What the hell kind of professor is this, Axe thought as he loomed over the human waste of space with the hipster clothes, the full head of hair, and the come-hither-you-college-coed eyes.

Professors were supposed to be old, bushy-browed, tweed-wearing anachronisms, the kind of males where, even on a deserted island with the fate of the race in jeopardy, no female would ever look twice at them, much less consider procreating with them without a loaded gun to the head.

Oh, and then top off all the totally-not-old-and-elbow-padded with the fact that the miserable bastard had been staring at Elise like she was the single most gorgeous female on the planet?

Which, fine. Was true.

But still.

He needed to kill the bastard right here, right now—

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elise said quickly. “This is my, ah, he’s my—”

“Bodyguard,” Axe snapped. “I’m here to keep punks away from her.”

And how’d you like a demonstration, you pencil-necked psychology- spouting whatever-the-fuck. How ’bout I break both your thighbones and use the splintered end of one of them to clean my teeth—after I rip your throat out with my canines—

“This is Axe,” Elise cut in as she shot him a glare. “He’s just here to make my father feel comfortable. I am well aware there are no real threats against me.”

“Well … ah …” Mr. Professor pulled at the collar of his shirt. “So, um, actually, there have been a number of shootings on college campuses in the last couple of years. I, ah, I can see how … um … that would be distressing to a father.…”

Distressing?

This guy actually used the word distressing.

Yeah, you want distressing, Axe thought, how about I hang you out a third-floor window from your cute little pair of Merrells until you scream like a soprano and your libido falls out of the top of your head—

“Axe,” Elise hissed as she jumped out of her chair. “Will you come with me?”

Grabbing him by the elbow, she smiled with determination at James Franco– lite. “Will you excuse us for a moment. We’ll be right back.”

Axe was more than happy to follow her, because he had a few things to say, too.

She frog-marched him back farther into the stacks and shoved him against a line-up of books on the American Revolution.

With a jab, she shoved her finger in his face. “Lose the attitude or you can leave.”

“Excuse me?” he ground out. “I’m not the one who’s dating a human. If you’d been up front with me in the first place about why you wanted to come here, I would have appreciated it. Especially after your holier-than-thou ‘honesty is all I want from you’ bullshit. Or, wait, maybe you’re like your cousin Peyton and believe commoners like me are so second class, there actually is no hypocrisy when you lie to us.”

“I am not dating Troy!”

“Troy. His name is Troy.”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s a perfectly nice name!”

“I’m not touching that one—”

“Don’t be an ass! And there is nothing going on between us!”

“Oh, come on. I saw the way he looked at you. And this …” He motioned around her face. “With the hair and the makeup? It’s all for him, isn’t it. You got yourself dolled up for your little boyfriend, didn’t you.”

“I did not! And he’s not my—”

“Where’s that honesty, sweetheart—”

“Okay, you did not just ‘sweetheart’ me—”

“What do you want me to call you, ‘Professor?’ ’Cuz that title’s already taken by Troy—”

“You were growling! You were standing over him and growling!”

Okay, that got through to him. And she was not finished. Leaning in so close that she was practically rock-climbing up his chest, she nailed him with that forefinger again.

“You were about two inches and one giant testosterone surge away from baring your fangs and killing him!”

“I was not!”

They were both screaming at each other—at stage-whisper volume. Which was ridiculous, but at least they were alone back here.

“Show me,” she spat.

“What?”

She grabbed his upper lip like he was a horse and cranked it up over his head. “See!” More with that damn finger. “Your canines are totally descended—and let me tell you, the last thing in the world I need is for my bodyguard to rip the throat out of the very reason I’m bothering to put up with his sorry ass! You back off or I will get someone else!”

Axe ripped his mouth out of her hold and jacked forward on his hips. “Don’t put your hands on me again.”

“I didn’t want to touch you in the first place—”

“Liar.”

She recoiled as if he’d cursed at her. But she recovered quick. “You’re jealous.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Admit it. And if you try to deny that you want me, may I remind you of your ‘attraction working in our favor’ speech last night. You remember, you were sitting at the foot of my bed? You were quite articulate about it all.”

As she arched a superior, pure-as-the-driven-snow brow at him, Axe seriously wanted to shoot something. Maybe her. Maybe himself. Very definitely “Troy.” “You know, right now, I’m seriously reconsidering your cousin’s offer to pay me to stay away from you.”

Elise opened her mouth as if she were going to stay on her roll—but then clamped it closed as if the words he’d spoken had sunk in on a delay.

“Peyton did what?”

“He came to my house last night and told me I wasn’t allowed to take this job, and when I told him to fuck off, he said whatever your father is paying me he’ll double, triple, Powerball the salary.”

“Why would he do that?” she mumbled as if she couldn’t fathom any kind of “why.”

“Because people like me are only allowed to fix your house or your car or work in your garden.” Okay, now he was getting worked up again. “We don’t matter to people like you. We’re just another commodity to be bartered back and forth over—”

“That is absolutely not true!”

Before he could stop himself, Axe sneered, “Oh, really? Well, would you like to know how my father died in the raids? I’d be just goddamned thrilled to tell you, given that you’re all about the fucking talking. My father is dead because the aristocrats he was working for locked all of the staff and the carpenters out of the safe room. So when the slayers came, the riff-raff were all slaughtered, even though there was plenty of room for them. They pounded on the fucking door, begged to be allowed in, but your people let them die. That’s how my only family was killed. And that’s the exact same attitude that makes your fuck-twit of a cousin think he can buy me off and allows you to preach honesty while you’re blowing smoke up my ass about what you’re doing with your professor over there.”

There was a long, tense silence.

And then Elise cleared her throat. “I am sincerely sorry for your loss. That is an unbelievable tragedy.”

He laughed with a harsh curse. “Did your fancy psych degree give you those two sentences on a card to memorize during your Grief Seminar? Or was it your Placating the Lower Class survey course.”

Elise crossed her arms over her chest and just stared at him. And the longer she did, the more he felt like turning away from her and leaving.

He wasn’t really sure why he stayed.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” she muttered.

“Yeah, I think you’re right. And it’s probably the only thing we’re ever going to agree on.”

As she turned her head away from him, he had to ignore how perfect her profile was. But then she opened her mouth again … and laid him out flat on the floor.

Even though she didn’t make any physical contact with him.

“The makeup was for you. Not him. And congratulations, you’re fired. Hope you enjoy wallowing in your misogyny and self-righteous prejudice. Clearly, you get a lot out of both.”

On that note, she lifted her chin and waltzed off. Like she owned the place. Naturally—

Wait. What had she just said about the makeup?????

As Elise marched away from Asswell—Axwelle, she corrected in her head—she couldn’t figure out who she was more pissed off at.

Which, considering how badly he’d behaved, was really saying something.

The award for Biggest Douche Bag on the Planet was a toss-up between him and Peyton. Him, because he was so outrageously offensive she really wanted to call on what little self-defense she knew and knee him in the balls—on the theory that the ranting and raving he’d thrown around back there could only be improved upon with the addition of a helium voice. And Peyton, because it was so completely inappropriate for her cousin to try and buy off anyone, much less a fellow trainee doing a job for somebody else.

Although, really, it wasn’t like it was going to work—

Axe materialized right in front of her, so much out of thin air that she yelped and jumped back.

And then she realized what he’d done. In a human place.

“Are you insane?” She glanced around to see if anyone had caught the ghosting. “You can’t do that in here!”

“Like the books are going to have an opinion?” But he shook his head and cursed. “Look, I’m sorry, okay. I’m really … sorry.”

He met her eyes without flinching, and he had the grace to seem seriously sincere. “I’m not good at …”

She waited for him to finish. And when he honestly seemed to struggle, she debated just leaving him where he stood. ’Cuz he deserved it.

“Go on,” she muttered. “I’m listening.”

“The whole relating thing. I’m not a social creature.”

“Really. You don’t say.”

“It’s true.”

There was a pause. And as it turned into a serious stretch of quiet, she wasn’t going to help him out. Either he proved, right here and now, that he was more than a hotheaded thug with poor impulse control and the aforementioned self-righteous misogyny, or she was going to find another solution.

Hell, maybe Peyton would do the job.

And yes, she was going to have a happy little conversation with him, too.

Axe’s eyes focused on something over her left shoulder. And when he finally spoke, his voice was flat. “I need this job, okay? I have to find work. So I’d … appreciate … a little leeway when it comes to social graces.”

She laughed in a tight burst. “A little leeway? You need, like, a football field on that. Maybe more. You are one of the most offensive people I have ever met.”

He shifted in his boots, something she was beginning to recognize he did when he really wanted to leave but was making himself stay.

“This is on you,” she said. “I’m not going to help you here. If you’ve got something more to tell me, get on with it. Otherwise, I’m going to get my things and leave.”

Axe looked around, and then he muttered, “I live alone, okay? And the training program isn’t about making friends, it’s about life-and-death—which doesn’t exactly play to my interpersonal strengths. Unless it’s killing. And yeah, you just saw what that looks like. So I don’t really know how to make conversation. But I am sorry, all right?”

Elise shook her head slowly while meeting his stare. “I can’t have you getting aggressive with Troy. Yes, I’m aware he finds me attractive, but we’ve never been anything but professional with each other.”

She judicially edited out the details about their momentary lapse the night before. But she didn’t feel guilty about that even with Axe having thrown the honesty thing back in her face.

Okay … maybe she did.

Whatever.

“You need to be tantamount to invisible.” She put her palm out. “And before you go there, that isn’t because you’re a commoner. That’s what bodyguards do. Or … well, from what I’ve seen in movies, that’s what they do. I have real work to do here, and I’ve already had to justify my efforts to my father. I owed the explanation to him. I do not owe it to you.”

Axe nodded. “Agreed.”

After a moment, she took a deep breath, and then indicated the space between them, moving her hand back and forth. “We’re not walking this stretch again together. Am I clear? We’re done with this. If you can’t be up front without being abusive, and you can’t do this job without being out of control, I’m walking away and not looking back. Again, not because I think I’m better than you on account of my bloodline, but because I don’t deserve to have some male going ape-gorilla and pounding his chest in front of me all the time. I will not have this discussion again.”

Axe blinked a couple of times.

And then the strangest thing happened. Or at least … she thought it did.

The right corner of his mouth seemed to lift ever so slightly, and not in a mocking way. More as if she had impressed him and the respect he had for her had been the last thing he’d ever expected to feel around a female aristocrat.

“Deal.” He stuck his hand out. “And I’m sorry we had to run over the ground rules twice. It won’t happen again.”

Elise released the tension in her shoulders and accepted what he offered, shaking his much larger palm. “Deal.”

When they dropped the contact, she leaned to the side and looked around his huge shoulder. “Shoot. Now, we have to try and smooth this over with Troy.”

“Don’t worry. I got this.”

“Somehow that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“Watch me.”

As Axe headed back to where her professor was still sitting, Elise rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath. And then ran off behind him.

This was like Groundhog Day, she thought. With Jason-damn-Statham instead of Bill Murray …