I got to work, managed to shove aside thoughts of Maclean for the moment, and was staggered by a huge tip I got from someone who came up to the bar rather than waiting on being served.
When the same guy came back three times, with a massive tip on each occasion, my cheeks burned when I realized he was doing it for a reason—not because he was attracted to me, but to make his girlfriend jealous.
“It’s working,” I told him flatly, after I’d taken his tip. My eyes flickered over to the woman I’d seen him sit beside earlier. She was shooting daggers at me like I’d danced off with him into the sunset or something, and hadn’t just served him his drinks.
“Good,” was his gleeful retort, before he grabbed his order and returned to his date.
She shot me a triumphant look—like I gave a damn—and the second he was seated, almost knocked his drinks out of his hands in an effort to straddle his lap and kiss half his face off.
The tableau actually disturbed me on a base level. Made me wonder if she’d not been willing to put out or something, and his flirting with me—even though it had gone unnoticed in the face of my joy over his tip—had been used to manipulate her.
Men were douches, weren’t they?
Grunting under my breath, I focused on the busy shift, and realized that though the tips were way better up here, I preferred the mania of downstairs.
Maclean waited in his booth the whole time I was there. He didn’t dance. Didn’t even make eye contact with me. Just stayed there. Silent. Present without being watchful.
It was weird, and I knew I was making it so but hell, he had me on edge.
He was using my stupid mistake against me, and with no expiration date except for graduation? My options were limited.
When, an hour before my shift was over, the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, I knew who it was.
It was him.
I didn’t even have to turn around to see him to know he was there.
My heart started pumping, and I could feel adrenaline surging through my veins. It was as though my body was viscerally aware of the threat he posed, and though he was danger walking, that wasn’t my sole response.
Sure, I felt like I was in the middle of a race, with my lungs churning and my heart pounding, but my belly was tingling like someone was touching me. My core throbbed with a heat I couldn’t deny.
At that moment, my body wasn’t aware that he was the enemy. That he’d blackmailed me. All I remembered was how he looked that morning after I came, those beautiful brown eyes narrowed slits as he studied me, watching me like I was his own personal movie, as he demanded I suck my fingers clean.
Wednesday, I’d been terrified. Today, I’d been angry.
But now?
So shortly after he’d extorted his way into my life, I seemed to forget all that.
How could my body betray me like this? How could I be viscerally aware of this monster?
I turned around and saw him standing there, and when I saw the utter lack of anything on his face, just that calm studious expression that made me feel even more like an experiment, I realized how odd his behavior had been tonight.
He hadn’t left the booth once.
Hadn’t danced with anyone even though women had come to him and tried to entice him out—because yes, I’d noticed.
As he’d watched me earlier in his office, I watched him tonight.
And what I’d seen was just as perplexing as anything the man did.
He’d come to a nightclub to sit and read something on his phone? To ignore the hot babes who wanted to dance with him? Not even to hear the beat, evading it so successfully that he didn’t even tap his foot?
No.
He’d come for me.
When I took in his handsomeness, a beautiful masculine face that belied the cruelty he was capable of, my breath was taken away from me all over again as I took in the look in his eyes. Dear God, the intensity there? It set my nerves alight. He saw me, I realized. He saw me, and that was the most terrifying thing I’d ever noticed.
When he looked at me, his attention was nowhere else but on me, and it made no sense just as so much of what he did was actually illogical.
He hadn’t touched me. Seemed to loathe me. Talked to me like trash. Treated me like shit.
And yet?
I lit up like a fucking bonfire now that he was here.
The man down on the dance floor had inspired revulsion in me, yet this bastard had me tingling.
It was too soon for Stockholm Syndrome, right?
I mean, sure, he hadn’t kidnapped me or anything, but he’d definitely hijacked my body.
Twice now, he’d made me come in front of him, and that was more masturbating than I’d done in a month.
Swear to crap, I didn’t have enough energy to do more than scrub ‘down there’ clean in the shower most days. Touching myself was usually a great way to cure a migraine I didn’t have time for, and they came along once every blue moon. But twice he’d forced me to focus on me, had made it all about me and not about him, and apparently, even though it was only twice, that was two times too many for my body.
It remembered him.
And me? As if I could forget. As if I could forgive.
This man was doing me no favors by what he was forcing me to do, but like any prey in the crosshairs of a predator’s focus, I was preternaturally aware of the threat.
With the music pounding behind him, and in the strange glow up here from all the weird furniture, his features seemed more pronounced than ever.
He had a wide forehead with strong brows that shadowed those dark chocolate eyes of his. His nose was smooth, bump-free, and his Cupid’s bow was high, pulled taut almost, so that when he smiled, it flattened out, made him look like he was pouting—there was a reason half the females in his class sighed whenever he dared grin.
The thought had me gritting my teeth as I bit off, “Can I take your order, sir?”
“Yes, you may,” he corrected, his eyes blackened pools that I could easily fall into.
Jesus Christ, you could take the professor out of the classroom, but you couldn’t take the red pen and the grade book out of the professor.
Jerk.
“What would you like to drink?” I asked flatly, hearing my irritation and aware that he would too.
Why was my pussy melting for this bastard?
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“Can you take a bathroom break?”
My face paled. “E-Excuse me?”
“Not this again,” he snapped. “You’re a relatively intelligent human being, Phoebe.” Huh, so I’d been upgraded from moron to relatively intelligent. Such sweet words a woman dreamed of hearing from a hunk like this. “I asked you if you could take a bathroom break. You haven’t left the bar once.”
So, he had been watching me.
Shit.
Why did that make warmth pool in my belly and not a frigid cold that a polar bear would be happy to roam around in?
“I-I can.”
That smile appeared, and though it was sigh-worthy, it didn’t inspire that in me. If anything, it made me trepidatious.
“Good.” His eyes twinkled, and I knew the bastard was enjoying my discomfort. “Be a good pet, and go inside and bring me your panties, along with two fingers of Jack Daniels.”
Before I could agree or disagree, he turned away from me, leaving me gaping at him, and wondering if I had the gumption to deny him his request.
For endless moments, I stared at his back, hating him and hating my response to him at the same time.
I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t. I didn’t want him to coerce my panties from me. Didn’t want him to be able to hold his threats over my head, so he could force me to do things I didn’t want to do. And yet…
When he left thirty minutes later, fifteen before I was done with my shift, my panties were in his pocket and I’d never been more aware of just how damn naked I was beneath my skirt.
&nb
sp; Chapter Five
That night, when I made it home, I collapsed on my bed after checking on Scottie and kissing him on his chubby cheek.
As I lay there, still in my uniform, I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what was going on with me.
My body was behaving oddly.
So oddly.
I was wet.
Had been since I’d given him my stupid underwear, had been on the ride home on the bus, had been as I headed up the eighty-one steps it took to reach my apartment.
This was wrong, wasn’t it?
How was he controlling me from afar?
My face scrunched up as desire hit me. Having never had that much energy for sex, for even thinking about it, tonight, it was all I could think about.
Biting my bottom lip, I spread my legs on top of the covers and reached between them.
I’d done this twice now on his desk, and each time, I’d felt mortified. Alone in my bedroom, the mortification wasn’t there, but neither was the drive to make myself come.
I touched myself, learning my body, the peaks and troughs of my sex, and then slipped a finger inside my gate. I was slicker than ever, and so aware of how thin my finger was and how empty I felt.
Just as I released my lip to give an exasperated and thoroughly frustrated sigh, my phone beeped a text alert.
No one except for work, my mother, the professor, and now the nurses’ department at Mrs. Linden’s hospital knew this phone number, and since it wasn’t a call, I knew Enid was still okay.
When I reached for it, I saw the text was from the professor.
Mouth suddenly dry, I swiped into the message and felt my stomach sink.
Maclean: Send me a picture of your pussy.
A fine quiver rushed through me.
What did he want that for?
More leverage over me?
Or to… God, would he jack off to the picture?
And why, oh fucking why, did that idea send a spark of emotion through me?
Even as I was angry at his command, I felt myself gush, a slick droplet slipping down the lips of my sex in response to his command.
What the hell was going on with me?
With my legs already parted, it was easy to take a shot. I sent it and waited with bated breath for a reply.
He didn’t disappoint.
Maclean: Have you touched yourself? Send a picture with your pussy lips spread.
My nostrils flared, and rather than answer, I slipped my fingers between my folds, took a deep breath, and tapped my screen. Was it awkward? Hell, yes. But the shot was surprisingly clear.
I looked wet.
Drenched.
Bright pink and flushed. Ready to be fucked, and my pussy clenched at just the thought.
After I sent that, I typed:
Me: I didn’t come.
Maclean: Don’t you dare.
I didn’t reply, but instantly, I slipped my fingers between my legs and began to rub my clit.
Hard.
Where before, there’d only been the desire to explore, now I wanted to come.
God, I’d never wanted to come so damn hard in my life.
Don’t you dare?
I’d show him.
My heart began to pound in my chest, my pussy pulsed with its incessant throb, and my whole body flushed as I neared a peak.
Then the phone rang, and when I stared at it, I realized he’d added me to a video call.
I could accept or reject the call.
Knowing I needed to see a shrink, I didn’t hesitate over accepting the call. The second I saw his scowling face, his furious eyes, that snarled top lip, my head flung back as wave after wave of delicious ecstasy cascaded through me.
I was loud because my mother was flat out drunk on the armchair as usual, and I let myself cry out, moan, fully ride the delicious sensations that were whipping through me like a twister in Tornado Alley.
By the time I came down from the high, I was too languid to really care that there was a vein pulsing in his temple, and that his cheeks were hollowed from containing his rage.
I stared at him with sleepy eyes, unsure why the sight of him had triggered my orgasm and to be honest, uncaring too. And he stared back.
For endless moments, we didn’t say a word, just looked at one another.
It was, bizarrely enough, one of the most intimate moments of my life.
My throat felt tight with the need to ask a thousand questions. Like why was he doing this? Why was he putting me through this? And why, even though he’d made this about sex and I wasn’t about to complain about his stance, hadn’t he once suggested that I do anything to him?
Why was it all about me?
The thought had me biting my lip.
“I’ll be at the cafe in the morning,” he said, eventually. I cast a look at the call length and saw that we’d been sitting, staring at one another for twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes of silence.
“Okay,” I rasped.
“Don’t wear any panties. I want you bare from now on.”
I gulped—from now on? My voice was strangled as I got out, “I won’t. G-Good night.”
He hesitated a second, then his mouth pursed before he curtly said, “Night.”
The second he disconnected the call, I placed my cell on the bedside table again and slumped back onto the too thin pillow I’d had for way too many years for it to be hygienic.
Hygiene wasn’t always easy when you lived hand to mouth.
Did I want new bedding? Yes. Did I have the money to spend on it? Nope.
Of course, that had changed now, and once again, that urge to splurge hit me, as did the knowledge that once I bought anything that wasn’t important, vital for my lifestyle, the guilt that attacked me would sour any joy I found in having new things.
Plus, it would let my mother know I had money, and where she was concerned, what was mine was hers and what was hers was hers.
It was beyond unfair and had been one of the major reasons I’d wanted to move out. Then she’d gotten pregnant, pretty much to spite me, I felt sure, and I’d been left caring for Scottie.
I’d even named him.
The second she’d popped him out, she hadn’t even given that much of a damn to call him anything other than son.
God, the hate inside me for her was so overpowering some days. Others, I just felt shame, and then there was rage and annoyance.
I could attribute no positive emotion to my mother, and yes, that was sad, but I’d moved past that point.
I’d consider it a boon if Scottie and I never saw her again.
That thought had me closing my legs and curling onto my side.
A girl could dream, couldn’t she?
I huffed, because dreams weren’t for people like me. I’d already attained more than I’d ever imagined by getting into an Ivy League school, but even there, I was drowning in the weight of my studies, struggling to keep up. That dreams weren’t for everyone was cemented home when at three AM, the hospital rang.
Mrs. Linden had passed away and the only family I had who loved me back, aside from Scottie, was gone forever.
❖
The next morning, my eyes were red from crying and I knew I looked like one big, tear-swollen mess.
I didn’t have much makeup, but I tried to blot it over my cheeks and ended up making things worse. After rubbing it off, I decided to just go to work looking splotchy.
So what if Professor Maclean was there?
Did I really give a shit if he thought I was uglier than usual?
Maybe he’d ask, maybe he’d learn why I wasn’t the monster he seemed to think I was, but I doubted it.
He wanted to see me in his own particular way, and it didn’t matter if I fell outside the bounds of that opinion.
When I headed into work, the place was empty except for Jose, the guy whose shift I was relieving, and someone in the corner.
Was that him?
I’d never really noticed before becau
se the cafe was usually busy, and even though my job could have been easy, this was the quietest shift, so Lorenzo had me dashing in and out of the kitchen, getting things prepped for the morning rush that would hit later on. People could come and go without my notice, but I recognized the back of his head now that I knew it was him.
He’d been here before.
A lot.
A lot, a lot.
I couldn’t say if it was every day, but now that I thought about it, I just remembered seeing someone always sitting in that corner when I came into work.
Did the man never sleep?
I know I sure as hell didn’t sleep enough, and last night had left me more exhausted than usual.
When I called out Jose’s name, the professor turned to look at me over his shoulder. Because I was waiting on the move, I stared straight at him, and when he saw me, he frowned then turned back around.
“Hey Phoebe,” Jose greeted, then he startled. “What’s wrong? Have you been crying?”
“Mrs. Linden died last night,” I rasped, aware that most people who worked around my shift knew of my circumstances. Sometimes, they’d had to cover for me when Scottie was sick and Mrs. Linden couldn’t manage him, or there’d been that time, a few months back, when she’d fallen and I’d had to help out.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Jose patted my shoulder, looking awkward enough to make me want to laugh a little. “Where’s Scottie? Who’s looking after him?”
“Mrs. Linden’s neighbor.” Cheryl had agreed to look after Scottie for thirty dollars for eight hours. Not a bad rate, but considering I was paying her under the table, and she was at home anyway with her two kids, I figured it was better than nothing, and though I was going to let my mom care for Scottie at night, trusting her throughout the day too was just asking for trouble.
But, all told, it might be cheaper for me to stop working at the café period. Two hundred bucks a week on childcare wasn’t sustainable, and I needed every cent of what I earned here for living expenses. I’d need to figure something out before the money Enid had given me hemorrhaged. Working from home would be for the best, but hell, who didn’t want that kind of job?
The Professor: A Standalone Novel Page 7