angle is deeper, more possessive. My hands grip her shoulders, holding her in place as I drive into her.

“Now,” I command, my voice rough against her ear. “Come for me. Now.”

It’s all the permission she needs. Her body shatters. Her inner muscles clamp down on me in rhythmic, fluttering waves, a pulsing, hot release that draws my own control to a razor’s edge. Her cry is muffled against the mirror.

The sight of her coming undone, the feel of it, breaks my last restraint. With a final, guttural groan, I follow her over, spilling deep inside her with a force that makes my knees weak. My forehead drops against her shoulder as the last tremors rack us both.

For a long moment, the only sound is our ragged breathing. I slowly pull out, helping her turn. Her legs are shaky. I lift her easily, carrying her out of the cramped powder room and into the dim living room.

I don’t make it to a couch. I sink to the floor on the plush rug before the fireplace, holding her in my lap, her back against my chest. Her ruined dress is still rucked up around her waist. We’re a mess. We’re perfect.

I wrap my arms around her, my chin resting on her head. Her breathing gradually evens out, her body going lax and heavy against mine. The scent of us, of sex and sweat and her perfume, fills the air.

In the quiet darkness, the words rise up, unbidden but utterly true. They fall from my lips, soft and certain, into her hair.

“I love you.”

She doesn’t stir. A deep, contented sigh is her only response as she drifts into sleep, her weight a perfect anchor against my heart.

16

ELARA

"I cannot believe," Georgia hiss-whispers, her voice pitched low enough that the students walking past my apartment building can't hear but loud enough to convey her absolute outrage, "that you have been fucking the hottest professor on campus and didn't tell me. And not just fucking him—married him. MARRIED, Elara. As in, legally bound. As in, 'til death do us part. As in, what the actual fuck?"

I tape up another box with more force than necessary, the sound of the packing tape gun echoing in my now-empty bedroom. "Can we not do this right now?"

"Oh, we are absolutely doing this right now." Georgia sits cross-legged on my bare mattress, looking like a blonde avenging angel in her oversized Belgrave hoodie and leggings, her makeup still perfect despite the fact that she's been helping me pack for three hours. "You've been living here for two months. Two months. And in that time, you somehow managed to seduce Professor Draven—Professor Alexander Draven, who every girl on campus wants and who never, ever looks at students—convince him to marry you in what I can only assume was a two week long whirlwind romance, and now you're moving into his house like this is a perfectly normal Tuesday."

"It's Wednesday," I mutter.

"I don't care what day it is!" She throws a pillow at me, which I catch one-handed. "I care that my best friend is keeping secrets. Big secrets. Marriage-sized secrets. And don't even try to tell me this is about love at first sight, because I've seen rom-coms and this is not that."

I pause in my packing, a stack of books halfway into a box, and look at her. Really look at her. At the hurt beneath the outrage, the confusion beneath the dramatic presentation.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly. "I wanted to tell you. But it's... complicated."

"Complicated how?" She slides off the mattress, crossing to where I'm standing by the bookshelf. "Elara, talk to me. Please. Because from where I'm sitting, this looks either wildly romantic or deeply concerning, and I can't figure out which."

Both, I want to say. It's both.

But I can't tell her the truth. Can't tell her about the Veritas or the blood sacrifices or the fact that I got caught snooping where I shouldn't have been and my husband—my husband, Jesus Christ—saved my life by binding himself to an organization he hates for eternity.

So instead, I go with the partial truth. The version that won't get her killed.

"We've been... seeing each other," I say carefully. "Since before I was in his class. We met at a party off campus. Neither of us knew who the other was until I showed up to his lecture."

Georgia's eyes go wide. "Oh my God. You're the student everyone's been whispering about. The one who made him dismiss class early last week."

Heat floods my cheeks. "People are talking about that?"

"People are talking about everything," she says. "There are rumors he got engaged two weeks ago. Rumors he's leaving the university. Rumors he was seen at the courthouse yesterday with a mystery woman who definitely wasn't faculty." Her eyes narrow. "That was you, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"And you married him. Actually married him. Not engaged—married."