Page 33 of Misadventures with a Professor
“No. What were you doing with that man?”
I roll my eyes and start to pull away, but Oliver pins me against the outside wall of the pub, one hand on either side of my head and his body a shield of angry male in front of me.
“Were you going to let him kiss you?” he asks in a dangerous voice. “Were you going to let him fuck you?”
I want to say yes. I want to make Oliver angry and miserable, just as he’s made me. I want to prove that I am sophisticated, that I do have dignity, and that I’m just as good at ignoring him as he is at ignoring me.
But like earlier today, I find I can only be Zandy. Honest, embarrassing Zandy.
“No,” I admit, looking away.
“Fuck right, you weren’t,” Oliver growls. “He’s not allowed to touch you.”
“Why do you care?” I ask, searching his face. It’s near-dusk, still light enough to be warm but dark enough for shadows to dance in his eyes. “You made it very clear today how you feel about me.”
“That’s what you think?”
“Yes,” I shoot back hotly. “Yes, that’s what I think. What else?”
“What else?” he breathes. “Not that you drive me mad? Not that I can’t work, I can’t focus, I can’t even think when you’re around me?”
We stare at each other, chests rising and falling with jagged breaths, our mouths nearly close enough to touch. To kiss.
My lips part and my eyes hood low, ready for him to lay waste to me with his skilled mouth and tongue. Ready for those hard, greedy kisses he delivered with such furious conviction for a man normally so cold.
He doesn’t kiss me.
When I open my eyes all the way in confused disappointment, he’s glaring at me like I’ve taken a match to his rare books. “We’re going home now, Miss Lynch,” he seethes, and I don’t argue, because the minute I get back to his house, I’m packing my suitcase and leaving. I don’t care if I sleep in some open-air train station. I am not staying.
I’m fuming as I climb into Oliver’s car for the short ride to his house. Fuming and rehearsing my grand speech about leaving and how Oliver can go fuck himself. But when we pull up to the cottage and I get out of the car, Oliver meets me at my side, crowding me against the car door.
I expect more of his anger, or maybe that we’d go back to the cutting chill of earlier, but the man in front of me is neither angry nor cold. He’s breathing hard, and there’s something in his eyes that looks bruised and tender and young.
“I want you, Zandy, and I can’t tell you how much that terrifies me.”
Terrifies him? It’s so hard to imagine this marble-cut man being terrified of anything, much less me.
“I don’t understand.”
He gives a bleak kind of laugh at that. “No. You wouldn’t, because you’re still happy and ready for the world. You’re still unhurt. And I— I woke up this morning horrified at the thought that I may have stolen that from you.”
I stare at him, beyond baffled. “What? By sleeping with me?”
He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “By sleeping with you and…all the other things.”
The front garden is a dark haven of flowers and rich grass, lit only by the faint kitchen light coming out of the cottage, so it’s hard to be sure—but I think I see color in Oliver’s cheeks.
He’s ashamed, I realize, and the thought is so bizarre to me, so foreign, that it takes a minute to absorb it. He’s ashamed of what he likes in bed.
And abruptly, everything else—his behavior today, my leaving—is set aside. Or, rather, filtered through the light of this new information.
“Oliver,” I say, catching his eyes. “I liked what we did. Both times. It’s sexy to me, and…” I search for the right word. “It’s not any more complicated than that. I like it. Who cares if I like it because I was raised by professors or because I’ve worked for professors before or because I’m an incurable teacher’s pet? It’s fun, and I consented wholeheartedly. What more can there be to it than that?”
It’s Oliver’s turn to stare, and he’s staring at me like he can’t believe I’m real.
“What?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“You,” he says, like he said yesterday afternoon, except this time it’s not dark or tortured. It’s wondering.
