Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King

Chapter 22

IVORY

I’ve arrived at my anthropology class ten minutes early, just to see if I could get a better seat than right at the front of the class. The professor likes to pick on me because he knows I’m smart, and as much as I appreciate the recognition, it’s gotten me a reputation for being a know-it-all.

There was a huge rager last night at one of the frat houses, and at least ten people in the class are completely hungover or burnt out from doing too much MDMA. Some of them are having trouble focusing on basic tasks like placing their laptops on their desks or opening bottles of soda. It makes me feel grateful that I never felt the need to party like that, but it would be nice to have something in common with anyone here.

As the class starts, I find myself drifting in and out of daydreams or reliving the night that Maxim found me at the bat caves. I’ve never been the type to jump someone’s bones the first time I meet them, but had I been any more intoxicated, I just might have tried something with him once I had recognized that he wasn’t going to hurt me.

I’ve never had a proper boyfriend, and I haven’t even had sex, but there was something in me that night that was awoken, something that didn’t want a collegiate football player or trust fund baby who would lose a fight in two seconds.

No, this was different. Maxim was so real, so authentic in his masculinity in a way I had never seen before. All the men I grew up with were so soft, not in an empathetic or warm way, but in a way that told me they would never be able to protect me if something were to happen. All they did was go on vacations, eat dinners that were worth more than some peoples’ rent, and make bullshit speeches about nothing to their constituents.

Maxim makes me feel so small in the best way, so protected.

Perhaps this is just a result of me having never felt safe around men in my life, so much to the point that a man who doesn’t hurt me when he has the chance is the person I imprint on as a potential partner. Maybe that makes me kind of fucked up.

The professor drones on and on about his first-ever trip to Ethiopia, which is a story he’s told before and has inadvertently exposed some racist undertones in his teachings. I’ve tuned out the story so many times that I can still piece together what it’s about, start to finish, even though I’ve never taken the time or had the attention span to actually listen to it.

There’s a girl at the front of the class with light blonde hair who is listening intently to the story. She has the same look in her eyes when she looks at him as I do when I look at Maxim, at least when he isn’t looking.

From the outside perspective, it’s absolutely nauseating and a little pathetic. While I’m sure he would bend her over his desk and blow his load in her with no provocation, she would inevitably develop feelings for him founded on absolutely nothing, showing up at his house at three AM in a t-shirt and panties, crying her mascara off and waking up his wife with her drunken confessions of love.

I would never get that desperate.

Not ever.

But I can’t say I don’t see the appeal. Older men can either lack or completely encapsulate the danger in life that younger guys can’t seem to get a proper grasp on. Younger guys never know what they want, so they jump from one slutty girl to a mousy bookworm to an angsty goth DJ and never find what it is they need in a partner. When an older guy chooses you, it’s because he really wants you.

After class ends, I’m hardly out the door when a group of jerkoffs from class approach me. One of them, named Spencer, leads the charge, grinning in the smuggest way possible.

“Hey Ivory, I heard your man got fuckin’ brutalized to death,” he says, his hypermasculine affect ringing particularly loudly in my ears. “Guess that means you’re back on the market, huh?”

The other guys laugh quietly behind him, not hard enough to draw attention but just loud enough for Spencer to hear them praise him.

“Always nice seeing you, Spencer,” I reply in my most disinterested tone as I attempt to walk past the group to my next class. I’ve hardly ever spoken to Spencer, let alone given him any details of my personal life. It’s a mystery to me why anyone would think I was dating Chad, but it doesn’t surprise me when somebody who doesn’t even know me starts to make assumptions.

“Hey, come on, I just want to talk,” Spencer says, relentlessly blocking my path as I struggle not to push him out of my way.

“God, what?!” I shout.

Guys like Spencer love to nag people and pressure them into heated conversations that are always one-sided and typically lead to nowhere until you’re frustrated with his abject stupidity. At that point, he’ll accuse you of being too sensitive, and all his little troglodyte friends will squeal gleefully behind him. I’ve seen him try this agitation technique on at least two professors.

“It’s just that we think you’re probably pretty lonely without a dick in your mouth,” he replies, trying to bite his lip in a sexy way and failing so badly that I almost laugh in his face. This guy has had so much attention and positive affirmation growing up that nobody ever told him he’s an absolute clown.

“Oh no, I’m fine, but it looks to me like your mouth is getting bored without a dick in it,” I respond, my tone unwavering as his face turns red.

His buddies erupt in amused snorts and giggles, and I can’t help but smile myself.

“You fucking bitch, you should be grateful that anyone wants to touch your prissy little ass after what you did to Chad. He’d still be alive if you hadn’t ratted on him like that, you fucking liar,” Chad rambles, losing momentum as he runs through his very limited and overused list of sexist slurs and insults.

“I didn’t do shit, and he’s lucky I didn’t kill him myself because I would have strung him up by his fucking balls and ripped out his brainstem to hang him with,” I reply.

I’m not sure what’s come over me lately, but somehow the version of me that my father and mother so carefully crafted into a darling little lady has taken a shit and died. I feel savage, like nobody can stop me from taking over the world or enslaving the entire male population if I want to. Who’s going to try?

“Jesus, stop taking everything so personally,” Spencer backpedals.

Seeing the panic wash over his face as he loses ground in his stupid little peacocking stunt makes my heart feel like it could explode. It’s so gratifying, better than any drug I’ve taken.

“Why don’t you just go the fuck home to your mom and resume your life as a worthless goddamn basement dweller, since we all know you’re failing every class?” I continue. The better half of me would probably be strangling me if she were to materialize here in this hallway.

“Why don’t I make sure that Chad’s legacy of fucking your tight ass doesn’t die with him? Or will you have me killed too?” he replies, still on the losing end of the fight but growing angrier.

I’ve never punched anyone before. I went to a very prestigious all-girl prep academy in Greenwich where the worst drama we ever saw were girls stealing bloody pads out of their enemy’s dorms and plastering them all over the hallways. It was disgusting and animalistic, but we all had nose jobs to preserve, and this unspoken rule kept us from committing any bodily harm.

Today is different.

The term “seeing red” never meant anything to me before now, but as I look at Spencer and his cretins smiling at me with such contempt and undeserved superiority, I lose my ability to step back and take a deep breath like my mother would tell me to do when my cousins would steal my clothes.

There’s no zen here, just rage.

My closed fist finds spencer’s lower jaw as I become blinded by white-hot anger. The bones in my hand scream as my hand collides with his admittedly strong jawline, but Spencer’s a bitch. He goes down within seconds, yelping like a designer Yorkie as he falls to the floor without recoiling or even returning to his feet to face me.

“Fuck you, Spencer, and fuck all of you for being little dick-sucking sycophants just like your parents, you goddamn roaches,” I hiss through my teeth, pointing at all of the guys behind Spencer as they recoil, quickly shuffling away from the scene.

I pick up Spencer by the front of his Balenciaga shirt, intentionally handling it as roughly as possible to stretch it out. “I never want to see you within twenty feet of me, ever. I know people who will do far worse to you than I could ever dream of doing. So, I recommend that you leave me the fuck alone because they’re watching,” I growl, inches from his face.