Page 39 of Lethal Kiss

Gross.

“I’m charmed,” I say, putting as much loathing as I can into those words, “but what we have is purely for pleasure.”

Arjun stares at me, and for a moment I see how young he is, how unready for my burden. When I pity a dying animal, it becomes a mercy when I kill it. A coup de grâce, so it doesn’t have to suffer anymore.

I lay a hand on his knee, voice softening. He is quite handsome, after all. “Come now, Arjun. You knew this was nothing but a fling, didn’t you?”

His eyes flick to the dean’s house down the way, the buttery light broken up by mottled, humanoid shadows. Were I easily scared, it would give me a thrill.

As it is, it only makes me hungry. My stomach twists.

“What if I want to know you more than fucking?” he says, his voice small. “More than drunken kissing at a party?”

My laugh twinkles. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, that’s not how this works.” When I smile, I’m sure he feels my silent derision. “I’m here for the academics.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“And you wouldn’t. My focus is elsewhere. Don’t pretend like we know each other.” But I can see, he thinks we do know each other, intimately; he’s wrapped up in the story I spun for him like spider silk in his mind. He could no more distinguish reality from falsehood than any of the other men I’ve kissed silent. “It’s not shameful, my dear. Pleasure is unto itself a reason.”

He closes his eyes. “Fine.”

And then I have a brilliant idea. “I propose a trade.”

“A … trade.” That cockiness comes back, shuffling that lost, sad boy beneath layers and layers of masks where his shouting will be drowned out.

“Yes, Arjun. A trade where I agree to see you regularly, predicated on you telling me … things. About Preston.”

He coughs a laugh. “What? You’ll prostitute yourself for academic secrets? Like what, how we admit students?”

I personally have no problem with prostitutes. In Lyon, in fact, I availed myself of them often. Ah, but that was the 1920s. “No, no, not that. I want to know about … Dean Shea.” I smile, leaning back in my seat but angling the planes of my body toward him. I’m having trouble turning on the sparkle of my seduction this evening, my hair dulling and my body failing.

I hate it. Muscling through my hunger, my exhaustion, I rip the glamour from my veins and slip into it like a ragged dress.

But it works. Arjun tongues a bead of sweat off his lip.

“What’s there to tell?” Arjun laughs. “He’s a terrible old man. Wants all the funding, all the time.”

“That’s a start.” I give him a glittering grin but dip my lashes demurely. “Come here.”

He unbuckles his seat belt and slides to the center of his car, peppering kisses down my throat. He smells of cigarette smoke, his fingernails jaundiced and cracking. The man isn’t well. Nevertheless, I expose the column of my throat to him, let him think he’s the one seducing me.

“Mmm, more of that,” I murmur, just before his hands creep to the straps of my dress. “Say more.” I bite my lip. “And then…” I run my fingernails around his ear, rest them on the faint beat of his jugular.

He would taste delicious right now. My hunger becomes a wild scream, buzzing between my temples as it starts to drown out everything else.

He smiles, leans in so he can whisper in my ear. “You know, everyone thinks he’s so smart, but he really is quite stupid.” I feign a gasp of delight at his words, but really—truly—he smells like dinner. Who ever thought old white men attained their positions with smarts? “But because of that, it has become his obsession.”

“What, intelligence?”

“School ranking.” Arjun smiles at me as though he’s gifted me something irreplaceably valuable. He leans in to kiss me on the lips, and I turn away.

“Is that all?”

His brow presses down. “What? I told you about Dean Shea, time to pay up.”

I hold a finger to the center of his forehead, pushing him back. “More. What does he do for school ranking?”

“God, what? I don’t know,” Arjun snaps, pushing a rough hand behind my neck. “Expels people. Lets people go. What do I care? All I know is that it’s a tightrope walk between making him happy and not showing him up.”