#Chapter 9: Truth or Dare

Lila's POV

He meant my ex.

I understood. The professor wasn't holding me because he wanted to. He was holding me because half the school was staring and my ex was ten feet away with murder on his face. This closeness was a performance.

I swallowed. His fingers were firm at my waist. His chest was warm against mine. His heartbeat was steady and unhurried and mine was not.

Then he looked down at me, and something in his eyes shifted.

His pupils weren't brown anymore. They were red. Dark, deep red, the color of wine held up to firelight, and they were fixed on me with an intensity that had nothing to do with strategy. It was the way a wolf watched something it wanted to run down. Patient and focused and predatory.

My stomach dropped.

I felt a pull in my chest. Low and heavy. Something that wanted me closer to him. I wanted to lean into his throat and breathe him in. I wanted to press my face against his neck and stay there. My brain had not authorized any of this, and my legs locked up.

It reminded me of that night. The hotel room. The silk over my eyes, the hands holding my wrists behind my back, the voice that said stay and meant it. The man I'd never seen. The man who was not the professor, because the professor himself had told me the cufflinks were common.

But my body didn't care about cufflinks. My body was reacting to something older and deeper than evidence and I didn't have a name for it.

The dance wasn't over. I pulled away anyway.

"Excuse me," I said. "I need air."

I walked off the floor before he could respond.

Gemma found me at the refreshment table with both hands wrapped around a cocktail glass.

"Why are you here?" She pushed a strand of hair out of my face. "You should be dancing with the professor."

"I stepped on his foot."

"So? He's a big boy." She grinned. "He's not going to torture you in combat class and on the dance floor, is he? Although honestly, I wouldn't blame him—"

"Stop." My face was on fire. I tipped my head back and drank half the cocktail in one swallow because the alternative was thinking about the professor's hands on my waist and his mouth near my ear and what he might look like without the tailcoat and I could not — I absolutely could not — think about that. "I will sew your mouth shut."

She laughed and dragged me toward the far side of the clearing, where a circle of students sat on logs around a smaller fire. "Truth or Dare," she said. "Best part of the night. Come on."

I tried to resist. She was stronger.

The circle was nearly full. Students passed a beer bottle around the ring, spinning it to pick the next target. Gemma pulled me through the gap and I spotted the two empty spaces at the same time my stomach clenched.

One seat. Between the professor and my ex.

Brielle was across the circle. She saw me, smiled with her teeth, and waved me forward. "Sit down," she said brightly. "We've been waiting. Now we can start."

Gemma gave me a gentle shove. I sat.

Professor Aldrich was to my left. He wasn't looking at me. His posture was rigid, his jaw set, and the air around him felt ten degrees colder than anywhere else in the clearing. Angry or bored. Impossible to tell.

Derek was to my right. He didn't look at me either, but I could feel his fury radiating off him.

Round one. The bottle spun and landed on a boy near the front. His dare: hug the person you know least for ten seconds. He picked a girl across the circle, wrapped his arms around her, and everyone counted down.

Round two. A girl. Truth. "When was your first time?" she was asked, and she blushed and said, "Coming-of-age night," and the circle howled.

Round three.

The bottle pointed at me.

I chose truth. It felt safer than whatever dare they'd invent for the wolfless girl who'd just rejected the football captain.

A boy across the fire leaned forward. He'd been watching me since I sat down. His eyes dropped to my legs, to the hemline of my borrowed dress, and his mouth split into a grin.

"Hold on," he said. He whistled. "Aren't you supposed to be the good girl? What's that on your thigh?"

Every head turned.

The dress had ridden up when I sat. Just enough. The mark was still there. Faint now, days old, but visible in the firelight. A handprint. Five finger-shaped bruises on the inside of my right thigh, fading from purple to yellow at the edges.

My blood went cold.

The hotel room slammed back into me. Hands pulling my wrists behind my back. The sting of his palm. The sound it made. The way my body had arched into it instead of away.

"My boyfriend did it," I said.

It came out flat and fast because I couldn't think of anything else and the circle was staring and I needed them to stop looking at my thigh.

Derek went rigid beside me. I could feel his confusion. He had never touched me like that. He knew he hadn't. His eyes burned into the side of my face.

From my left, Professor Aldrich spoke. His voice was calm.

"When my dog doesn't listen," he said, "I make it kneel and spank it too."

The circle erupted. Laughter, gasps, a chorus of disbelief. The cold, untouchable combat professor owned a dog? He spanked it? He made it kneel?

"That's so cute," someone said.

"I can't picture it," someone else said. "The professor with a puppy."

He didn't smile. Didn't elaborate. Just leaned back on his hands and looked at the fire.

I was the only one who heard it differently. The phrasing. The cadence. Kneel. Spank. Words that belonged to the forum, the community, the conversations I'd been reading and writing for over a year.

My skin prickled.

It meant nothing. He was talking about a dog.

But my hands were shaking.