I woke up to silence.
My eyes fluttered open slowly, my body sore in places I didn’t want to think about yet. The sheets were cool beside me.
Empty.
My heart skipped as awareness rushed in all at once.
This wasn’t my room.
The ceiling was too high. The bed too large. The smell in the air—dark, clean, masculine—was unfamiliar but burned into my memory from last night.
I sat up abruptly.
Professor Zander’s bed.
The man whose hands were still printed into my skin. The man I had watched kill someone. The man who owned the bar I worked at. The man who had touched me like he knew exactly how to break me open—and then disappeared.
My chest tightened.
I scrambled out of the bed and wrapped the blanket around my chest, gripping it like it could hold me together. My bare feet hit the cold
