And the flush on her cheeks . . .
She looked like one of those old paintings at the museum benefits my ex-wife used to drag me to in Chicago. Like she belonged in another place, another time.
My grandmother had loved poetry. When she got older, her eyesight started to go, and she would ask me to read her poems in her room at the nursing home. I’d thought I’d forgotten most of it after she passed, but lines flitted through my brain.
All that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes . . .
She was a Byron poem. And I was fucked.
When she’d first walked into my office, I’d been convinced that I was now hallucinating in addition to her haunting my dreams. And then she’d stared, her gaze running over me as though she stripped the clothes from my body layer by layer, and I’d gotten hard imagining all the things I wanted to do to her on my desk.
This was either going to be an unexpected pleasure or an unmitigated disaster, and given the way my life had been going lately, the trend skewed toward the latter.
I waited for her to crack under my scrutiny, for her composure to waver.
It didn’t.
That was one of the things that impressed me most. She had an unflappable grace that never failed her. In the beginning, I’d looked because I couldn’t help it, because she was like the fucking sun, shining bright in your face when you were hungover and just wanted a pair of sunglasses and a burger. And then, little by little, with each day that had passed, each time she looked at me, she got under my skin, until now I wanted the light. Craved it. Even when it blinded the shit out of me.
I wanted to know more about her, wanted to understand what it was about this girl that had me completely gone. And apparently I’d just been given the perfect opportunity.
Fucking serendipity.
I nodded toward one of the empty chairs. “You can sit, you know. I don’t bite.”
I lobbed the innuendo at her, waiting to see if she’d ignore it, if I was playing this game alone, or if she’d volley it back to me.
She didn’t disappoint.
“Now, why don’t I believe that for a second?” she muttered, not quite under her breath.
I grinned. Smart girl.
Blair
“You don’t like me, do you?”
I sank down into the chair, his question hitting me mid-motion, my body jerking in surprise. His tone was casual with a hint of silk, as though he could seduce the answer out of me.
I’d never been prone to fits of temper, but god, he pushed all of my buttons. It wasn’t an etiquette thing—a social faux pas he’d somehow made because he didn’t know better—he knew he was being rude and he just didn’t care.
And perversely, I was equally determined to deny him.
The truth?
Of course, I didn’t like him.
It was debatable if I would throw water on him if he were on fire. While my body apparently didn’t need me to like him to want to lick him all over, at least my mind had better judgment.
An uninvited guest, twenty-three years of etiquette, reared its untimely head.
“Why would you think that? Your class is . . .” I commanded my voice to say something nonthreatening like, “interesting,” or “nice,” but instead, “hell on earth,” “my least favorite place,” and “motherfucking torture” pushed to get out.
Screw it.
He sat there with that same smug smile—he knew—and suddenly, I stopped caring about being polite. If he was going to be inappropriate with me, then I was more than happy to return the favor.
“No, I don’t.”
His smile deepened like it was a fucking reward, like I was his prized student, and I’d just given him the answer he wanted.
My scalp tingled, a pull gathering low in my belly. I was so screwed, and not in a good way.
“I call on you too often,” he continued, his stare unblinking, dark humor dancing in his eyes.
He did not just say that.
His eyebrow arched as if to say, I’m rewarding your honesty with mine, not needing to give me the words, weeks of this fucked-up silent war we had going on creating an undeniable intimacy.
He read me like a book.
My breath hitched. The air pulsed. And just like that, my nipples decided to join the party.
I wanted to ask why he called on me so often, why he liked flustering me, yet as much as curiosity poked and prodded its way through my composure, I couldn’t make myself form the words. It was one thing to engage him with the safety of a classroom between us, another entirely to wave a cape before a bull without a buffer. I was heading into deep and treacherous waters, and he looked only too happy to pull me under.
My eyes narrowed. “Are you going to stop?” I snapped.
“Probably not.”
God, he grinned at me. The man’s ego was unbelievable.
Silence filled the space between us, the tension lingering, the heady recklessness tempting me, goading me. Since my engagement had fallen apart, I’d been going through the motions, pretending everything was okay, pretending I was okay, and suddenly I didn’t want to fake it anymore. I didn’t know what it was, but somehow I’d felt more alive in the last few minutes of sitting in his office than I had in months. There had always been a disconnect between what I thought and what I said—a big one—but with him I didn’t care.
There was no pretense with him. He was an asshole and he owned it. I didn’t know what exactly I was, but whatever it was, I wanted to own it, too.
Gray
She didn’t shy away when I called on her, took everything I gave her with an angry flash of her eyes that was my own brand of crack. So I pushed the boundaries even further, craving her reaction. I wanted more, wanted to know her.
I’d had glimpses of her. I knew she was serious. She didn’t wear sweats to class, didn’t pretend to take notes while she was really messaging on her computer. She had friends—I’d seen her joke around with the preppy guy who sat next to her and a blonde girl—but she was quiet. She seemed older than her classmates; maybe it was the way she carried herself.
I wanted to unravel her until she was lying at my feet.
“How old are you?”
Her eyes flickered with that expression I’d come to love, a cross between disdain and annoyance, her tone ice. Her only tell was the faint pink that spread across her cheeks.
“Did you seriously just ask me how old I was?”
I didn’t bother trying to hide my smile. “I did. And you’re avoiding the question.”
“It’s a rude question,” she snapped.
I shrugged, egged on by the temper she threw off. I was a twisted fuck, but I liked bantering with her. Liked the sparks that ignited between us every single time.
By the look in her eyes, so did she.
“Maybe I’m a rude guy,” I countered.
“I’ve picked up on that,” she muttered and her gaze did that fuck you look, and I shifted in my seat again.
Behind those pretty lips I wanted wrapped around my dick, she had razor-sharp teeth she wasn’t afraid to use.
“I’m twenty-three,” she answered with the same hauteur of a queen addressing a peasant. She gave me the words without abdicating an inch.
Hot as fuck.
Seven years. Not exactly dirty-old-man territory, but not small.
“You seem older.”
She blinked and her eyes widened. “Are you saying I look old?”
I’d never been good with social niceties, never had much patience for dancing around things. If I felt something, I said it. Anything else seemed like a waste of time.
“No, I’m saying you don’t act like you’re twenty-three.” I gestured toward her outfit. “Or dress like it.”
The pink on her cheeks turned to red. “Are you saying I dress like I’m old?”