My new professor of literature had certainly already turned the heads of a lot of female students.
Edwards eyeballed me from top to bottom. It seemed as if he wanted to devour me with his eyes.
"Same as you, I suppose," he replied, signaling to the bartender.
"I...haven't seen you here before," I said and leaned back a little.
His hand was still on my naked back.
Didn't it bother him at all that the whole world could see us?
"I guess it's because I just moved here," he returned after ordering a Black Russian.
I sipped my champagne and looked around stealthily.
Edwards seemed to notice my nervousness because he asked at the same moment: "Shall we sit over there?"
He pointed to a dark corner, near the VIP area.
Why was he so calm?
Was it common practice in California for professors to take their female students out for a drink in their free time?
He had no way of knowing that Rector Campbell was playing for the P-Fiends and would almost certainly turn a blind eye if he heard anything.
Still, I didn't want anyone from Xantec, my future employer, to see me with him.
An outwardly spotless white vest was important to me.
At least in front of the people who mattered.
"How do you like Vancouver?" I asked, to start with something innocuous.
I would find out what drove him to stick his finger in my mouth one moment and treat me like air the next.
We sat opposite each other. Our legs were separated by a deep, round table.
It stood in the middle between two super soft wing chairs that were so comfortable that I would have loved to take one home.
Edwards took a sip of his cocktail. Even when he raised his glass to his mouth, he was still appraising me.
"It's," he started, and put his drink on the table, "interesting."
I licked my lips. Calm down, B, I admonished myself.
"The privileged devils, hmm?" Edwards leaned back and gave me a challenging look. "How do you get them?"
As I pondered the best way to answer his question without revealing too much, I realised once again how brazenly handsome my new literature professor was.
"A question of status and money," I replied, trying to hide my nervousness.
It was difficult for me to admit it, but Logan Edwards intimidated me.
"The only conditions?" he asked and looked me deeply into the eyes.
I cleared my throat.
"Not quite," I explained further. "You must be a member of the vice country club."
"That's all?"
He scratched his chest and completely threw me off balance.
I put my hand between my legs and crossed my legs the other way around.
"You get picked by the seniors. The number of members is limited to a maximum of six."
"Hmm", he returned with a smile.
I took a sip and hoped the alcohol would loosen me up.
After I put the glass down on the table, I too leaned back and folded my arms in front of my chest.
"Why Vancouver?" I asked him straight out.
He laughed. Something flashed in his eyes. I had the feeling that he liked it when I was confident.
"It's far enough away from California," he said.
"Did you have any reason to run?"
Professor Edwards leaned forward and almost touched my knee.
His tanned forearms lay casually on his thighs, his hands interlocked.
"Can I trust you?", he suddenly asked in a rough voice.
The directness of his question surprised me.
I nodded, perceiving the people around us and the music less and less.
"I'm sure you can."
"My wife has left me." He sighed. "Since then I've been on the run from everything that reminds me of her."
His jaw tightened.
"O", took it away.
I hadn't expected such frankness.
He turned up his aristocratic nose.
"Life has a way of taking you by the balls sometimes," he remarked in the finest James Bond manner.
I giggled.
Who was this man who suddenly made me laugh?
"Tell me about it!"
I was beginning to enjoy the evening.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
Something flashed in his blue eyes.
"Maybe you'll come and visit me sometime. I don't want to spoil the surprise."
I swallowed.
"What reason would I have for visiting you?"
Again he leaned back and looked at me with a confident look in his eyes.
I took another sip of my drink - a big one.
"Because you suspect that I can give you much more than literary knowledge."
He tapped his lower lip twice with his finger. I immediately thought of the explosive atmosphere between us when he put his thumb in my mouth.
We looked at each other and I couldn't stop a tingling sensation in my abdomen.
"Oh yeah? What's that?", I asked boldly, almost wetting my pants with excitement.
I was not used to situations like this. This man could indeed become dangerous to me.
I wanted him. That much was certain.
Again I brought my glass to my mouth while waiting for his answer.
"Give me your cell phone," he demanded.
I hesitated.
"No!", I replied determinedly, pondered briefly and added a "Why?"
Edwards leaned forward once more. Gently like a feather he stroked his finger over my naked knee, only to bury his hands so tightly in my thigh that it almost hurt.
The frightening thing was that I wanted more of it.
"So I could give you my number," he replied, assessing first my lips, then my non-existent cleavage and lap. Until finally he returned to my eyes.
I bit my lower lip.
"Fine," I replied almost defiantly.
I didn't like the fact that he got me around so easily. I wanted to resist it, reject him coldly and let him approach me again only on my terms.
But I wound like a flag in the wind, unable to resist the driving force.
So I opened my clutch, fingered out my smartphone and handed it to him.
His eyes darkened as he said "Brave Ella," and a guttural growl left his extremely kissable lips.
At that moment, Benji passed us by. In tow, he had Diane in an olive green sheath dress, her face adorned with a lascivious expression.
He winked at me in a meaningful way, whereupon I rolled my eyes.
The guy was really incredible! It had taken him less than an hour to convince the red-haired secretary of himself.
Our plan would actually work. Now there was no turning back!
"What was your wife's name?", I asked, while Professor Edwards was still typing his number into my mobile phone.
"Monica," he said without looking up.
"Was she your great love?"
I bit my tongue. Of course she must have been, otherwise he wouldn't have married her, my cheeky inner voice interfered.
He looked up.
A strange expression, which I couldn't make out, spread across his face.
"I would have done anything for her."
We looked at each other.
I suddenly felt as if we were somewhere else. It was just him and me - in a glass ball shielding us from the rest of the club.
"I'm sorry," I said softly. "That she left you, I mean."
"Love is always a dangerous game, Ms. Spencer."
He handed me my phone. "When you're unlucky, you lose your heart.
For a split second, he ran his fingers over mine. And I almost froze, at the intensity of that touch.
"It was very nice to meet you," he noticed and got up.
"Until next week," I replied, looking up at him. "In college."
I would wait until I called him. Maybe I wouldn't do it at all. He seemed pretty sure of himself. I didn't lik
e that - although I knew he'd already got me wrapped around his finger.
Literally and figuratively.
On the way back, I asked the taxi driver to make a stop at the gas station. I bought two bags of jelly beans, which I left at Lu's room door after I returned home.
She was certainly already asleep and I didn't want to wake her up.
Still, I was dying to talk to her about the professor.
I had to talk to someone about it!
And my little sister was still my closest confidant besides Sky.
When I closed my eyes that night, I was far from being able to shake off the excitement that the encounter with Professor Edwards had triggered in me.
And strangely enough, I liked it.
Pact with the devil
Lu and I were sitting on our veranda, each one with an iced tea in his hand and a self-knitted scarf of aunt Polly around his neck.
It was still mild outside, but if there was wind, you could easily get chills.
"Are you going to date him now?" Lu asked, after I had told her everything about the professor, down to the last detail.
Everything except the bet.
I was ashamed of not telling my little sister the whole truth. Especially because I knew that it wasn't the rules of p-fiends that kept me from doing so.
I didn't want her to think less of me. I was her big sister and certainly part of her role model - though not the best. She didn't need to know the extent of all my screw-ups.
"No, I don't think so", I refused, not believing a word of it myself.
Lu lifted her eyebrows while sipping her iced tea.
"Well... I don't know," I admitted. "He scares me somehow."
Lu frowned.
"What do you mean?" she asked anxiously.
I breathed out loud.
"He makes me nervous."
The corner of my little sister's mouth twitched upwards.
"And you can't stand it because you're not in control?"
As so often, her hunch was right on target.
"It's complicated," I replied curtly and slipped my fingers under my thighs.
"Isn't it always with you?", Lu remarked, to which I gave a sigh.
"You are afraid of being hurt. That's why you always pick the guys who either can't get dangerous or who have some other flaw that makes them a priori unlikely candidate."
I clicked my tongue.
Sometimes it could be annoying to have a smartass sister like that.
"Edwards has no quirks," I countered, admitting that Edwards actually attracted me.
"Maybe I'm ready to move on to new territory now."
My subconscious added that I wasn't laughing.
Against all external assumptions, I was a coward at heart when it came to feelings.
Lu knew that. She saw through me like no other.
That was both a curse and a blessing.
Thank God, at this very moment my cell phone shrilled and released me from my hot chair.
You want details?
I didn't even have to look at the sender to know who the message was from.
I had already been waiting for Benji's comment on his night with Diane Kingsley.
"Sorry, I have to go again", I explained and emptied the rest of my iced tea in one go.
"Sure, now that it's getting exciting," Lu moaned in a playful manner and twisted her rosy lips into a snort.
"Hey!", I complained. "You know more about this than anyone else - doesn't that count?"
I stood up and put one hand on my hip.
Lu curled his nose.
Then she said with a loving look: "I don't care how much you tell me or don't tell me. I just want you to be okay." She tilted her head slightly as she kept saying, "Take care of yourself, okay?"
I went up to her and gave her a kiss on the hairline, like Dad used to do with us.
"Sure, I always do."
On the way to my car, I texted Benji that I was on my way over to his place.
***
The Kings' estate was the largest in all of Vancouver. Except for the white stone wall and the color of the house walls, everything from the statues in the garden to the floors and walls inside was black and anthracite.
That alone was enough to make me shiver whenever I visited Benji.
"Go right up, Ms Spencer," said Marga, the Kings' housekeeper, after greeting me.
I followed her advice and took two of the flat steps at once, which led to the upper rooms of the imposing home.
I knocked twice on Benji's door.
"Come in!" he cried in a deep voice.
When I opened the door to his fifty square meter bedroom, he was standing right in front of his wardrobe.
His upper body was naked.
"Couldn't wait, huh?"
He grinned and assessed me with a twinkle in his sky-blue eyes.
I shook my head and threw one of the twenty or so pillows lying neatly draped on his bed.
Benji, quite the sportsman, caught it without much effort.
"You're gonna have to try a little harder than that, Spencer!"
He threw the pillow back with full force - deliberately, it seemed to me, just inches away from my head.
I watched his muscles flex as he put on his rowing shirt.
"Don't keep me in suspense," I implored him.
"She likes it hard, likes to be pinched in the nipples at the same time as she licks ... and -", he did a thinker pose and tapped his chin with his finger, "... she is not a very good kisser.
"What did I come here for anyway?" I moaned, picked up the pillow and put it back on the bed with the others.
I didn't feel like playing Benji's game.
"All done," he said the moment I walked back to the door and was just about to leave.
I turned around.
"44652809", Benji said with the corner of his mouth raised.
"Could you be a little clearer?"
I was annoyed. I hated it when he had everything pulled out of his nose.
It was in his nature to always ask people around him for anything, to make him kneel down when they wanted something from him.
"The code for the entrance," he told me.
"George knows. He'll take care of it tonight."
Benji grabbed the dark blue gym bag from his closet and walked towards me.
"Are you crazy? We weren't going to drag anyone into this," I said with an angry expression.
Benji reached past me to the door handle. His acrid scent grazed me.
He always smelled pleasant, even when he was sweating from one of his training sessions.
"If I wouldn't trust George, I might as well shoot myself," Benji remarked with a rough bass.
His mint-smelling breath grazed my face as he said that.
We looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then I backed away so he could open the door.
"Do you want to come to the beach? I'm going rowing."
"I thought so," I replied, looking at his blue and gold jersey.
"Why not," I sighed and trotted after him like a puppy after its master.
It wasn't like that, of course, but he still kept making me do things I wouldn't even consider of my own accord.
I loved the beach and the tasks for the seminars next week could wait a while.
On the other hand, there were countless other situations in which my yes to a question that Benjamin King had asked me had been much more fatal.
The same thing happened with Chloe.
I didn't know why he hated her so much. But, despite his remorse, it was a convenient suggestion.
Chloe Clarice Bell was mean and deceitful. A vicious bitch like no other. She also jeopardized my future plans and stole my boyfriend. Weren't those reasons enough for her to deserve what Benji and I had planned for her?
I exhaled for a long time as we drove up the beach promenade and finally came to a halt in one of the front parking lots.
"Do you want to watch or go to your favorit
e beach? You can take the car."
Benji still had one hand on the steering wheel. His upper body was slightly turned towards me as he looked at me from his blue eyes.
This was one of the moments when I was once again sure that Benjamin King had something like a heart.
He had remembered which was my favourite beach and that although I had only mentioned it once in all the years we had known each other.
But the fact that he entrusted me with his beloved car made me wonder.
"You give me your car?", I asked with raised eyebrows.
"Scrap it and you won't get any cake from me for your birthday this year," he grumbled with clenched teeth.
I laughed.
Benji regularly gave me a cake from Berns&Buns for the new year.
I liked this little tradition between us. Not least because it reminded me of James and me.
Benjamin King bore no resemblance to James Wyatt Cole, but that didn't change the fact that he had been something of my best friend for many years.
We didn't have the same intimacy that James and I had when we sat in our hiding place and exchanged vows of loyalty; or when he followed me into the waves, even though he hated the water, or read me my favorite story for the third time in one day.
The forms of love are as different as the people we meet. It is precisely because of their diversity that we must appreciate them. Because that makes every love unique and special.
I had learned that by now.
And yet I always knew that I was fooling myself by pretending that the hole that the boy from my neighborhood had left in my heart many years ago was no longer there.
I felt it every single day.
"You are so kind," I replied with a mischievous grin, waiting for Benji to get out so I could climb into the driver's seat of his Jaguar.
Sunset Beach was well attended when I arrived. But the people there were not as crowded as at English Bay, where I had just dropped Benji off. Here and there, young adults played Frisbee or football to each other; families went for a walk with their children and individuals with their dogs.
I walked so close to the water that there was barely ten centimetres of space between my shoes and the rolling waves.
The sun's rays glittered on the turbulent water. A few seagulls chased along the beach on my right.
I closed my eyes and sucked the salty air deep into my lungs.
Vicious Bet: Don't fall in love! (Sinners and Saints Book 1) Page 10
