Page 20 of Misadventures with a Professor
Fuck.
“I really, really want this,” she continues. “Not just for the work, although it will be invaluable to have on my résumé, but to have a summer that’s somewhere new and different. If you send me home, I’ll just be bored and alone with nothing to do, and I promise to be good if you let me stay. I’ll be so, so good, Professor. Please.”
I have to swallow.
Remember again that I’m a man and not a monster. “It’s impossible, Zandy. Surely you see that. It’s wildly inappropriate for us to work together now.”
Her tongue peeps out to wet her lower lip. “I won’t be inappropriate,” she whispers. “I promise.”
Does she not understand? She is inappropriate without even trying. Her earnestness. Her extravagant body. Everything about Zandy Lynch is fiercely unseemly, and it makes me crave very unseemly things. I can’t have her in this house—her spiced and flowery scent in my nose, her dark hair catching the sunlight in my study—and not want to bend her over a desk. Not want her on her knees with her mouth open and those blue eyes trained up at me as she waits for the crumbs of my approval.
And I’ve vowed not to be that man anymore. Whatever happened in London be damned, I’ll control myself starting now.
I ignore the tear-shine in her eyes when I say, “You’ll leave tomorrow. We’ll make the arrangements in the morning.”
I mean to leave her there, with the finality of my decision hanging around her, but I have to stop. I don’t turn to look at her. I simply make sure she hears me. “I don’t like how you talk about your virginity like it’s a burden. Something you had to coax a stranger into doing away with. It was a gift to me.”
Then I leave her among the books and the papers, and when I reach my bedroom, I pull out my cock with embarrassingly frantic hands and stroke myself, thinking of those tits under her camisole. And after I come all over my fist and clean up, I kick my slippers under my bed with a growl, crawl into bed, and lie awake for untold hours, Zandy Lynch haunting my thoughts like a spirit haunts a house.
I barely sleep. And around five, when the sun is beginning to paint the sky on the other side of my little valley, I climb out of bed. Frustrated and hard, even after two more rounds with my fist. Quiet rounds, so that she wouldn’t hear, although I almost wanted her to. I wanted her to creep by the door and listen to what she did to me. I wanted her to push her way in as boldly as she pushed her way into my night three days ago and demand to be fucked.
Beg to be fucked.
Promise to be her professor’s good girl.
Of course it didn’t happen, and I came into a T-shirt like a fucking adolescent, furious all the while. I’d done so well after Rosie—so well for years—and now here’s Zandy Lynch with her mouth just made for my cock, with her backside just begging to be spanked.
Grumbling, I fish out my slippers from under the bed, yank some drawstring pants up over my hips, and pull on a clean T-shirt. If I can’t sleep, I may as well work.
Beatrix joins me as I make a cup of tea and set out some of the latest texts I’ve been reading, along with my notebook and pen. She curls up on the table next to my notebook, oblivious to how many times I nudge at her to make writing room for my hand, and together we work until the kitchen slowly fills with light and the sun decides to peer directly into my house. I flip over the latest sheet of what I’ve been reading—a selection from a Victorian ladies’ magazine—and move it to the edge of my workspace, which happens to be a nearly perfect square of sunlight coming in through the window.
“You really shouldn’t expose it to the light like that,” comes a voice from behind me, and it takes everything I have not to flinch at the sudden intrusion.
Zandy appears at the edge of my vision, her body in some kind of knit dress that looks nearly pornographic on her curves, her hair woven into a long, messy braid—the kind of braid that makes a man think of pulling on it. Her mouth is curved into a small smile as she sits at the kitchen table, but there’s a flat sheen of defeat in her eyes.
I look away from her and rub at my chest again. “I suppose next you’ll chide me for not using gloves.”
“Actually, you shouldn’t use gloves with paper,” she says. “The fibers of the glove might catch on the document, and it’s also important to have a feel for the page itself as you handle it. It’s a delicate thing, handling something that rare, and you need every tiny, minute sensation to help you feel for whether it’s brittle or supple. Whether it might break or bend.”
I’m hard.
From her talking about paper.
“Duly noted,” I say shortly, hoping she doesn’t see how she’s affected me. I tug the page out of the sunlight. A moment passes, when I pretend to go back to my reading and ignore her—as if I could ignore her. My body definitely can’t.
She endures the silence for an admirably long time. And then, “Are you really going to send me home?”
She asks it in a soft voice, and when I look up, I see that defeat in her gaze again. I can’t say why it bothers me, only that it does. Only that in the bizarre and short circumstances of our acquaintance, I’ve come to expect that blue gaze to bubble over with confidence and eager energy.
I set my pen down and run a hand over my face. “You have to see why it’s impossible.”
“But I don’t. I already told you I’d be good. I’d be better—”
“Your father sent you to me with the tacit implication that I’d keep you reasonably safe during your stay. Do you honestly think he’d be comfortable with you staying in my house if he knew what happened in London?”
“I’m twenty-two,” Zandy insists, leaning forward. “He knows I’m an adult. And besides, it was one time. One time. And we didn’t know who the other really was. It’s an outlier, not even a real data point, and it should be thrown out.”
I scowl at her. I scowl because there’s a part of her argument that’s logical and because I don’t even care about the parts that aren’t. As much as I know she needs to go, as much as I want her to go—dammit, I do—my thoughts keep crowding with plans and ideas and all the moments we’d have together if she stayed.
