Grace - Elijah Mikaelson -

Chapter 58

The air of the lecture hall gave Grace some comfort. It smelled like a normal life, books and hangover while having the aura of intelligence and even kind of this special cheeriness that university life brought with it. 

She left the pension a bit earlier, to grab a freshman snack and have time to find everything on campus. It all went quite smoothly and now she was nearly alone in the auditorium, realizing how funny it would be if the students around her knew that she just drank a proper amount of blood. 

Soon she became quite bored and grabbed her phone, browsing the web for some real estate offices that sold apartments in the Quarter or closely around. There were plenty, she was sure she would find something that was of her liking. But she had to admit that she already adored the old lady that led the pension, usually witches were much more hostile about vampires, so her nice behavior was quite refreshing. 

She got so sucked into the research that she didn't even notice that students came flooding in and that the lecturer had entered. Grace heard a group of girls mumbling about how good looking he was. It made the vampire roll her eyes, she didn't even waste a look at their person of interest. She never could understand were the sense was in wanting to sleep with the professor. 

But when his voice sounded throughout the large room, his tone steady and confident enough to not even need a microphone, Grace tensed. It sounded way too familiar. 

"I welcome you to today's lecture, which will circle around the topic of the protection of our beautiful cities' historical places. My name is Elijah Mikaelson and I'm the head of one of New Orleans' many preservation communities."

Grace's eyes darted upwards to see the man standing in the front, slowly pacing while moving his hands and eloquently expressing his words. Now she understood why the girls found their lecturer hot. 

"You got to be kidding me..." 

Her voice fortunately was low when the words slipped her lips. But it was loud enough to draw the attention of the other person in this room with supernatural hearing. 

Elijah would've recognized her voice everywhere. He stumbled upon the ideas he was about to articulate and came to complete silence when his eyes met hers. She sat in the middle of the hall, squeezed between students, but still he could see every detail of her beautiful face. 

It was impossible. The look on her face told him that she wasn't here because of him. Elijah knew that Niklaus had compelled her to forget where they were. She was as surprised as he was.

The silence made the other students mumble, their gazes moving towards the source of their lecturer's attention. Within a few seconds, Elijah Mikaelson destroyed her shot at having a normal student life, because now she was the girl that slept with the professor. Amazing. 

Grace ripped her gaze away from Elijah, her cheeks still deathly pale in shock. She felt all those eyes on her and her only instinct was to flee. But she couldn't without making more of a scene. She sat in the middle row, in one of the seats far away from any way out, so she had to endure the full ninety minutes of torture. 

Elijah had already started to speak again, but Grace didn't really get what he was saying. She just stared at him and had to admit that it still struck her how good looking he was. The stubble that darkened his cheeks and chin gave him this unbelievingly sexy rough look that brought all these memories of their nights together back. As if the pain beating strongly like a second cold heart in her chest wasn't enough. 

Sometimes their gazes met and then she felt like she was falling apart over and over again. He composed himself well enough to keep speaking, but it was obvious that this wasn't easy for him either.