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Prologue

Selena

The libraryat Hade Harbor University was a thing of ugly beauty. While the outside matched the rest of the school’s late 1800s architecture, the inside of the library had been remodeled sometime in the 1970s, and the golden pine paneling and brown carpeting cursed the bottom five floors of the illustrious building.

Beautiful outside. Ugly inside.

A building shouldn’t be so relatable.

So far, my favorite part of my new part-time gig was when I was sent up to the upper floors, where the original tile floor and lofty ceilings remained. I popped my headphones in and wandered around, shelving books by great minds on topics I’d never know anything about, from environmental linguistics to the mathematics of time travel, and let the peace of the place sink into my bones.

Peace was hard to come by these days, and in a public place, near impossible.

Today, I hummed softly as I pushed the cart around, mentally thanking the random grad student who had checked out a massive amount of books on archaeology.

I rounded a corner, enjoying the way a beam of light fell through a panel of stained glass, coloring the black-and-white tile a vivid red shade, when I saw them.

I jerked back, the sudden, unwanted sight a shot of electricity to the brain. I hadn’t heard them, my music too loud in my ears, so the unexpected visual sent my blood rushing through me.

The girl kneeling back on a hundred-year-old desk, her shirt pushed down around her waist. For a second, I felt outrageously offended on behalf of the dignified piece of furniture that generations of students had sat and studied at, before my brain caught up with what I was seeing.

She was pinned to the table leg, her back bent unnaturally, and a guy stood over her. His profile was arresting.

He was big and broad, handsome in that way that you just knew he was aware of. No one could sport that wavy brown hair, steel-cut jaw, and drool-worthy face without being insufferable. It didn’t happen.

Slowly, his rough, dominant movements sank through my brain, and I struggled to process what I was seeing.

He thrust against her chest in long, languid movements, sinuous and purposeful. A stark shot of fear grounded me to the spot. Panic licked along my limbs. That’s what happened these days. I froze. A deer in the headlights. I couldn’t seem to step away froma car coming straight on. My therapist had called it a trauma response, but it just felt like a weakness.

I pulled a headphone from my ear, and the sound hit me. Wet slaps and her breathy moans.

Her hand crept down between her legs, and he tutted.

“I didn’t say you could touch yourself, did I, Linda?”

“It’s Lisa,” the girl murmured. “And why not? You’re making me so wet?—”

“Not my fucking problem,” he ground out, his accent British, cocky and arrogant and full of entitlement.

“I didn’t ask to know anything about you,” he continued, sounding dangerously bored by the entire encounter. “So, either finish me off or get up and stop embarrassing yourself,” he drawled.

Lisa shuddered, nodding quickly, chastised, and then set to rubbing her breasts up and down the asshole’s dick with renewed energy.

Luckily, my anger at his offhand comments had unfrozen my limbs, and the panic ebbed away. This wasn’t an attack. It was just bad sex with a dickhead, something that happened all over campus every single day.

You’re safe. Everything is okay. You don’t need to run.

I took a deep breath, dragging it into my paralyzed lungs forcefully.

An electronic beep sounded, and to my disbelief, the asshole pulled his phone out of his back pocket and started to read thescreen, all while poor Lisa bounced on her knees and did her best to get him off.

He typed out a reply, seemingly unaffected by the girl reverently rubbing her breasts up and down the length of his dick. Thank God I couldn’t see it properly given her movements and various moving body parts. I actually hadn’t seen a real, live naked male body in over a year. Not online, not in real life… I was fourteen months phallus-free and proud.

“Fuck, yes,” he growled, his voice lower and rough.

An unwanted rush of goosebumps spread over my skin.

“You like that, baby?” Lisa purred, clearly encouraged.