Liam. I came to Harrowbridge to win—on the field, in the classroom, everywhere. But then Professor Eleanor Mercer looked at me like I was a problem she wished she didn’t have, and something in me turned sharper…hungrier. She’s grading me harshly, thinking she’s in control. She has no idea how much I pay attention—how I see the way her breath stutters when I walk into her classroom, how she flinches at my voice, how she hates that her eyes linger on me longer than they should... moreLiam. I came to Harrowbridge to win—on the field, in the classroom, everywhere. But then Professor Eleanor Mercer looked at me like I was a problem she wished she didn’t have, and something in me turned sharper…hungrier. She’s grading me harshly, thinking she’s in control. She has no idea how much I pay attention—how I see the way her breath stutters when I walk into her classroom, how she flinches at my voice, how she hates that her eyes linger on me longer than they should. The harder she pushes me away, the more I want to push back, because she’s hiding something behind those perfect, practiced walls. And I’m going to make her confront it—make her confront me. They say I play dirty. They say I don’t know when to stop. They’re right. Because Eleanor Mercer is the one thing I’m not supposed to touch…and the only thing I can’t stop wanting. Eleanor. I know better than to let a student get under my skin. I know better than to react, to slip, to feel anything at all. But Liam Ashford isn’t like my other students. He walks into my classroom with that quiet, predatory self-assurance—the kind that makes everyone else shrink back and makes me stand a little too rigidly behind my desk, pretending I’m unaffected. Rumors cling to him like smoke. Talent, temper, trouble. A scholarship golden boy with a dangerous reputation. So I did what I always do with threats: I pushed harder. I graded harder. I kept well hidden behind rules and distance and professionalism. But he doesn’t stare the way other men do. He observes. Learns. Collects the pieces of me I try not to show: the tiredness, the anger, the hunger I’ve kept buried since my marriage fell apart. And now he’s looking at me like he sees straight through all of it. He’s unraveling the things I’ve spent years holding together and now I feel him everywhere—in the hush of my office, in the hallway behind me, in the corners where the light doesn’t quite reach. Some buried, broken part of me, the part I pretend doesn’t exist, keeps wondering what would happen if I stopped running and let him catch me. Shadowed by the Scholar is seventh book in the Dark Obsessions series—where love is forbidden, protection turns to possession, and happily-ever-afters come wrapped in the shadows. less
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