Page 24 of Misadventures with a Professor
Of unabated longing.
And then as I sigh and pull my hand away from myself, I hear it—the creak of a floorboard outside my room. I go completely still, flooded with embarrassment and something else that’s harder to name.
Anticipation?
Hope?
Do I want Oliver to kick down the door, pin me to the bed, and finally go all professor on me?
Yes. Yes, I do.
God, I want it more than anything.
The floorboard creaks again, and I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I’m ready for him to force his way in here and relieve the still-aching need deep in my core.
But he doesn’t.
Hushed silence fills the corners and crevices of the room, and I’m left alone. Empty. Unfulfilled.
Sleep takes a long time to find me after that.
A week goes by like this. During the day, Oliver is uncommunicative and distant. I work and he works, and I steal glimpses of him working, his light-brown hair burnished in a near-gold by the June sunlight and his jaw ticking in that particular way of his as he thinks. I feed him lunch, which he barely notices, and then at some point I tentatively bring up dinner, which is almost always some kind of carryout and also an excuse for him to jab angrily at his food until he finds a reason to leave the table.
And then I go up to my room and read or work until I can’t stand it anymore, and I rub myself to climax. I never do hear that floorboard again, but every single time I hope I do.
I hope Oliver comes in and claims me. I want it more than I want anything, even more than I wanted to stay. Or maybe I wanted to stay because I wanted him to claim me more than anything. So much for being sophisticated, Zandy.
By my seventh day, the air in the study is thick with tension.
The sun is hot through the window, and I’m a very dismayed American when I realize that a box fan is the closest thing Oliver has to air conditioning. We crack open the windows and angle the fan so it doesn’t blow century-old paper everywhere, but it barely helps. Even the cat escapes the house with a cantankerous meow, jumping out the open window and loping into the back garden in search of shade.
My sleeveless dress is too hot, and I’m tugging constantly at the neckline, feeling warm and flushed even with my hair fastened up on top of my head. I’m jealous of the cat, jealous of her shade, but all of my work is here in the study, and I can’t leave either my work or Professor Grouch, who is even grouchier than usual today.
The second time I trip over a stack of books, making a ton of mess and noise, Oliver slams his laptop shut. “You,” he says darkly.
Just that.
Just you.
And then he glares at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just messy and hot and…what is it?”
“Do you even care that you’re making it impossible for me to work?”
Normally, I find his arrogant coolness sexy or amusing, but not today. It’s too hot for one thing, and I’m eyeballs deep in fixing his mess, and so I snap back, “Not in the slightest.”
I know instantly that I’ve fucked up. Oliver is a man of little patience, and the kind of lippy insolence I just displayed is absolutely one of his pet peeves. I feel a quick dart of fear that I’ve just managed to get myself fired.
Get myself sent home.
Shit.
Oliver’s face could be cut from stone right now, and his words are made of ice when he finally speaks. “Come here.”
“Oliver—”
“You call me professor in here or nothing at all,” he interrupts coolly.
