Azira
“Are you alright?” Nat asks, frowning at me.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
She shakes her head. “You just look a little pale.”
I shrug. “Perhaps it has something to do with my fucking brother being a professor here,” I lie.
She nods. “Fair enough.”
We both step into the classroom barely a second before the bell rings, rushing to our seats at the front quickly.
I feel Blaine’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at him. The man is an asshole for not contacting me for two weeks, and I won’t be the one to make first contact after that.
Eva is already sitting in her spot. “You both left that close,” she whispers.
Nat shrugs. “We were talking to Luca, Azira’s brother. He’s the temporary math professor.”
Eva’s brow raises. “How come you didn’t tell us?”
I clench my jaw. “Because until five minutes ago, I didn’t even know.”
The slam of a ruler against my desk makes me jump and I glance up to see those hazel eyes staring at me.
“Silence, Sidorov. You made it here with barely a second to spare and now you are chatting in my class.”
I clench my jaw and narrow my eyes. “I apologize.”
His jaw is as hard as stone as a muscle twitches in it. “You will wait after class.” With that, he turns and walks back to the front of the class, leaving me staring after him.
“What the hell? It wasn’t like I was the only one talking,” I murmur to Nat.
She just shrugs and gets out her textbook.
I know deep down the reason he’s picking on me, and it’s because he wants me to stay behind so he can use me as his toy. However, I will not give in so easily. Two weeks without a word from him, not even a simple text asking how I am, and then he thinks it will all go back to how it was before.
A pain clenches at my chest as I know he warned me about getting too attached at the start.
Sex is always merely a transaction for me. No attachments.
It means I’m the one in the wrong. The idiot who promised she wouldn’t get attached, but did, anyway. And Blaine has made it clear he has no interest in attachments or getting involved with me beyond having sex.
His voice drones in the background, but I struggle to focus on what he’s saying. All the while, my mind runs over what I’m going to say to him after class. I imagine myself putting him in his place, but there’s a part of me that worries I’ll cave. With Professor Luigi, my instinct is to submit to him, which irritates me beyond compare.
For the first time in my life, I wished away the break, wanting to be back at the academy because I missed him that much. If he thinks I’m going to fall in line as if nothing has changed, then he is wrong.
I try to focus on the lesson as he speaks, keeping my eyes anywhere but on him. Instead, I keep my attention on the textbook in front of me, pretending to read it.
“Miss Sidorov,” Blaine says.
My heart stops beating for a second as I glance up to find him staring at me expectantly.
Fuck.
“Sorry, sir?”
A muscle in the side of his temple flexes. “Do you know the answer to the question?”
“No, I’m sorry, sir.”
He grunts in frustration and glances at Nat. “Gurin?”
Nat reels off the answer, as she always does, and the rest of the lesson goes by quickly as he assigns an essay that I can hardly focus on. The bell sounds, and Blaine claps his hands. “I want the essay on my desk by the morning if you haven’t finished them yet.”
The class grumbles in response.
I stare down at my notebook and groan, as I’ve barely written ten sentences.
Nat glances over and arches a brow. “Seriously?”
“What?” I ask, despite knowing she can’t believe how little I’ve written in just over half an hour.
She gathers three full pages of writing and shakes her head. “You need to focus more on class.”
Instead of responding, I gather my books into my rucksack as Nat goes up to the front to deliver her paper. A few other students do as well, but most haven’t finished.
Blaine glances at me as I remain seated, waiting behind as he instructed. A smirk twists onto his lips, which only makes me angry. I scowl back at him and break his gaze.