Page 12 of Devil

“Birdie, I can’t get you out of my fucking head.” He looked feverish as he spoke, the words practically burning the air as they left his mouth. “I’m haunted by your throat, your eyes, your hands. The only thing I want to do is watch you work. The only thing I want to smell is sawdust and your shampoo.” He laughed at whatever he saw in my face then. “Yes, I know the smell of your shampoo,” he said, the laughter curving the edges of his words. But I heard something else too—that chilling intensity from earlier.

He stepped so close that our shoes bumped. My back was flat against the blackboard now, and he leaned in to press his nose into my hair.

“Apples,” he murmured, satisfied. “God, little bird. What you do to me.” His nose moved down, finding my jaw and then my neck.

I couldfeelhis inhale, a shift of air.

“I’m bedeviled by you,” he whispered. And then something utterly shocking happened: he pressed his lips against my neck.

I jolted—the unfamiliar sensation had sizzled through every nerve ending I possessed—and the pomegranate fell to the floor with a wet thud. His now-free hand was on my neck, and then it was in my hair, and then it was cupping my head, holding me in place while his open mouth moved on my neck.

Heat coursed through me in a thousand different rivers; every river converged between my thighs and sang down to the soles of my feet and then back up again to shimmer underneath Bell’s lips. The pleasure I felt on my neck was matched, magnified even, by what thrummed in that forbidden part of my body, by what ached and flared there.

I had never—No one had ever said—You heard about kissing on the lips and you heard about sex, but this was something entirely unheard of, unknown, unrevealed. Bell’s mouth on my neck—andoh my God, on my throat—wet, sucking, tasting… I was suddenly, dazzlingly, made physical. So physical that the rest of me barely existed, as if whatever electrical frissons made up my intellectual self had been thoroughly overrun by the hot flickers sent up by my nervous system.

I was gasping and then I was more than gasping. A helpless whimper left me, a plaintive little noise.

Bell gave a low, torn groan. His other hand came up to cage me against the chalkboard, and his hips came against mine, our thighs slotting as he pressed close. The long, flowing skirt I wore lifted enough that I could feel the air around my ankles.

“Let me kiss you,” he breathed, mouth on my jaw now. He moved to smell my hair again and then my neck. “God, Birdie. Can I kiss you? Tell me I can kiss you. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.”

I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think at all. My thoughts were nothing, scattered like blown sawdust, and his mouth was all I could think of. Well, that and the hand in my hair, so incomprehensibly large and warm. And his hips against mine. And that thigh now pressing against the center of my legs and I—oh, sweet God—I had no idea what to do with this feeling. It curled in my stomach, squeezed like a cramp, matched the tightness in my ribs and the trembling in my thighs.

“Please, baby,” he groaned against my cheek. “Please let me kiss you.”

Baby.It was ridiculous to be called that by someone seven years younger than me, by a college student, and yet the giddy warmth that flushed through me was undeniable. Just as undeniable was the reflexive panic, the terror, the uncertainty. I’d never been kissed, never even been close to being kissed, never even had the chance to consider what it would be like. Busy was whom people kissed, or Kaitlyn, when she decided her rules for other people didn’t apply to her. Not me. Never me.

And we couldn’t. We couldn’t kiss. It was as impossible as the idea that Bell wanted to kiss me at all.

“Birdie?” he whispered, pulling back to look at me.

I tried to look away—an instinct, a tuck of my chin to my shoulder—but that large hand wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t grant me even that escape. Those blue eyes burned into mine, the irises paler than a winter morning but his pupils dilated into pools of night.

“Birdie, please say yes. Say I can kiss you.”

My voice was shaky when I spoke, but the words were certain. “We can’t.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Who says we can’t?”

“You’re my student,” I whispered.

“Until Saturday, and then I’m nobody’s student. The grades are submitted. There’s no conflict of interest.”

“It’s against the student safety policy and the student-teacher fraternization policy.”

“Again, I’m days away from not being a student. You’re no longer a teacher at all, only a resident.”

“I’m older than you,” I said, wishing he weren’t making me look at him because the intensity in those eyes… It was so hard to think. “And it’s not right.”

“I know you’re older than me,” he said with a small, tender smile. The intense look in his eyes didn’t diminish one bit. “And it’s perfectly right. A kiss, Birdie. People do it all the time.”

“Not the way you want to kiss me,” I whispered, and he let out a laugh, deep and warm and so, so heavenly. Like music. Like the sun. You just wanted to be close to that laugh. Inside it.

“You’re right, you’re right,” he said, a dimple burrowing deep into his cheek. “Not the way I want to kiss you.”

“We can’t,” I repeated. But I was still caged by that hand splayed on the chalkboard by my head, by his hand in my hair. By his eyes.

“Are you saying no, Birdie? Are you telling me I can’t kiss you?”