Living in Shadow (Living In…) by Jackie Ashenden Read Free Book Online

opened then shut and she abruptly looked away.
    But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted to look at her because she was so fucking beautiful. Delicate jawline. High cheekbones. The sun in her hair turning it into the spun gold from a fairy tale.
    He wanted her, Christ, so much. Perhaps he hadn’t appreciated how badly until this very moment.
    “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, continuing to look out over the rest of the grass.
    “Then why won’t you look at me?”
    She let out a little impatient breath then tilted her head, looking down at him, her gaze sharp as a blade. No fear this time. Only those walls. “I’ve seen your file,” she said conversationally. “King’s boy, aren’t you? Head prefect. Top of the class. Rich family. Good-looking and, like I said, arrogant as hell. You don’t give a shit about the rules because they don’t apply to people like you, right?” Her tone was cool. “I don’t know you, Lucien, but I’ve seen many boys like you go through this law school and in my experience you’re all exactly the same. You think you know everything. You think you’re God. You think every boy wants to be you and every girl wants to be in your bed.” Her mouth curved in a faint smile. “Well, honey, I hate to break it to you, but you don’t know everything and you certainly don’t know me. So stop playing little-boy games and back the hell off.”
    Fuck, she was strong. And so goddamn sure of herself. Pity she was wrong about him on just about every count. Yes, he’d been to King’s College, one of Auckland’s most elite private schools. Had been head prefect. And yes, his father’s family was rich. But that was it.
    She only saw the mask he’d perfected over the years he’d been back in New Zealand so he could fit in. Yet that wasn’t all he was.
    Killer. Monster.
    Luc forced away the cold voice in his head. Focused instead on the burst of adrenaline that had flared through him at the challenge in her tone, like a spike of flame over frozen ground.
    Little-boy games. Like fucking hell.
    “Sit down, Professor May,” he said with quiet force.
    She frowned. “Excuse me?”
    “I said, sit down .”
    She gave a dismissive kind of laugh. “Oh I don’t think so. This conversation is over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to.”
    No, she wasn’t going anywhere. He hadn’t finished.
    Luc reached out and closed his fingers around her ankle before she could move. She was wearing tights, even in the hot summer sun, and through the nylon he could feel the warmth of her skin and the electricity that hummed between them. The electricity he’d felt the day he’d taken her hand and introduced himself.
    She stiffened, every line of her almost vibrating with tension. She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on the path ahead.
    Warm. Fuck, she was so warm. Vital. A shaft of dazzling sunlight in a dark, dank cave. The feel of her seeped through his palm and moved up his arm. And he knew if he kept hold of her, it would move farther still, going deeper inside him, lighting him up. Shining into the dark, cold heart of him.
    What would it feel like to have her in his arms? To be inside her? Wrapped up in all that sunshine? He’d had fantasies about her, so many fucking fantasies. Yet he suspected that the reality would be so much more intense.
    Oh God, he had to have this. He had to have her. Somehow, some way.
    He moved this thumb, unable to resist, a single stroke near her anklebone, and he felt the tremble that went through her in response. Faint, but there all the same. He looked up. Her face had set into hard lines, her jaw tight.
    “This conversation is not over,” he said quietly, letting steel thread through his words. The steel he never used in this particular world because as he’d learned, this particular world couldn’t handle it. “In fact, we haven’t even had a conversation. What we’ve had is you making assumptions about me. Patronizing me. You tell me I