Maggie sighed. ‘Seriously. I’ve been with Will for three weeks, and if he wasn’t hung like a –’

‘Your card,’ Eve interjected as if repulsed, and I escaped that too-clear mental picture of Will, whoever he was. Thank Christ.

‘– I’d be bored out of my mind. I mean, he’s sweeter than chocolate, but ugh, when he starts talking. Zzzz.’

Jacqueline’s friend laughed. ‘God, you’re such a bitch.’

I pulled the lemonade from the fridge while Eve pumped syrup into a shaker.

‘Yeah, yeah. Nice girls finish never. Speaking of, what are we going to do about Jacqueline?’

Her friend sighed. ‘Hmm. Well, she left the party early last week, so that was a major fail – but that was probably because Kennedy was douchebagging it up with Harper right in front of her. Harper’s been after him since last spring – I’m sure she flaunted the shit out of bagging him. God. I never should have taken J to that f**king party …’

Eve slid their drinks across the counter, rolling her eyes – which went unnoticed. Poking straws through the lids, they turned to go, caught up in plotting.

‘We should dress her like dessert and take her somewhere Kennedy won’t be, so she can get her groove back.’

When the redhead suggested a club known for blasting crap music – overplayed on every top-40 station in existence – I knew I’d reached a new level of personal idiocy, because I was going to go. I had to see her on neutral ground, and I was willing to endure almost anything to make that happen. Even pop music.

I’d barely looked at her in class today, trying to fight the attraction I’d been feeling weeks before I’d become the guy who prevented her from being raped in a parking lot. I’d been her saviour that night, yes, but also I bore witness to the humiliation she must still feel. I was eternally linked to that night – an inevitable reminder of it.

That was clearly how she thought of me – as evidenced by the wide-eyed shock on her flushed face when I asked if she was ready to order on Monday. Evidenced in her quick, ‘I’m fine,’ when I asked if she was okay. Evidenced in the way she jerked her hand back when I handed her the card and my finger grazed hers.

But then she looked back at me in class on Wednesday, and the hope I knew I should discourage reignited. It was a dull glow in the pit of my heart – that somehow this girl was meant to be mine. That I was meant to be hers.

Avoidance would have been the smart thing, but where she was concerned, all logical thought was useless. I was full of irrational desires to be what I could never be again, to have what I could never have.

I wanted to be whole.

Watching from a distance as her friends pressed drinks into her hand and encouraged her to dance with whatever guy popped up to ask, I suspected she’d not told them about that night. They’d brought her here and pushed her into the arms of new guys to get over her breakup, not to recover from an assault. Smiling and performing silly dance moves, they coaxed smiles from her, and I was glad to see that happiness on her face, no matter what put it there.

I knew I should leave her alone. She was a lure I couldn’t resist, though she had no way to know it. No way to know I’d watched her relationship crumble from a safe distance. No way to know that I was as attracted to the sense of humour and intelligence she revealed in our email exchanges as I was to those captivating movements her fingers made when her mind was on music and not what was going on around her.

Her ex had chided her once for her inattention to some gibberish he was spouting, and I wanted to throat-punch him. What a f**king idiot he was, to have had her so long and somehow to have never seen her.

I finished my beer and vacated my seat at the bar, torn. I didn’t want to betray Charles’s faith in me. This wasn’t my scene, so there was no denying the knowledge that I was there for her, in deliberate disregard of the fact that she was my student. I would keep to the edge of the club and head straight out the door. Or I would just say hello and leave.

I walked up behind her, noting that she was taller in her heeled boots. Even so, I towered over her. Stroking a finger over the soft skin of her arm, I knew that all pretence of fighting this attraction was suspended, at least for these few moments. I vaguely noted her friends, both facing me, but couldn’t tear my eyes from her bare shoulder long enough to acknowledge them.

Jacqueline turned, and my eyes were drawn straight to the plunging neckline of her top. Holy. Hell. I snapped my gaze back to her face.

Brows raised at my quick but blatant inspection of her chest, she seemed to hold her breath, and I let myself be caught by her mesmeric gaze. I wanted her trust. I didn’t deserve it, but I wanted it. This was no time to be sidetracked by dessert.

She’d yet to release the intake of breath, while I recalled our engaging email exchanges – her comical admission of friends who bartered the use of her pick-up for beer, and the way she’d talked about her students – boys who must have been crushing out of their minds during every music lesson. I couldn’t stop the stupid smile stealing across my face, but I wasn’t the one who’d shared those exchanges with her.

Way to not be creepy, dumbass.

I leaned in, intending to take a moment to compose myself as well as avoid yelling the Hello I meant to say before leaving. Instead of expressing an innocent greeting, I found myself drowning in her scent – the subtle honeysuckle that had etched itself on to my olfactory sensors that rainy day weeks ago. So sweet. My body tightened, and with enormous effort, I murmured into her ear, ‘Dance with me?’

I pulled away, watching her. She didn’t move until her friend poked a finger in her back and gave her a firm nudge in my direction. She reached her hand forward as I reached to take it, and I escorted her to the dance floor, telling myself, Just one dance. Just one.

Yeah. That didn’t happen, either.

The music of that first song was loud, but slow. As long as I’d been watching her, she’d refused invitations to dance every slow song. She’d flinched from the touch of every guy, almost inconspicuously, but none of them seemed to notice. Maybe alcohol had dulled their senses. More likely, they simply didn’t sense her anxiety at all, and wouldn’t have known the grounds for it if they had. They didn’t have my knowledge of what she’d experienced. In addition, years of martial arts had trained me to discern the barest of physical reactions. Hers were clear to me, as were their origins.

I hated the fear that ass**le had instilled in her, and I wanted to dispel it.