After that rollercoaster of a weekend, I was grateful to have a solid distraction. However, I couldn’t help but feel personally cheated and slighted by the cruelty of fate.

If we’d just fucked and I’d gotten it out of my system and cast her aside, it’d probably have been completely different.

Well, it would have been a bit weirder than usual since I’d see her at family reunions, but it would have still gotten her out of my system. I wasn’t used to mentally marking a sexual target and having the opportunity ripped from my clutches on a technicality.

I had begun to think that Clara had a point.

She was determined to nip whatever we might have had in the bud. I couldn’t help but admit that us having something while our parents had something was a bit… strange. I knew it wasn’t incest because we weren’t related, but Clara clearly thought along those lines, and maybe she wasn’t wrong to shut everything down before it started.

However…

I always hated to turn down a challenge.

All of this had to go on the backburner for the moment, though. Just one day later, before I was ready, Monday morning was here. That meant something that I’d been putting off for over eight years now.

School.

You might have gotten the impression, correctly, that college was kind of a complete afterthought to me. As a Marine with eight years of service under his belt and a massive inheritance on the way, I wasn’t particularly interested in giving even more of my life away.

There was one slight problem with that…

And it was named Raleigh and Riana Carlyle.

My elderly, posh grandparents were the rightful wielders of the Carlyle Fortune. After they skipped my father and lost their daughter, I was the only remaining heir to the bloodline. They only had a few rules, but their firm expectations were airtight:

1. Never disgrace the family.

2. Earn a place of societal standing.

3. Obtain a dignified higher education.

I wasn’t interested in kissing ass up the societal chain, so I discussed the option of joining the active military of my resident country. To my favor, I had several dignified ancestors who had served as officers in the British Army, and my grandparents were surprisingly lax in caring which country I served, so long as it was a “relevant” one.

Of course, I didn’t do it just to get their money, even if we are talking about a fiendishly large quantity of it. There were a lot of overlapping factors involved in that decision.

For one, I did it for me. I wanted the discipline, the prestige, and to essentially drown in pussy for the rest of my life. Call me selfish, because it’s true, but I’m a particularly forward thinking brand of selfish.

Secondly, I wanted to make an effort to please my father, who was perpetually afraid of me following in the footsteps of his former life. At the bare minimum, I knew he’d be pretty fucking proud of me.

Finally, by being smart about my expenses for eight years, I walked out of the service with over $150,000 in cold, hard cash. It meant significantly less beer than I would have liked, but it also meant I had options.

After all, if fate intervened and the Carlyle Fortune was ripped from my hands, like my father before me, it left me in a reasonably good financial position without it.

I could still buy a house or travel the world with well over a hundred thousand dollars.

So far, my grandparents loved me. I never felt pressured under their expectations, particularly since it wasn’t difficult to keep my sexual exploits away from their ears. That’s pretty much the only thing I could think of that might jeopardize my claim, since they were apparently the biggest fucking prudes on the planet.

However, I wasn’t exactly interested in scrimping on the sex for years, especially without the inheritance being a done deal.

Despite not particularly giving a rat’s ass about the degree, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to at least try. I was actually looking forward to the next step on my quest for the Carlyle Fortune when I walked into my first class of the semester, Psychology 1001.

I was just in time, and I spotted an empty seat up in the small, stadium-style seating. Unfortunately, I didn’t even get two minutes of peace before I realized that fate was going to be a prissy little bitch after all.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I grunted to myself when I glanced down and saw Clara a few rows below me, tentatively awaiting the professor’s appearance.

What is it with this goddamn girl?

Clara had been everywhere I’d turned since the beginning of the weekend. Everything from the Marine banquet, to the bar afterwards, to Father’s little family get-together…

I realized the seat next to her was available, and a sly smile crossed my lips.

Fine. Challenge accepted.

Narrowly, I squeezed into the seat before some other guy could snag it. Clara quickly glanced up, her breath catching in her throat.

“Hullo, love,” I grinned knowingly.

“What. The. Fuck.” She trembled. “Are you, like, actually stalking me now? Why can’t I fucking get away from you?”

“Yes, you’re absolutely right,” I conceded mockingly. “I specifically called you in to work my banquet, trailed you to the bar, hooked our parents up, and somehow got your schedule and put myself in your class.”

“Ugh. Actually, that last one is me,” Clara sighed. “I transferred into Psych at the last second. I wasn’t on the attendance until this morning.”

“See? It’s destiny,” I told her.

“Destiny?” She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Of course! Either you and I are the butt of some cruel, cosmic joke… or something really wants us to give each other a chance. You can’t deny that this is pretty bizarre.”

“The only bizarre thing about this is that our parents are dating,” she spat out in a hushed tone.

“So you’re fine with us, then,” I countered without skipping a beat. “It’s just our parents that are the problem. Good to know.”

“No, that’s not what I said at all,” she insisted.

“You said, and I quote, the only bizarre thing about this is that–”

“I know what I said.”

I smiled, watching her grow more flustered by the second. Clara shook her head at me, the very picture of exasperation; valiantly, she tried and failed to hide a faint smile, hinted at the corner of her lips.

At that moment, the profession stepped into the room. A thin, gaunt figure with thick, snow-white hair and a matching, magnificent beard, he set down his briefcase on the podium and glanced up at us through thick, black-rimmed spectacles.

“Good morning, students, and welcome to Psychology 1001. My name is Doctor Thaddeus Pritchard. You may call me Professor Pritchard or Doctor Pritchard; either will do. Now then, I’ll be guiding those of you here next week for the following several months. Please pull out your textbooks and flip to page 108 while I call roll…”

“Shit,” Clara whispered. “I totally forgot to pick one up.”

“No need,” I replied casually, pulling out a thick, heavy copy of The Realm Inside: A Beginner’s Psychology Guide. “We can share this for the moment.”

She bit her lip and raised an eyebrow, but couldn’t overlook that this book was, used, still over a hundred bucks. “Just for today.”

“Oh, of course,” I shrugged. “Just today. You’ll get your own copy after that, assuming you stick out the class, that is.” I let my slight smile carry the tone as I challenged her. “I hear this guy’s kind of tough, after all. You might not hack it.”

“Is that so?” Clara replied, slipping a few strands of hair behind her ear. She was watching me with an eyebrow raised. “We’re assuming, of course, that you won’t be intimidated by him either. A guy like that looks like he belongs behind a podium at Harvard, not here.”

The professor smacked something loud against the podium, drawing our attention.

“I’m sorry, is your flirtation more important than my class? If that’s the case, feel free to excuse yourselves,” Doctor Pritchard airily cut in.

“Apologies, Professor,” I replied with dignity. “I was merely offering to help a fresh transfer with reading materials for today.”

“English, hmm?” Doctor Pritchard observed keenly. He adjusted his glasses against his nose and peered towards me. “What part of England are you from?”

I was surprised by his sudden interest.

“Uh, South London.”

“I see,” he murmured. “Interesting. I spent a decade teaching in London. Awful food, too much drinking, but it was, overall, a pleasant experience.” He turned to Clara, who seemed amused by this assessment. “Is it true that you joined in the last twenty-four hours?”

“This morning, actually,” she answered.

“Better last minute than a week late,” he nodded with a tentative smile. “What’s your name? You won’t be on my attendance sheet unless I pencil you in.”

“Clara Campbell,” she answered.

I smiled privately. Alliterative. I like it. Also, not a far cry from ‘Clara Carlyle’…

With a brief moment of horror, I banished the thought away. There was no reason to have thoughts even remotely like that… until I realized that, if our parents married, that could possibly wind up becoming her name, anyway…

Once he made the corrections, Doctor Pritchard continued the roll call, leaving me plenty pleased with my thoughts. Well, maybe he’ll be a little easier on me with the grade.

The rest of the class wound up fairly straightforward. This professor didn’t employ casual starter days – we were already reviewing material and assigned homework at the end of the session.

It was hard to stay committed to paying attention to him with Clara right there. I felt myself enamored by the way she focused on the material, biting her bottom lip when she was heavily concentrating or perplexed.

She was so effortlessly beautiful.

That’s when I knew I had to take things seriously with her… that I had to try. I could have just written her off, but honestly? All that destiny stuff I had told her?

I believed it.

It was weird to me that I’d seen so much of her in such a short period of time. We were definitely supposed to be paying attention to each other, and the more that I did so, and the longer that I watched her out of the corner of my eye, the more I felt a little something tug inside me for her.

It was small and easily overlooked, but from that small flicker in my heart, I could build the foundation of something much bigger.

I knew my soul could burn for her if I let it.

That’s why, when class was over, I followed her outside and redirected her towards the nearby overhang. It was a covered seating area; other students mostly filled the available tables, so I leaned against a pillar instead.

“Yeah? What did you want?” She asked impatiently. I could see that she was slightly on edge, nervously looking around and absent-mindedly sliding her hair behind her ear… something that only encouraged me further.

“You and I need to talk,” I told her.

“I, uh, we don’t need to talk.”

“We definitely do,” I smiled softly.

“No.” She was trying to put her foot down here, but her hesitance gave her away. Sure, she knew what I was going to say… but she wanted me to say it.

“I’m just going to go out and say it,” I sighed, choosing my words very carefully. “Clara, you’ve had my attention since the moment that we first met, and I want to see where that goes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll remind you that when we first met, you were publicly humiliating me in front of your Marine friends, and making horrible sexual passes at me.”

“So I came off the wrong way,” I shrugged. “I know that I fucked up. You were only going to be a harmless little bit of amusement, but then I ran into you immediately afterwards, and you seemed so…”

“So what?” She asked with feigned apathy, poorly disguising how she was clutching onto my every word.

“So… wildly attractive,” I conceded. “Seeing you there by yourself, outside of your banquet serving attire, as just a girl trying to buy a drink… it compounded inside me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you. I had to get to know you.”

Clara scoffed. “So, you see me in my street clothes, and suddenly everything changes? Real smooth, bucko.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I insisted. “Once we were alone and back in our elements, we clicked. Sure, you pushed me away a little, but I deserved that. And once we got to talking, I felt a spark grow.”

“A spark? You’re a real walking cliché, you know that?” She muttered, shaking her head. Her hair falling forward didn’t hide the smile that I saw developing across that beautiful little face of hers.

Testing the waters, I reached down and lifted her chin. Instead of flinching or recoiling, her eyes went wild with fear, gazing deeply into mine like a frightened animal… but Clara didn’t dare move away.

“I know you feel something between us,” I whispered, stroking her cheek with the backs of my knuckles. “I know it’s happening fast, and it doesn’t make sense to either of us… but I know you do, because I can feel it too.”

Clara sucked in a small gasp of air, clearly filled with conflict. “But it’s wrong,” she huskily replied. “And we only just met. We can’t. You know we can’t…”

“We can,” I pushed her, staring deep into her eyes with every ounce of conviction I had. I just have to break down this barrier between us. “We’re not related… our parents are only dating… time is on our side. I just don’t want to kill this thing we feel before it starts.”

Clara’s face was growing flush; her chest was visibly rising and falling with mounting intensity. “Maybe that’s for the best,” she tried to concede, although I could see her grasp slipping.

“I don’t think so,” I nudged caringly, “and I know you don’t really believe that, either.”

Her eyes slid open, half-rimmed by her heavy eyelids. When she spoke, her silky voice was like honey to my ears. “Then, what do you suggest?”

“You know what I suggest,” I replied calmly, tracing the shape of her cheek with my thumb. “We take the plunge. We see where this goes. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work… but I can’t let it end without trying.”

When she nodded involuntarily, drawn into the rising sexual tension between us, I knew that I had my moment.

I pulled Clara Campbell close.

My hungry lips met hers.

And for that heated, magical moment, all was right with the world.