CHAPTER 7

ALEKS

The first time I saw Leukas Hyades wad a cold Tuesday evening. I had been in California for a month and I was finally settling into a life very different from my usual one. I didn't wake up at three in the morning for intense exercise routines. I didn't do perimeter checks around my father's house. I didn't go out to guard any old men as they conducted drug smugglings and human trafficking. I didn't have a couple of men to instruct or any infiltration strategies to make. I simply woke up, went to classes, hung out with a few friends I'd made, ate, went to parties and read. I had never been happier.

That evening one of the girls who had taken me under her wings as soon as I'd arrived, Sam, had asked me to wait for her after class so that we could go out for tacos. She had been ten minutes late so I had set out towards the Chemical Sciences Faculty to go and find her. I remembered her telling me she had an exam there so I decided I would go see if she was still there and hadn't left. All those plans and intentions went out the window as soon as I rounded a corner and through an open lab door, saw the most enthralling guy I would ever behold.

He was simply…. gorgeous and I could do nothing but stand at the door and gape at him. Because he was standing next to what I think is a centrifuge, a notebook and pen in his hands, I could see all of him properly. He was tall, at least 6-foot-five, with a lean but muscular frame. I was immediately drawn to grey eyes fanned by impossibly long lashes I would have killed for if I cared much about beauty and if they didn't look so perfect on him. His lips were blood red and full, striking against his pale skin and his nose was long and shapely enough to give his face a regal and surreal look. His hair was a long curly mane of silky and soft-looking gold and blonde locks, which I would come to learn was his hair's natural state which he disliked and kept straightened as often as he could, and an overwhelming urge to stroke and sniff overcame me. He was wearing a blue lab-coat, buttoned up to the top three then revealing a tight black t-shirt with dark jeans and combat boots. My body heated up so fast it was dizzying and I felt feelings I had yet to feel in my jaded life. Desire. Need. Lust.

I had never truly felt those feelings before. When I was growing up, my father violently drilled me against feelings which would draw attention to me as a woman instead of me as a 'warrior'. Feelings towards man was one of those feelings. Tenderness, gentleness and kindness were also strongly discouraged and corrected immediately if ever suspected. Feminism was also greatly intolerable to him.

I had no respect for my father and I had never been disillusioned about the abuse he put me through. Old habits where hard to break though and I had become the person he had molded me into, whether I liked it or not. I had noticed my indifference towards most men and I had feared he had broken me when I saw how other girls reacted towards men. I had never felt attraction before. Leukas had unknowingly awoken me then. I had felt so alive. I had felt complete. I fell in love with him then, the exact first moment I saw him.

I had felt Sam's presence before I had seen her. Very few people could sneak up on me and Sam was just a college student who hadn't had to look over his shoulder every second of her life like I did.

"Who is he?" I had whispered quite unbothered by the huskiness of my voice. I was entranced by the man. His eyes just killed me even as he wrote something on his notebook, shining with a quite pleasure in what he was doing. His hands were encased in black leather gloves, something so mundane and random that somehow appealed to me greatly. His body was completely free of any tension then; it was like he was home in that lab. How I would ever look away from him was beyond me. How I could stop myself from spiraling into an obsession with him was a mystery.

Sam had stood behind me and looked into the room before sighing in a dreamy way I was now familiar with. "Leukas Hyades. He is nineteen and doing his PHD in Psychology and some other science subject. I've forgotten which. I hear these will be his fifth and sixth PhDs. He is topping all of his classes. He is a genius, a mentalist even. Even more than everyone here and as you can see, the most gorgeous guy as well. Pity he won't give anyone but his friend Lander any time of day. Rumor has it that he doesn't sleep. Maybe he's a vampire. I know how you feel right now; we have all been through it." She said, giggling and pulling me away from the man who would come to mean the world to me. She was wrong though. No one would ever feel the way I did for Leukas from the start.

Against my better judgement, I started stalking him then.

Maybe stalking him was a strong word but I found myself asking about him. Signing up to all his classes. Finding out all about his hang out places. Watching him while he worked at a club. Okay, maybe stalking would have been accurate, I couldn't get enough of him. I soon knew that he spent his days going to lectures and then to the library with Lander Blake and a few other select friends of his. He would plug in some headphones and lose himself in a mountain of books. I knew that he would barely partake in any activities college kids considered fun. He always wore gloves and long clothes because of his aversion to touch. I suspected that he was sensitive to the world around him. I knew that he rarely talked. I was out of control with love and lust and the need to know him. I wanted to touch him like he never allowed anyone to. I wanted to be the exception. I wanted everything with him.

I also couldn't bring myself to stop watching him from the shadows like the creep I had become. I couldn't make myself talk to him. It surprised me. I had always been able to talk to men. I had used my body and my looks to get information and to bring grown men to their knees ever since I was sixteen. According to my father, it was the only way I could apply myself as a woman. Turn my womanhood into a weapon. I had. I had learnt the art of seduction and enthralling. I had shaped my body into every man's fantasy.

I knew how to use myself in that manner because I had never emotionally attached myself to my physical being. I had no inhibitions. I had never slept with any of the men I had seduced but I had still gotten all I had wanted from them. But in the face of the nineteen-year-old guy, a guy who was three years my junior, I felt so much insecurity.

I couldn't talk to him. For the first time in a long time I felt fear. It wasn't the all-consuming fear I had felt when I first saw the true nature of my father. Before I grew immune to his punishments and his threats. Before I became a person even he feared. It was a different fear. A gentler one. An emotional one even.

Leukas was bringing out so much emotions in me and he hadn't even spoken to me. I dreamt about him. I dreamt of his hands on me. In my dreams I was so beautiful he couldn't keep his hands off of me. He would touch every inch of me with his smooth hands which tell a tale of an easy life. His luscious, red lips would give me the softest kisses on my skins, and the hottest on my lips. His hands would skim through my most sacred parts and I would call his name desperately, begging for release. His hypnotic eyes would gaze at my body, caressing every inch with soft, invincible touch. I was going crazy with desire. I would wake up wet and aching at my core. My breasts were crazy sensitive from the tenderness of my nipples. Leukas had unknowingly turned my world upside down.

The first time I spoke to him wasn't as I'd always imagined.