I muttered to myself. “For someone so brilliant, you’re stupid. A stupid, stupid jackass. It all adds up now, doesn’t it?”
I shoved the papers into my briefcase angrily. It had hurt me to the core to brush her concerns aside. The truth was that I had wanted to pull Ariana into my arms and kiss her until we were both nothing but a puddle on the floor. The taste of her sweet lips still lingered. Her lips were soft, kissable, and maddening.
I sat in my chair and placed my elbows on the desk. I cradled my head in my hands and sighed. How was I going to get through this semester with her sitting not twenty feet from me? I had felt a magnetic pull to her from the moment I had entered the tea shop. It was just one of those gut feelings. And I was sure she hadn’t recognized it, but I was communicating with her telepathically. My gaze had immediately been drawn to her firm rear, which had been snugly encased in her leggings. There had been that waterfall of gorgeous blonde hair that my fingers had itched to run through. But I had wanted to see her face. Not one minute later, she had reached up and pulled her hair away.
I had just caught a glimpse of her delicate profile when fate gave me a push. After the bubble tea accident, it had seemed only natural for me to offer her my hoodie. I still was not sure how I had managed to string a sentence together: her beauty had me tongue-tied. I could not explain how it felt to see her wearing my clothing. Then when she accepted my invitation to sit and talk, I felt as if I had won the lottery. Never in my life had a woman held my attention for that long. And it was not purely physical, as she was genuinely an interesting person. I had not wanted the evening to end. But time does not stand still. Before we knew it, I had taken her home. I had not been able to resist leaning over. My intention had been just to casually kiss her on the cheek. But when I got that close her scent had intoxicated my senses. And her response! She had been as eager as I.
I clenched my fists as I tried to stop the memories from invading my thoughts. But I was fighting a losing battle. Her lips. Her moans. Her breasts! Oh! those breasts. My mouth watered as I remembered how it had felt to suck on her nipples. And then when my hand had slid down her stomach…
I felt my dick start to thicken, and I tamped the feeling down. I had to get out of there before I went and jacked off on the very chair she had been sitting on just minutes ago. I slipped out of the lecture hall and headed straight to the parking lot. This was my only class for the day. As of next week, I would have to go to my office for tutorials, but for today I had to get out.
As I put the car in gear, I remembered what the ride home had been like after watching her walk away. I had been in two minds about our being interrupted. I had felt a sense of pride at being able to bring her to satisfaction with just my hands. I could only imagine what it would have been like to have her naked and writhing beneath me, begging me to invade her body. I had been started to contemplate how to get her out of her leggings and position her just so as I undid my zipper. But in retrospect, I realized that Ari was deserved better than a quick hump in a parking garage. So the interruption had been a blessing in disguise.
My erection had throbbed the entire drive home. There had been no other option than to take matters into my own hands. As I had shuddered to a release, I had held in my mind’s eye the image of her arching against me earlier that night as she had reached her release. I had waited for a few minutes for my breathing to return to normal before I went to shower – and imagined what it would feel like to have her in the shower with me, her naked, beautiful body pressed against mine, her soft curves in my hands, my cock inside her... The sudden switch to cold water had solved the issue only temporarily. By the time I had toweled dry and crept into bed, I was imagining what she would feel like naked in bed beside me. Falling asleep had been extremely difficult. I had tossed and turned for hours before falling into exhausted slumber somewhere around three.
The morning had not been too bad. I had gotten up, made a quick breakfast before showering, and gotten out the door in record time. I had an excellent distraction in my new job. And so, rather than getting into an obsessive-compulsive zone and beginning to think up algorithms that could be used to track every Ariana Hartley who was twenty-one and living in Portmore, I had transferred the energy to becoming familiar with my private office, printing multiple copies of the syllabus, and updating my information on the portal so that by the end of class students could begin setting their tutorial times. I had printed the class list and grabbed the sheet of paper as I had rushed to the lecture hall. I had been the first to arrive and had taken the opportunity to set up and test my microphone. The students had started to trickle in. I had been focused and fine until that black hoodie with my app logo had walked into my class, worn by the source of my sleepless night, and everything had come crashing down.
I eased my foot off the accelerator as I put the car into cruise control. I took a deep shuddering breath. It seemed as if I could still smell her fragrance. It seemed to have stained the leather and lingered. I gave myself a mental shake.
Dude, she’s a student. She’s off-limits, and you’ve got to forget about her. I shook my head and muttered. “Not with her right under my nose each week.” I shifted slightly in my seat as I felt my dick lurch. I sighed in exasperation. “You’d think I was a damned teenager who just discovered erections. Get a grip on yourself, man.”
I turned into my community and was soon clicking the button on the dashboard to open the gate. Driving straight into the garage, I parked beside the black Chrysler. I quickly grabbed my briefcase from the back seat, made my way into the house through the garage, closed the bedroom door behind me, stripped, and stepped beneath the coldest spray I could get. I would control my body. I would control my thoughts. It was with firm resolve that I emerged half an hour later.
I pulled on a pair of sweats and went down to my home office. I had several emails to go through. Phase two of the app also required some further experimentation. There was one fleeting memory as I recalled how hopeful she had looked when she had approached me. I was proud of how dismissive I had been. I could tell just by how she had spoken that I had not been the only one who had felt the intoxicating pull the night before. I was going to be honest with myself and admit it: I wanted more, much more. And had the circumstances not been what they were, and had she had not popped up in my class, I would more than likely have been back at her apartment, making plans to finish what we had started. I wanted more. I wondered if she would have felt the same if I hadn’t shot her down. Something deep inside told me she would have.
I looked at the series of codes that I had typed on the screen. I would waste no more time on exercises in futility. I drilled it into my head. “Ariana Hartley is a student. Benjamin Buckley is a teacher. Ariana Hartley is Benjamin Buckley’s student. Benjamin Buckley is Ariana Hartley’s teacher. The college has a strict policy regarding inappropriate interactions between students and teachers. Therefore, the college will frown upon the kind of relationship Benjamin Buckley is envisioning with Ariana Hartley.” I typed in a few more codes and watched them skitter across the screen as I forcefully pushed all thoughts of Ariana out of my head.
The most important thing was to crack this code. We were close to completing the app upgrade, and I would not be distracted. I would take each class one day at a time. That was all I could do. I smiled as the codes responded to my manipulation. I copied and pasted them into a document and sent them to Ollie immediately. Next, I completed my plan of work and uploaded it to my account on the LMS. I was pleased to see that my tutorial schedule was being filled out. I scored myself a small victory as I merely glanced at the list rather than perusing it to find out whether or not a particular blonde blue-eyed student had chosen her tutorial time.
Chapter 6
Ariana
Gradually I settled into a routine. I found all my classes quite manageable – except one. My difficulty in that class had nothing to do with the coursework and everything to do with a tall, brown-haired, green-eyed man. Tu
esday mornings at nine became a weekly challenge which became harder with each week that passed.
I had taken B.B. at his word after that first class. He had described our encounter as just a moment in which we had both temporarily lost control of our mental faculties and allowed our libidos to take over. I had believed him – up until our second class, and third class, and fourth class… It seemed as if just about in every class over the past six weeks there had been one reason or another why I wanted to doubt whether that had really just been a “moment” for him
For one, when I had handed in my first coursework piece, was it my imagination that he had deliberately overstretched to take the document from me and had, therefore, brushed his fingers against mine? Or how about when he had handed out the second assignment sheet and dropped the sheaf of papers just as he approached my row? Automatically I had bent to assist him, and our heads had connected. He had steadied himself by placing a hand on my shoulder. Had I imagined that he had squeezed my shoulder gently before straightening up? I gave him the benefit of the doubt in those two instances. But there were still other times when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was just as affected by my closeness as I was by his.
It was not my imagination that he could not keep his eyes away from me, no matter how hard he tried. I had tested this in the fourth class by switching my seat to another row and watching as he looked at my usual position. Something akin to panic had crossed his face. His eyes had rapidly scanned the rows until he found me. The relief he displayed was palpable. I had deliberately held his gaze while I walked to my usual seat. I had not imagined that his ears had turned red at having been caught. Just a moment, my ass! He felt for me as deeply as I did for him. So why were we both fighting it?
Having a roommate who was bent on playing Cupid was not making things any easier for me either. It seemed as if Carey was always there to give a blow-by-blow recap of every look, every smile, every tone in which he called my name when he took attendance, every gesture, the way he walked by me slowly and I breathed deeply. (On that point she was one hundred percent correct. I was addicted to his musky scent.) I brushed her comments aside. That wasn’t because I didn’t believe Carey. She was right, but I couldn’t let her know that, or I’d never hear the end of it. She was right, but I would not encourage these feelings I had for B.B. They were too dangerous. It was even worse knowing that he felt the same way. And so, week, by painful week, I sat in torment for three hours.
As I entered the hall this morning, I could not help feeling a sense of satisfaction that I had made it through the first half of the semester. Only six weeks to go before I could walk away from B.B. forever. I took my usual seat and waited. He turned, and my heart skipped a beat. He was dressed in the same outfit he had been wearing when we had met at Wayling’s, hoodie and all. I heard nothing at all in the class that morning. I looked down at the mid-term study guide which he had handed out at the beginning. I had so many questions about the coursework, but I dared not ask. Everyone else seemed to have been keeping up with the revision session. I scurried out of the class as soon as it was dismissed.
For the rest of the week, I attempted to do the questions he had given us to practice. But by Thursday evening I knew I was in trouble. I was seated at the kitchen counter idly playing with a knife when Carey walked in.
“Whoa! Life isn’t that hard, hun. You don’t have to end it like this.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You understand these notes. I was too busy trying not to be distracted and ended up being too distracted when Professor Buckley was explaining how to approach this question. And this will be a compulsory question on the mid-semester. What am I going to do?” I sighed deeply and dropped my head into my hands.
“Go to his office tomorrow.”
“And right afterward I’ll just don a polka-dot tutu and join the pink elephants and unicorns dancing around the room.”
Carey rolled her eyes. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are. But you must think I’m crazy for you to even make such a suggestion. You know I can’t go anywhere near him.”
“Why not? According to you, you’re just like any other student to him. And he’s just like any other professor. You have a question and he has the answer. Just go to his office, knock on the door, enter, ask your question, exit. Done.”
“You make it sound so cut and dried.”
She looked at me with a smirk. “Is there a reason it shouldn’t be?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good. Go in, ask, get out.”
I spent all day Friday weighing all the pros and cons of Carey’s suggestion. I even considered winging the question on my own. But with forty percent of the total test grade riding on that question alone, that was not a chance I wanted to take. So on Friday evening at four-thirty, when most students had deserted the campus after their last class, I found myself sauntering towards Professor Buckley’s office. My heart was in my mouth. We would be utterly alone for the first time since that afternoon in August. The corridor echoed with the tap of my footsteps. I met no one. A college campus was not a preferred place to be on a Friday afternoon for either student or teacher. As I approached his door I swallowed hard and smoothed my damp palm against the dress I had worn for a presentation in my last class. I didn’t even have Carey waiting for me; she’d only had one class that day, in the morning.
I raised a hand and knocked.
“Enter.”
Slowly I turned the knob and pushed in my head. “Professor Buckley?” I felt a tiny bit of satisfaction as I observed that he looked stunned to see me. “May I come in?”
Wordlessly he beckoned me to enter. He came to the door as I brushed past him to take a seat. I breathed in his cologne and felt a stirring I had not felt in weeks. He stuck his head out, looked up and down the corridor, closed the door, and leaned against it.
“You’re alone?”
“Yes. Carey has classes in the morning on a Friday.”
He nodded. “How can I help you?”
I pulled a paper out of my backpack. “I know I should have asked in class, or at least asked before today, but I can’t seem to make heads or tails of Question 16 on the practice sheet you gave us to study for the mid-semesters.”
He smirked. “Is that the only question with which you’re having difficulty? I think you were a bit distracted in class this week.
I muttered underneath my breath. “I’m a bit distracted every week.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” I held my head down as he came around to lean on the desk. He chose the corner closest to me. I could smell his familiar musk. My nerves were on edge as he leaned forward to take the assignment sheet from me. He took a pencil, made a few notations on the paper, and handed it back.
“If you reference those pages in the text, it should be clear enough from there. Had you been paying attention, you would have heard me say that, for those who still had challenges, the reference pages were on my portal page. I can’t imagine why it is you can’t seem to focus when you're in my class. I trust you aren’t having the same problem with the rest of your classes?” He raised an eyebrow.
“My other classes are fine, thank you. Thank you for the tip.” I stood to leave. Big mistake. The space which had seemed sufficient while I was sitting was now reduced to mere centimeters when I was standing face to face with him. I drew in a sharp breath as I looked into his eyes. The raw smoldering desire was as plain as day.
Who moved first was not significant. One moment I was attempting to get by him, and the next I was in his arms. He buried his face in my hair as his arms circled my waist, trembling slightly. My hands crept around his shoulders. I held on tight, feeling his chest heave against mine as he took a deep breath.
“Ari,” he whispered into my ear as he nuzzled my neck, his hot sending a shudder down my spine. I swallowed rapidly and my pulse fluttered. My arms tightened as his lips found the racing pulse. I moaned deep in my throat as
his tongue traced a line from my ear. He nuzzled along my jawline until his lips met mine. Instantly, I melted as my mouth opened beneath his. He did not hesitate as his tongue surged forward to find mine. I leaned into him as fire shot through my entire body. He leaned forward and turned with me in his arms. I found myself hoisted onto a corner of the desk as his mouth devoured mine hungrily. My hands slid down the front of his shirt, plucking at the buttons. I pressed my palms against his bare chest and felt his heart beating like a drum beneath my fingers. I raked my fingers up and down and reveled in the fact that he trembled beneath my touch.
I found the nub of his nipples and stroked them. I rolled them between my thumbs and forefingers, felt him lean into me, and breathed in sharply. My legs parted as he pressed forward. His hand, which had been tangled in my hair, moved to my knees. I trembled as he touched my bare thighs. He slid his hands up, pushing the hem of my dress higher and higher. I felt him pull it up to bunch around my waist and the cool air hit my thighs. I felt a heated pool and a fire come alive between my legs.
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