Dominance Read Online Free PDF Page A

good-looking in an older-prof way. Interesting in bed. A shock of dark hair fell over his left eye. He took her dancing. Alex could have done worse at Harvard. Much worse.
    They ate at a new place in Boston called the Well. A throng of students gathered there, the room churning and loose—just as she liked it. Peter didn’t. He was a whisperer, enjoyed leaning close to her ear and telling her what he might do to her later. But Alex liked the noise, the sounds of college life. It reminded her of Jasper.
    She took a bite of her bacon cheeseburger and followed it with a swig of cheap beer. Vampire Weekend trilled out of the old-school jukebox.
    â€œFaculty reviews coming up soon,” Peter said. It was not a conversation she wanted to get into, not tonight. She looked away, swept her eyes over the room. One of her old students was in the corner with a rugged townie, the girl too sweet for her own good. Alex was always falling for them, the students with pensive smiles and fiery minds, who knew the answer to every question but rarely spoke it aloud for fear of being wrong. Girls like you, Alex. Girls just like you before you took the night class. Before Aldiss.
    â€œAlexandra, are you listening to me?” She looked at Peter, at that dangling hair, those liquid blue eyes. She hated it when he used her full name.
    â€œI’m listening,” she said. “Loud and clear.”
    â€œAre you going to apply to Oxford again?”
    This was, what, the fourth or fifth time he’d brought it up? The summer in London. The grant money, the semester to finish her book. It wasn’t a book yet, really, just a seed. A true-crime thing. A book on the night class, about what happened to them in that classroom. What happened to her.
    â€œI don’t think so,” she said.
    â€œWhy not? Alex, we could both apply. Get away, spend a semester in Europe together working, teaching, learning. Learning each other . . .” He squeezed her hand under the table. Despite herself, she pulled away.
    Peter made a face, poked absently at his steak.
    â€œYou should’ve gotten the position last time,” he said.
    Alex shrugged.
    â€œI know it. Everyone knows it. To hell with Tom Headley. You’re one of the best this university has to offer, Alex. If only you could play by the rules a bit more, humor Headley and the rest of them.”
    It was then that her cell phone chirped, saving her.
    â€œExcuse me,” she said, and slipped out of the restaurant.
    A cool night, April just coming on, traffic crawling down Tremont Street. Sometimes she imagined them, the passengers in those cars. Imagined where they were going, who they really were. To be anywhere but here—the thought enticed her, but then she swept it back with indignation. Hadn’t there been a time when she would have done almost anything to get a chance to teach at Harvard University?
    She checked the face of her cell, saw a Vermont number. She dialed it.
    â€œHello?” a man answered.
    â€œWith whom am I speaking?”
    â€œThis is Dr. Anthony Rice, interim dean of Jasper College.”
    Alex recognized the name from a research conference somewhere in the Midwest. Rice hadn’t been at Jasper when she was a student there.
    â€œWhat is this about, Dr. Rice? I was in the middle of dinner.”
    â€œI won’t keep you long. We’ve had . . . something happen at Jasper. A tragedy.”
    Oh God. Oh no. Not again, please.
    â€œDr. Shipley?”
    â€œYes,” Alex said, composing herself. She saw Peter staring out at her from their table and turned her back to the front window of the restaurant. “Go on.”
    â€œMichael Tanner was murdered last night.”
    Everything fluttered. She focused on the dean’s words, watched their heat bloom outward in her mind as if they were a spreading stain. The streetlights along Tremont seemed to blink once, hard, off and on. Alex was leaning now