Living in Shadow (Living In…) (2 page)

“You never look at me.”

She blinked again, taken aback. “Pardon?”

“At the end of every lecture, you look at everyone else. But not me. Why?”

There was an odd glitter in his eyes. The one she’d seen before, as if he were angry with her.

Which was weird. Because she was sure she hadn’t done anything to him. Shit, she didn’t even know him.

“Do I?” she said carefully. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Bullshit. You’re doing it on purpose.”

Eleanor stared at him. God, he was intense. She found it vaguely threatening in some way and yet, at the same time, thrilling as well. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

Well, shit, she didn’t know why either.

Yes, you do.

She shifted on her feet, not wanting to acknowledge the thought. “I could ask you the same kind of question,” she said instead. “You’ve been in this class for the past four weeks and you always sit in the same place. And you always stare at me.”

“I’m looking at you because you’re the lecturer, of course.” He paused. “Would you like me to look somewhere else?”

It wasn’t quite the answer she wanted, though she wasn’t sure exactly what answer she
did
want. “No, that’s where you’re supposed to be looking.” She picked up her laptop from the lectern and shut it. Now that he was closer, she’d noticed he seemed to be a little older than most of her fresh-out-of-school students, though not by much. Which didn’t make her feelings any less wrong, of course.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Why don’t I look at you? I look at the people I think aren’t paying attention. And you seem to always be paying attention.” It was a lie and not a very good one, but, hell, she wasn’t going to admit the truth. She couldn’t even admit the truth to herself. “You’re wrong anyway,” she added. “I looked at you today.”

He didn’t reply, studying her silently for a long minute, his gaze measuring. Assessing. And so sharp she felt like she was under some kind of microscope.

It wasn’t a good feeling.

She smiled—the cool professor smile, the one she normally used with students. “And is there anything else I can help you with? Or is that it?”

“Seeing as you answered my question, no, not so far.”

“Good. Glad we cleared that up then.”

A silence fell, the full weight of his intense, focused gaze falling on her, zeroing in on her in a way that forced the air from her lungs.

Say something, fool.

“See you next Thursday, Professor May,” he said abruptly.

Thursday. What was Thursday again?
Day after Wednesday usually…

Thursday was the next legal history lecture. Shit, this guy was seriously messing with her head. “Yes, indeed,” she said coolly, irritated with herself. “Thursday.”

He took a step toward her and put out his hand. “I’m Lucien, by the way. Lucien North.”

She was holding her laptop but that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t want to take that lean, brown, tattooed hand in her manicured white one. An instinct she hadn’t known was still alive inside her told her that to touch him would be A. Very. Bad. Idea. But how could she refuse? She had no reason to and it would be rude to ignore him. Keeping on her professor smile, Eleanor put the laptop down and took his hand. Shit, it was just a handshake. What could possibly happen with a handshake?

Heat stole up her arm. Flickering like a fire and just as hungry. Stealing through the cracks in the armor she wore. Armor she wore for very specific reasons. To avoid situations like this. “Pleased to meet you, Lucien,” she said. No, she wouldn’t pull away. Perhaps if she ignored it, the heat would vanish and she’d feel nothing.

The corner of his long mouth suddenly lifted in a hint of a smile, as if he’d seen her response somehow. As if he knew. And liked it. “Call me Luc.” His grip remained, holding her prisoner for a second longer, then it loosened and she was free.

Instinctively her fingers tried to curl into a fist, but she forced them straight, not wanting to give herself away any further. “Thank you, I will. And you can call me Professor May.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but that almost smile deepened a fraction, making something warm and liquid coil way down low in her abdomen.

“I’ll catch you Thursday, Professor.” Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the lecture theatre.

Goddamn.

Eleanor shook her head and went back to putting her laptop away.

And tried to put Lucien North from her mind.

Chapter Two

Luc sat in the student café with his back to the wall, which he preferred. Another habit the army had bred into him. Even though he knew no one was going to suddenly get out a knife or a gun and shoot him in the back here, he couldn’t quite break himself of the habit.

The only exceptions being Eleanor’s classes. For her he’d sit with his back to the rest of the class, so he could be down in the front and look at her.

He turned his head a little, watching the group on the other side of the café without seeming like he was staring. Another old habit.

Eleanor sat there with some of the other faculty members, talking about something that was clearly very interesting because she was leaning forward with her elbows on the table, making small, elegant movements with her hands as she spoke. Her face was alight with interest and intensity, as if she was trying to get a very important point across.

I look at people who aren’t paying attention…

A bullshit lie, offered with a cool, impersonal smile. And yet when she’d taken his hand, he’d seen the telltale stain of color on her cheekbones. She’d hidden it well, but he’d had a lot of practice watching for people’s reactions. Seeing below the surface of a person. It had been a skill he’d had to develop in order to survive Inza’s army and it was one that continued to be useful.

He had the feeling that he could look all day at Eleanor May and he still wouldn’t be able to see the woman she was underneath. A pain in the ass since that thought only made him want to find out even more.

Christ, he shouldn’t have approached her yesterday after the lecture. He should have walked out with all the others, and yet he hadn’t. What had he been thinking? He’d been obsessed by that split-second reaction he’d seen in her eyes. And now the feeling of her cool fingers in his had only wound that obsession tighter.

Beside him, Maddy was saying something. She had one hand on his thigh, a proprietary gesture he didn’t much like. They’d been sleeping together on and off—a casual thing, they’d both agreed. But that didn’t mean he was hers, like she wasn’t his.

He shifted his leg subtly and her hand fell away.

Across the room, Eleanor laughed her amazing laugh. Dirty and low. He could hear it even in the hum of the café, the sound in stark contrast to that cool, sophisticated image of hers. She wore another of her pencil skirts today, light charcoal. One knee was crossed over the other under the table, leaving the heel of one of her stilettos dangling off her toes.

Such a little thing to notice and yet he did, fascinated by the dichotomy of her. The way she could be cool, not a hair out of place, one minute, then laugh like a phone-sex worker and dangle one heel off her foot the next.

“Hey, Luc, are you listening to me?”

“Not really. Sorry.”

“Who are you looking at?” Beside him, Maddie craned her head and he forced himself to look away from Eleanor, focusing his attention on the woman beside him.

“You,” he said and smiled at her.

The smile had its usual effect. Maddie rolled her eyes, but he knew she wasn’t offended. “You’re impossible.”

Across the room he could hear Eleanor laugh again, but this time he didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He already knew how her face lit up.

Why were you looking at me?

He’d told her he was looking at her because she was the lecturer, fucking liar that he was. He should have told her the truth.

Because you’re the most beautiful, fascinating woman I’ve ever seen. Because I want you.

“Ugh,” Maddy said, complaining already. “I’ve got Harris this afternoon. Anyone got anything to keep me awake?”

The conversation turned into the usual round of complaints about the boringness of Prof Harris and his criminal law classes, then diverted into what was usually a more interesting topic, such as which club they were going to that night.

Luc didn’t much care where they went. He’d gotten himself to the point where he could fit in with what normal twenty-somethings did on a Friday night without trying too hard. Sometimes booze and loud music even made him forget he wasn’t a normal twenty-something.

Of course there would always be a part of him that knew otherwise. That understood no amount of booze or sex would make him normal. He was too different. There was too much darkness inside him.

He’d learned to ignore that part.

As his friends argued over the choice of bar, over on the other side of the café Eleanor was standing, her jacket slung over one shoulder, high heels now firmly on. She was smiling at one of her colleagues, continuing to talk. And even though he’d seen her glance around just about everywhere in the café, she hadn’t once looked in his direction.

Like she didn’t look in his direction during class.

Something stirred in him. Something hungry he’d been suppressing ever since he came back to New Zealand—there wasn’t any need for it in the life he’d come back to. The instinct of a hunter.

Fuck that. He was going to make it his mission to get her to look at him. See him the way she had in the lecture hall, as if for one split second he was a man not a student. Get her to look at him like that
every
damn time.

She’s your professor. That sort of shit isn’t allowed.

Yeah, but it wasn’t breaking any rules. An acknowledgment. That’s all he wanted. And then perhaps he’d get back to thinking about his degree and not what lay behind that cool gray gaze of hers.

He sat back, waiting as she and her colleagues came toward the doors. He was sitting right by them; she wouldn’t be able to miss him unless she was deliberately avoiding him. But he wasn’t going to resort to a cough or anything else attention getting like last time. She would look at him because she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

She continued talking, smiling at something Professor Devon had said to her, and he thought that perhaps she’d keep on ignoring him, which was a kind of acknowledgment all on its own.

And then her attention flicked to him as she approached the doors.

He held her gaze, silently willing her to see him. To
really
see him. And shit, there it was again, that flash of silver in her eyes. A reaction she couldn’t hide.

Helpless desire tightened its grip. So, he hadn’t imagined it yesterday. There
was
something between them. Very definitely something. And God, he wanted to know what it was.

Her gaze dropped, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of his stare, and he found that perversely thrilling. Was she trying to hide her reaction again? Collect herself? Had he affected her so much she didn’t know what to do with herself? God, he wanted to take that determined chin in his fingers and force her to look him in the eye. While he told her exactly what she’d been doing to him for the past month…

Since when did you force women to do anything?

A thread of unexpected cold wound through him at the thought. No, shit, he didn’t force anyone to do anything. Especially women. That was one of the rules he’d given himself back in the squad. It was the one thing that kept him from becoming one of them. The only thing…

“Anything I can do for you, Mr. North?” Eleanor May’s cool voice cut through the ice and he realized that, far from continuing to ignore him, she’d stopped beside his table, looking down at him with one pale brow raised in enquiry.

Well, hell. He hadn’t expected that. “Excuse me, Professor?”

“You were looking at me. I assumed you wanted some attention.”

He leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to relax. “Of course I want some attention. Who doesn’t?”

Maddy snorted and Eleanor flicked her a brief glance before looking back at him. “It appears you have plenty of that.”

Oh, she was so cool, so calm. Pretending nothing had happened, that she hadn’t felt the charge of electricity between them. Which presented him with an irresistible challenge.

She wasn’t going to pretend, no fucking way. He was going to make it his goal to see under that smooth, sophisticated front of hers. Get beneath it. Get the truth out of her, one way or another.

Starting now.

The decision gave him far more satisfaction than it should have, but he didn’t bother to hide it. “Surely you can never have too much attention, Professor?” he said and smiled at her, an expression he’d once had to practice in the mirror to get it working right.

She stared at him for a moment, gray eyes narrowing, clearly sensing something was up. Her colleagues were looking at her strangely but she didn’t seem to notice.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but one of her colleagues said, “Are you coming, Ell?”

A fleeting look of annoyance crossed her face before the cool smile was back. “Yes, possibly you’re right.”

“What’s all that about?” Maddy asked as Eleanor went through the café doors. “I didn’t know May was giving undergraduate classes?”

“She’s giving Prof Holmes’s legal history class this semester.”

“Huh. What’s she like?”

Luc put his hands behind his head and smiled. “So far? Interesting. Very fucking interesting indeed.”

Eleanor was extremely pissed. Somehow Lucien North seemed to be everywhere she went. It wasn’t that he was stalking her—at least she didn’t think he was—it was that she seemed to notice him a lot more than she had before. The Auckland University law school wasn’t terribly big by international standards and she knew a lot of the students, at least by sight. He’d never been in any of her classes but he’d been there on the periphery, a tall, striking figure she’d glanced at many times and acknowledged—at least in the privacy of her mind—as being pretty stareworthy. But now he’d somehow insinuated himself into her consciousness, made it so that she was exquisitely aware of him.