by Ruby Steele
But here, now, I know I’m finally going to get to taste him, to know what it feels like to have him come in my mouth. Because even though we aren’t exactly being smart right now if we want to keep our secret, we do have a cardinal rule we won’t break. No sex at school. So like it or not, if he wants to get off, this is how it’s going down. Or rather, I’m going down.
I almost feel bad because I know he’s started to worry that maybe we are putting too much at risk, and I definitely know he’d prefer to be doing this at home. But apparently my powers of seduction—or at least my recent inclination to pull a Britney with skirts and no panties—are too much for him to resist.
“God, Olivia, you feel so good,” he growls, pulling my hair like he knows I like and thrusting into my mouth. I groan around his cock, and he shudders slightly before looking down at me. “Are you touching yourself right now? Because you better be fucking touching yourself when I come down your throat.”
I moan again and immediately pull my skirt up so he can watch as I play with my clit. It doesn’t take either of us long before we’re on the verge. But I need more. I need his cock. I finger fuck myself furiously, giving him the same treatment with my mouth. I can’t decide what I want more, him to spin me around and fuck me until I come, or for him to release himself in my mouth.
Turns out, I don’t have to decide, because the next thing I know, he’s gripping my head, his cock throbbing in my mouth as jet after hot, salty jet hits the back of my throat. “Fuck,” he groans, not nearly quietly enough, and I send up a silent prayer to the sex gods that no one is anywhere near his office at the moment.
“Holy hell, Olivia. That was… just… fuck.”
I release his cock with a pop and smile up at him as I wipe my mouth. He hauls me up and smashes his mouth to mine, taking me by surprise since I just swallowed a mouthful of his cum.
“Your turn,” he growls, and drops to the floor. But he’s only just started to drag his tongue across me when there’s a sharp rap at the door.
I gasp, my eyes feeling like they could pop out of my head. Shit. Fuck. Dammit. Every other curse known to man. They all want to fly out of my mouth as Aiden and I stare silently at each other, not knowing what to do.
“Professor Hawthorne?” a voice calls out, and my heart sinks. I’d recognize that syrupy voice anywhere. It’s become the bane of my existence every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at ten a.m.
“It’s Annabeth,” I hiss. “And I’d bet you my virginity if you hadn’t already taken it that she knows we’re in here together.”
He smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “Just a moment,” he calls out, his voice surprisingly smooth and professional.
We both hurriedly make sure we’re fully clothed, but there’s not much we can do for our sex-ravaged hair. Glancing around, Aiden swipes a baseball cap from a shelf and pulls it low over his eyes, and I twirl my hair into a bun, shoving a pencil through it. Then I take a seat on the opposite side of his desk and school my face into that of an over-achieving student. It’s not hard. It’s my natural expression. At the last minute, just as he’s about to open the door, I catch sight of some mints on his desk and grab one, tossing him another a second later. I shrug at his arched brow. You never know.
Aiden opens the door, and Annabeth rushes in. “I’m so glad I caught you before you left for Spring Break,” she gushes. “I just know I did horribly on my midterm, and I don’t know what to do. Oh, hi, Olivia,” she says, stopping when she notices me.
I lift my hand and wiggle my fingers, barely able to force a smile. And it’s even harder to keep from rolling my eyes when she turns back to Aiden and says, “Professor Hawthorne—Aiden, if I may?” She touches him lightly on the arm.
His eyes widen, and he pointedly makes his way around the desk and sits—once he retrieves his chair from where he shoved it against the wall—putting as much distance between them as possible. “Miss Harper,” he addresses Annabeth, and I smile as I realize it sounds nothing at all like when he says Miss Morrow, “I’m currently in the middle of a conference with your classmate here, as you can see.”
She barely glances at me as she moves forward and steps up to Aiden’s desk. “This will only take a minute. I just want to be sure that after Spring Break, I can get some one-on-one attention. Some tutoring, I suppose. I’ve struggled all semester with this class, and I’d hate to fail.”
I do roll my eyes this time, so hard they feel like they may pop out of my head. Aiden sees, and barely conceals a smirk. “I’m sure I can arrange that. Perhaps one of your classmates. Brody Wilson, perhaps?”
“Oh no,” she says quickly. “I’d really prefer if you could help me. You know, so that I can be sure I’m meeting all your expectations.” The suggestion in her voice is so strong that I can’t control the giggle that escapes.
Annabeth cuts her eyes to me sharply, and I try to disguise it as a cough. But it’s too late. Her attention is now on me, and her eyes narrow. “You look awfully nice to have just finished up a midterm.”
I don’t miss the accusation in her voice. Great. Just what we need. Annabeth Fucking Harper sniffing around. Aiden seems to catch it too, because in what I assume is an effort to appease her and get her out of his office, he speaks up.
“Fine, I can schedule an appointment with you the Monday after we return from Spring Break. Will that work?” he pulls out his calendar, not even looking at her or waiting for a response.
But Annabeth isn’t one to be dismissed so easily. She claps her hands and runs around to his side of the desk throwing her arms around him. The look Aiden gives me can only be described as horrified. When she pulls back, jutting a hip out and leaning over him, exposing waaay too much cleavage, she points to a time slot on his calendar. “How about then?”
“Great,” he sighs. “Will that be all?”
“I think that will…” She trails off as her eyes alight on his computer. “Oh! Tickets to Vegas? How exciting!”
My eyes fly to Aiden’s, just as his shoulders deflate. Thanks a lot, Annabeth, for ruining the surprise, I want to scream. But of course, I don’t. I’m not going to open that can of worms.
And I don’t even have to. Because the next thing she says has my stomach dropping all the way through the floor. “A private flight for two? Who else is going with you?”
Aiden hurries to grab the mouse and click off the screen, but it’s too late. I know the minute she sees, because she pins me to my seat with a death glare that could shoot lasers rivaling Cyclops’. Yes, I’m a comic nerd, too.
She walks stiffly back around the desk, her eyes never leaving mine. “I’ll see you after Spring Break, Professor.” She says it as if it’s a challenge. “Have a nice trip, you two.”
When the door shuts behind her, and I finally dare to look at Aiden, he looks as devastated as I feel. After all this time, our secret has come out. And we weren’t even caught doing anything. That’s the kicker. He was trying to do something incredibly sweet and romantic for me, and it blew up in both our faces.
I only hope we can survive the fallout.
18
Aiden
After a long, agonizing night at my house, Olivia and I finally come to a decision we can both agree on. Neither of us like it—I fucking hate it—but it’s the only solution we can agree upon.
We cancel the trip and play it off as if Annabeth is mistaken, making sure Olivia is seen around campus, and hope like hell that she doesn’t say anything. It’s not a good plan really, so we have other safety measures in place.
We’re going to steer clear of each other for the rest of the semester. Olivia already knows she’s on Annabeth’s shit list, so she doesn’t want to give her any more ammo to use against us. I get it. I really do. But I don’t have to like it.
I’m still awake at two in the morning, just watching Olivia as she sleeps. I have a bad feeling about this. Like when she wakes up and leaves in the morning, everything could change. It’s less than two months, only seven wee
ks, so I should be able to deal with being apart from her that long, knowing that when it’s all over I’ll have come up with a way for us to be together. I already have the beginnings of a plan in mind, but it won’t work unless Olivia finds a way to complete this semester in my class. It’s going to be fucking torture to see her sitting there three times a week and know that’s all I get. But the alternative of not seeing her at all if she has to leave Stanford and move back home to Colorado is worse.
By the time the sun comes up, I still haven’t slept, still trying to figure out how to find a way out of this mess. Olivia wakes up and stretches, then rolls toward me and gives me a sad smile.
“I don’t know if I can go seven weeks without that,” she sighs.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “You enjoyed yourself last night, did you?”
She looks at me as if I’m crazy for even questioning it, and I laugh. That’s what I’m going to miss most. The way she makes me feel. How she can light up my entire day with one look.
I lean down and kiss her, wanting to make every second last forever. “I’m going to go make breakfast,” I say when I finally break away.
She nods and reaches for her phone, and I know she’s going to check her inbox and clear out anything that came through overnight. I realize that I already know all her little quirks and that every single one of them is endearing to me. I am so past the point of no return with her. Last night I wanted to tell her I love her, but the timing just didn’t feel right. I need to make sure that she knows I’m not saying just because of what we’re dealing with.
This is going to be the longest seven weeks of my life.
19
Olivia
I sigh as I snuggle back under Aiden’s blankets, content and miserable at the same time. This is right where I want to be, with the man I love, but I know we’re about to face a tough time. If we can make it through seven weeks apart and still want to explore a relationship, then I’ll tell him how I feel. I know my feelings won’t change—I’ll be counting the days until we can be together again—but I still worry that he might change his mind. I’m only twenty-one, after all.
Trying to put all the depressing thoughts out of my head so I can enjoy the rest of the morning before we have to say goodbye, I punch in the lock code for my phone and check my email. I’ve been waiting to hear back about the renewal of my scholarship, and when I see the scholarship office in the sender field, I sit up, excited to see what they say.
Tapping on it, I start scanning the email, my smile quickly turning to an expression of horror. I read it again, then again. This can’t be right. I can’t be seeing this. Not only have they denied my scholarship for next semester, pending further review, but according to this letter, my current scholarship is being suspended, effective immediately.
“Aiden,” I yell, jumping from the bed and running down the stairs, my phone clutched tightly in my hand. “You need to see this.”
My heart is hammering so hard I feel it might beat right out of my chest. I thrust it into his hands, swallowing against the lump in my throat.
I watch as he reads it, his eyes flying over the words as he scrolls through the letter. When he reaches the bottom, his hand falls to his side, and he looks up at me, misery and sorrow in his eyes.
“Olivia,” he says softly, “I’m so, so sorry. This is all my fault.”
I want to argue with him, tell him that I was just a much a part of this as he was, because it’s true. It takes two. But I can’t form words at the moment. All I can do is cling to him as he wraps me in his arms, for once not even noticing or reacting to the fact that we’re both still stark naked from last night. And as I fight back tears, I want him to tell me that it will all be okay.
But those words never come. And I realize it won’t be okay. Because I’m going to lose something in this. And it’s going to hurt either way.
20
Aiden
A week and a half later, I leave my differential equations class as soon as I’m done giving the lecture, my gut twisting as I take a glance at the seat that has been empty since I returned from Spring Break. Olivia’s seat.
My eyes harden, and I clench my fists as I take in the girl in the seat next to where Olivia sat. Miss Harper. The taste of bile rises in my throat. She couldn’t have waited two minutes to go to the Dean of the Mathematics Department with the discovery she made in my office.
It is my fault, just like I told Olivia the morning she left me. I should have taken better precautions with my computer. But more than that, I shouldn’t have pushed her to be with me in the first place. She tried to tell me no in the beginning, the day she found out she was my student. But I insisted, I used the fact that I could make her melt against her, weakening her resolve until she gave in to what I wanted.
And because of that, she’s lost her scholarship. At least for now. I stride down the corridor toward the elevator and punch the button angrily. Once inside and headed to the top floor of the building to the conference room, I try to gather my wits, try to push emotions to the side. I know that everything hinges on my ability to be professional in the next few moments.
As if it’s not bad enough that they suspended her scholarship, they also counted all the coursework she’d done for my class as invalid. As if she hadn’t earned her grades on the up-and-up. Objectively, I understood. How could they know for sure that her grades weren’t biased based on our relationship? But it still stung, I’m sure even more for her because it may delay her graduation another year from when it should have been because she’ll have to retake the class, and they don’t offer it very often.
Pausing outside the conference room, I take a few steadying breaths, sheer determination to enact my plan helping me to gain the cool demeanor I need. Then I push through the doors, hoping against hope this will work.
I sit down at one end of the long table. Everyone else is already there. The dean, members of the ethics committee. A representative from the scholarship department. Even my lawyer, at the insistence of my family, who weren’t willing to let my misdeeds reflect on the family business. I understood that too.
What I didn’t understand was how what I had done could be so very wrong. Because simply put, when you broke it down to the bare bones, all I’d done was fallen in love. I met a girl; I fell for her. The fact that she ended up in my class was a very unfortunate coincidence.
“Sir,” I say, nodding at the dean. I acknowledge all the other representatives at the table, then shake my lawyer’s hand. “Craig. Thanks for coming.”
The meeting is short. I go on official record stating exactly how things played out, leaving out the more explicit details of my relationship with Olivia, of course. But it went without saying. They knew.
When I finished my little account, I took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, I know there is no way to undo the damage I’ve done, but I do have a few requests I’d like to make. I realize you don’t have to accommodate me. You have been more than gracious to allow me to retain my position here. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that this will by my last semester teaching at Stanford.”
There is a commotion as everyone talks at once. Craig, my lawyer, leans in and hisses, “Aiden, what are you doing? Why would you throw away your career? What you love to do?”
I speak to everyone when I say, “Because there is something I love more than my career.” I hold up my hands. “And before you can say I’ve completely lost my mind, I’m not going to say it’s Olivia—though, make no mistake, I do love her. But something I’ve discovered over the past year or so is that my passion is certainly teaching, but not necessarily teaching advanced mathematics to university students. Some of you know that I volunteer to tutor at a center for underprivileged children.
“It’s something that speaks to me, and for quite some time now, I’ve wanted to do more, to reach out in a way that can help even more kids who fall through the cracks. I’ve started making plans to set up a foundation, and after this semeste
r, I’m going to devote myself to it full-time.”
No one speaks for a moment, and the first one who does is the dean. He smiles regretfully. “I can’t say we won’t miss you, Aiden. You’re a huge asset to the university and the department. But I think what you have in mind is a wonderful thing. And if you ever get the urge to work in advanced mathematics, you’re always welcome back for a seminar, a semester, or more.”
I nod my appreciation. “Thank you. I do have another request,” I add as some of the representatives begin to grow fidgety. “In regards to Miss Morrow.”
There are more than a few raised eyebrows, but this is the real reason I wanted to speak here today. Not because I wanted to resign or go on record, but because I need to do what I can to make sure I haven’t screwed everything up for Olivia.
“First of all,” and I look at the dean when I say this, “I need you to make sure that my Differential Equations course is offered next semester. Miss Morrow’s graduation shouldn’t be postponed because of me. She can take the class in the fall and still graduate on time.”
He nods slowly. “I can do that.”
I feel some of my tension ease. But the next hurdle is even bigger. I turn to the scholarship chair. “I need you to reinstate Miss Morrow’s scholarship. She is a brilliant and commendable student, one that Stanford should be proud to call their own. Had I not fallen for her before I even knew who she was, she’d never be in this predicament.”
“That’s a mighty big request, Dr. Hawthorne,” the woman states, surprised.
“I know it is. But I can guarantee that no one will work harder than she will to succeed. Her records are perfect. Please don’t let my shortcomings ruin her entire life. Because without this scholarship, she’ll be headed back home starting from scratch.”