by Maya Hughes
“I think it would be best if you took a seat over there.” She fidgeted, stacking and re-stacking a pile of papers in front of her. I pushed off the desk and sat in the chair. It smelled like an old pipe. Running my hands over my jeans, I tugged them down a little. Things had become extremely tight all of a sudden.
“It seems that you’re as surprised to see me as I am to see you.”
“Pleasantly surprised,” I added.
Her lips turned down even farther. “Heath…these sessions are going to be about work. You have a project you need to complete to graduate, and I have requirements I need to fulfill. If we keep things completely professional, we can both accomplish those goals and have a great semester.” She plastered on a fake smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m totally cool with keeping our sessions one hundred percent professional. Sitting next to you for a couple hours each week and not touching you will be torture.” I leaned forward, resting my arms on my legs and staring directly into her eyes. “But that will make it that much hotter when I rip those pants off you, bend you over that desk and eat you out from behind when this session is over.” I nodded to the desk she sat behind like it had the magical power of not making her the sexiest woman in a twenty-mile radius. Hell, at least fifty.
She bolted straight up, knocking over her coffee cup, which spilled a few drops out on the desk. Was she pissed we hadn’t talked in a couple days?
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to call you. I screwed up my phone while at the away game, and I only had time to get a new one today after our session.”
She cleared her throat and picked up a paper off the desk, clearly trying to ignore what I’d said, but I knew it had gotten to her.
“I’m not upset about that. It’s fine.”
She didn’t look fine. Her chest rose and fell a bit faster as she tried to compose herself. I didn’t mind ruffling her feathers. The woman from the bar made so much more sense now. It took me a couple minutes to realize she was talking to me. I’d been too busy running through the various surfaces and pieces of furniture in the office and how exactly I’d take her on each one of them.
Shaking my head, I cleared my throat as she stood behind the desk staring at me expectantly. “Sorry, what was that?”
“We can’t do this, Heath.”
“Why not? You’re not really my teacher. I get my grade from the department head.”
This was nothing like what had happened with Miss Juniper, the student teacher back in high school everyone had had the hots for. I’d been relentless during our senior year, pursuing her for a date and after graduation we’d finally had one. But this situation was different. Kara and I were already seeing each other. Both consenting adults. A little extra study time that ended in some seriously hot sex sounded like exactly the thing to keep me in line this semester.
“Based off my recommendations and feedback. I’m responsible for deciding what your grade is even if she’s the one actually typing them in. They could nullify your grade.”
My face fell. If they nullified my grade, I wouldn’t graduate. The season would be voided because I wouldn’t be eligible to play.
“Then, I’ll find someone else for independent study. Swap me with someone else.” I wasn’t going to stop seeing her this whole semester because of this class.
“There’s no one else. I’m the only one in the whole department who even had a spot to take someone on.”
I raked my hands through my hair, my frustration mounting. “I’ll figure something else out. I’ll find another class that works.”
There was a hint of desperation in my voice. She was the one thing I had been looking forward to this semester—hell, longer than this semester—but the past few days not talking to her had been torture. Being on the same campus, I’d figured once classes started and we settled into our schedules, we’d be able to see a lot more of each other.
“With what we have going on, I shouldn’t have any influence over your grade.” She squeezed the back of her neck.
“I don’t think I’ve been playing coy at all here. I, one hundred percent, intend for us to continue what we’ve had going on.” I stared into her eyes, pushing past all the hesitancy and doubt, ready to show her this wasn’t going to be something she could run away from.
“Heath, we can’t. This is my career we’re talking about, and your ability to graduate. If anyone finds out about this, about us, it could destroy everything.” Her eyes pleaded with me to understand. And I did, all too well. I’d crossed that line before. Let my pursuit get in the way of something that could hurt someone I cared about, and I couldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t do it again, especially not to Kara.
“So where does that leave us?” A dull ache grew in the center of my chest.
She dropped her eyes, her fingers running along the desktop. “Why don’t you give me the full rundown of your project?”
We went over my ideas about the possible medicinal extractions from a plant species I’d been cultivating over the past couple years. The guys thought I was insane for not going the kinesiology route, which was the default for athletes, but I knew a hockey career only lasted so long.
By going to college, I was already handicapping myself when it came to getting started. Most guys from Europe joined the NHL when they were eighteen, hell, some were even seventeen. I’d be ancient by the time I started, but I didn’t want to come back to college later. I wanted to live it now—and I was so close. The hockey would be there, and even if I only got five years out of it if I were lucky, anyone only needed so much money.
I’d make it work, and I’d have my degree to fall back on—move on with when I retired from the game.
“The new blooms of my plants will make for excellent test subjects for this by the end of the semester. I’ve already written up the experimental guidelines I’ll need to have preliminary results.”
She nodded along with an inquisitive glint in her eyes. Talking about this stuff got her as interested as it did when I told her what I wanted to do to her. Her questions came back rapid fire. As she spoke, I tried not to look at her lips and remember every place they had been on me. I longed to wrap my hands about her wavy black strands and settle her legs on either side of me while I showed her how good these sessions could really be.
I envisioned the next time I took her, pressed against the door or maybe over the arm of the chair I was sitting in. I sank my fingers into the soft fabric beneath my hand. I’d managed to keep talking like I wasn't envisioning her spread out on that desk ready for me to devour her. Those images flashed through my mind fast and furiously. Stop it. This is playing with fire.
After a couple minutes she’d even gotten up and come around the front of the desk, getting into the other leather chair beside me. Her sweet cinnamon smell wrapped itself around me like another taunt of how close she was.
Her initial questions had been simple and easy, like she thought she might break my brain with the hard stuff, but after breezing past those, her wariness fell away as she geeked out over science.
Hell yeah, I knew the way to a woman’s heart was through gene expression.
“Wow, Heath. Interesting topic and I think you’ll get some great research out of it. Why don’t we figure out your schedule? You’re going to be traveling for hockey, right? That’s why you picked the independent study option.”
“Hockey season stretches on for a few more months.” I ran my hand over my face, trying not to think of all that responsibility resting on my shoulders. As part of a team, I had no problem doing what I needed to do and helping to keep people in line, but captain… I still wasn’t completely sure that hadn’t been a huge mistake on Preston and Coach’s part. But I was determined not to let them down.
She leaned forward. “How did your games go?”
I’d tried to put the games out of my head. I was psyching myself out. We’d lost both our away games. The first time we’d had a back-to-back loss since fresh
man year. I squeezed the back of my neck. “They didn’t go well.”
She reached out to cover my hand with hers, but then she jerked it back at the last minute, and frowned like she’d realized how hard this was going to be. How was I supposed to go an entire semester without touching her? Without holding her and falling asleep in her arms? She’d already carved out a place in my heart, but five months without contact might wreck me when I was already sinking.
19
Kara
I shouldn’t have moved. The second I sat in the seat beside him, I’d known it was a mistake. I swear my mind was playing tricks on me. He smelled like a day at the beach and ice. Like a surfer dude and a snowman had a baby and spit him out. All sunshine and cool attitude and now I was screwed.
Get me talking about any kind of biology and I’m done for. Wrap it up in a package like Heath and you might as well bend me over and—no, not going to go there. Must keep this professional.
My gaze drifted to his lips as he spoke. His full pink lips had been all over my body. They looked soft, but the memory of the demanding pressure of them against my thighs started a throb between my legs so strong I squeezed them together.
Snapping out of it, I focused on his words, trying to use science to block the biological urges that almost made me jump out of my chair and straight into his lap. He went over the rest of his experimentation reasoning, and I nodded along, making notes.
Keep this professional. If I wanted to be taken seriously as a PhD candidate, I couldn’t get involved with a student I was advising. That was a one-way ticket to dismissal from the program and never finding a job in the industry again. Stevenson had a hell of a lot of pull, and it was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. She may have been a dinosaur, but she was also a stickler for the rules.
It was like the universe was punishing me for finding him. A reminder that I’d better not fall into old patterns and make the same mistakes as before or there would be consequences. Somehow, going home with a complete stranger after a few drinks did not hold up to the you’re-a-responsible-young-woman-who-won’t-end-up-screwing-up-everything-good-in-her-life model.
Now I was sitting across from the sexiest man I’d ever been near, and I couldn’t touch him. Spending that first night with Heath, a complete stranger, and then the letter from my mom and everything that brought along with it. I hear you, universe, loud and clear. He’s off-limits.
The easy way he spoke about his flowers made me want to scream. It was unfair for someone as obscenely hot as him to be this dedicated to something most people would think was boring. When he talked about it, I couldn’t help the way my mind raced to fill the gaps in his work to help him improve it.
Without noticing, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, and so was he, our knees almost touching. The energy bouncing between us wasn’t only chemistry, it was hard science. Maybe this could work. I put his earlier words and the mental images that made my knees weak out of my head.
“If you only knew how long it took me to find the right manure supplier. You wouldn’t want to know. Let’s say it was a distinctly unpleasant experience.”
I couldn’t hold back my laugh. Even with his lips in a frown, the excitement from what he was working on was still there. If there was anyone who could appreciate someone geeking out over science stuff, it was me. He laughed along with me, and the deep, rich sound of it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“I’m glad you didn’t need any help with that part of your experiment, because you’d have been on your own.”
He leaned back in his seat. Like a string was tied between us, I shifted forward before I realized what I was doing, not wanting to lose that connection. Biting the inside of my cheek, I leaned back.
“You’d have left me to the manure farms on my own?”
“Manure comparisons are where I draw the line in the ‘for science’ argument.” I laughed, and he stared back at me, sending a shiver down my spine. I’d seen that look before. It was the one he’d given me in the kitchen when he’d wiped the chocolate off my face. Well, kissed it off my face.
Keep it professional and there wouldn’t be an issue. I could make it through the semester without touching him. Pass my exams. Get the fellowship. And make it into the PhD program no problem. Exactly what I needed to do to make my parents proud.
The pit in my stomach grew, thinking of the other problem I was trying to avoid. Angie. Seeing her was not what I needed. She was a reminder of my life when everything had been an absolute mess. A barely teenager shouldn’t know what it feels like to be hungover. They shouldn’t know what it feels like to wake up groggy next to a random guy way too old for you and have to find a way home.
Heath was like a test for me to see if I’d fall into those old patterns of mistakes I’d tried to avoid since I’d left my mom behind. He was the tempting fruit dangled in front of me that I couldn’t touch no matter how much I wanted to take a bite.
And if we were still interested in each other at the end of the semester, we could reevaluate then, maybe try this again. I peered at him, hoping he’d agree that a few months wouldn’t derail whatever it was we’d started. I could deal with whatever fallout might happen of us being together after the semester was over.
He flipped to the last page of his proposal and dropped his hand onto my knee. The warmth of his touch sank in for a split second before I jumped up, walking back behind the desk, glancing down at my phone, checking the time.
“That all sounds great, Heath. It looks like you have everything under control. These sessions will be about checking in on your research and making sure you’re documenting everything for the final paper.”
I picked up the papers on the desk and grabbed my bag off the floor. Without looking up, I felt and heard him stand. My heart sped up as he closed the gap between his seat and the desk. His hand popped into my vision as he reached for one of the books at the same time I did. I snatched my hand back and let him pick it up.
He sat on the edge of the desk as he flipped through the pages of my study guide. Running a hand along his jaw, he stared down at the book. My eyes locked onto his neck. Onto the spot at the base where it met his shoulder.
“We’ll have our next session next week at the same time. Does that work? You don’t have a game or anything?”
He smiled at me. His blond locks partially covered the side of his face. The dark and light strands wove themselves together to make it a gold you wanted to reach out and touch.
My mouth suddenly totally dry, I picked up my coffee and took a big gulp. Wincing against the cold coffee taste, I grabbed the rest of my stuff off the desk and shoved it into my bag.
He closed the book and hopped off the desk.
“No, I don’t have a game. We only play on the weekends.”
He rounded the edge of the desk, and my pulse pounded as he got closer. I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted to the tile floor, and my brain filled with static as he got closer. His steps were slow and measured. He was giving me every opportunity to run away like a scared little rabbit, but I wasn’t scared. I was fucking terrified of the feelings I’d tried to push away that came rushing back the second he was within three feet of me.
Using his body like he always did, like he was in full control and he knew it, he stood behind me. I didn’t even chance a look back, but I could feel his heat and the gentle whisper of his clothes against my back.
“Does this mean our session’s over?”
His words skimmed across my neck and sent a shiver down my spine. Session came out like the dirtiest word, dripping with the promise of everything I thought he’d forgotten about in the course of an hour. I was stupid to think that because I sure as hell hadn’t.
Leaning forward, his chest pressed against my back. Even though our skin wasn’t touching, I was back in the hotel in the shower, dripping in anticipation of what he had in store for me. He reached around me and slid my book into my bag, and I gasped as the lips I’d been trying not
to stare at since I’d walked in the door landed on my neck. It was like a gunshot going off.
“Did you forget what I said earlier?”
My knees nearly buckled, and I took a shuddering breath. With my heart hammering against my ribs, I tried to think of what to do next, but there was no next. There was only now, and now everything centered around him pressed against me. His smell threatened to burn me up as his teeth skimmed across my skin.
“Did you think I forgot?”
My thighs pressed into the top of the desk as his body crowded against mine. His hand around the front of me wrapped around my waist and slid down my body, focused at the center of my hips, pushing me back against him. My eyes fluttered closed, and my mouth hung open.
All the while, with each pop of a button, his lips were blazing a trail of destruction along my shoulder and back, using every exposed inch of skin against me. A whimper escaped my lips at the insistent nudge of his cock against my ass. Snapping my mouth shut, I bit my lip so I didn’t scream out exactly what I wanted him to do.
“Or maybe you wanted me to show you how much I want you?”
He threaded his fingers into my hair, gathering it into a ponytail and turning my head to the side. He stared into my eyes. Even with his rough touch and growly voice, the playful look in his eyes added a stomach flutter to the pounding ache between my legs.
“Here, let me help you with that lip.” He ducked his head and captured my lip in his mouth, sucking it from its safe space between my teeth and plummeting us both into dangerous territory.
With my head tilted, he kept me in place with his body and his hand in my hair, like he knew I’d try to bolt, only I didn’t. I should have, but every nerve in my body was on fire and calling out for him. Without thinking, I opened my mouth to him, and he was an all-consuming force, overtaking my mouth and my body one inch at a time.