Chapter Three Bram #2
One of the muscled young men in the back raises his hand, going from slouched backward to sitting completely upright, like he’s trying to touch the ceiling with his fingertips. “Professor Ko—Kowow—uh, Professor K, can we go now?”
“Yes,” Maddie replies faintly and there’s a backpack-jostling scramble as the students race down the steps of the small indoor auditorium and rush for the door. Leo and I step back just in time—the door crashes open and students flood out, already texting, shoving, wedging earbuds into their ears.
We walk into the classroom after the students leave, and Maddie’s head swivels at the movement, sending her curls bouncing. She glares at me.
“What are you doing here?” she hisses.
Leo glances between us, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Great question, sweet,” he commends, and then turns to me. “Dr. Loe?”
“I just wanted to make sure you had everything you needed to pick up the twins,” I say.
“You,” she accuses, pointing her finger at me, “were watching me from the door.”
I slowly drag my eyes from her finger to her face, the blood suddenly kicking so hard in my veins that I’m almost dizzy with it. I want to wrap my hand around that finger and pull her close and tell her exactly what’s coming to her for that little show.
And then I suck in a deep, quick breath through my nose. What on earth am I thinking? She’s my employee. She’s almost ten years younger than me. And even before I gave up on dating, I still wasn’t the . . . the you’ve been a bad girl guy.
Maddie spins away, back to the podium where her laptop is still sitting open, obviously upset about something. Possibly me. Even more possibly what just happened during her first class here at Astra University.
I look at Leo. “You should leave.”
Leo bites his apple smirkingly in response. Only Leo Saint James can bite into an apple smirkingly.
I sigh. “Please?”
“But where would I go?” he asks when he swallows, looking suddenly like a lost angel, bewildered and innocent.
“I don’t know, Leo. Your home? Your office? Your local library?”
A flicker of something unnameable moves through his eyes. Then he smiles, one of the amused, vicious smiles that used to signal torment for me when we were boys. Now I think it might signal torment for someone else.
“You’re right,” he announces, tossing his half-eaten apple in the trash without looking at either the apple or the trash can.
It lands perfectly in the middle with a thunk.
“I should visit the library. Pick up a book. Get to know a librarian. It’ll do me good.
” And without another word, he leaves, sauntering off with his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Sorry about that,” I say to Maddie as I turn back to her, but she’s already shaking her head.
“Don’t be sorry for him, I don’t even know him! Be sorry for you, lurking out there and making me nervous!”
I lift my hands, palms out, the posture of an innocent man. “I wasn’t trying to make you nervous. I only wanted to touch base with you before you left to get the twins. That’s all.”
Her mouth, immaculately painted in Focus Group Mauve, curves into a luscious scowl. “Look, Dr. Loe,” she says, her gaze narrowed into black-lashed slits of irritation, “I might work for you at your house, but you’re not allowed to give me a performance review here.”
Oh, I want to give her a performance review, all right. Over my lap. With those pointy kitten heels up in the air.
“Understood,” I say with a mildness I do not feel. “I promise I’m not planning on doing anything of the sort. I’ll be home around five thirty; you have my number if you need anything. See you tonight, Ms. Kowalczk.”
I HEAR SCREAMING.
I’m halfway out of my weathered hybrid crossover, one hand wrestling with the door and the other with the satchel I’m trying to drag out of the passenger seat, and I finally give up on the satchel and the door and bolt around to the backyard, leaving the car door hanging wide open.
There was a time in my life where I did a lot of adrenaline-fueled bolting, where I had a knack for ruthless, reflexive action, and when I clear the corner of my house, my mind is already sorting through the possibilities—that there will be blood, broken bones, a strange dog that Hester Prynne, despite being a massive German shepherd, is too cowardly to chase away—and then I wrench myself to a halt, the split second between my photoreceptors turning light into electricity and my brain turning that electricity into information stretching into years.
Letty and Berry are jumping through the sprinkler, shrieking at the cold water, shrieking at Hester Prynne, who is trying to bite the water, and then shrieking at Maddie until Maddie chases them back through the spray again.
Fern is tucked away on the patio, chatting to a friend on her phone while she works on one of her many embroideries in progress (a hobby that sounds wholesome until you see the things she embroiders).
No one is bleeding. No one is broken.
The screams are happy ones.
I let out a full exhale for the first time since I opened my car door, and Maddie walks through the sprinkler to me, a challenging look on her face, like she’s ready to revisit our earlier disagreement. Satisfaction—strange, uninvited—blooms inside my chest as she comes closer.
I want the challenge. I want her to try me. I want her to step closer and let me see those flawlessly lipsticked lips and those wicked green eyes.
And then I make the mistake of dropping my gaze.
Something much, much stronger than satisfaction rips through me.
“Thank you for playing with the girls, they love the sprinkler,” I manage to say when she’s close enough.
She tosses wet hair over her shoulder, and oh god oh god—it’s not just that her blouse is wet, but the thin bra underneath too, and I can make out the pink of her nipples. I can see the hard shape of them.
She might as well be wearing nothing at all.
“I was happy to,” she says briskly. “Now, about you showing up randomly to my class—”
“It won’t happen again. And can we speak inside the house for a moment?” I sound gruff and a little stern, but that’s better than lewd and panting, I guess.
She regards me with enough miffed suspicion to make Dr. Monty proud, and then lifts her chin and marches to the kitchen door and goes inside.
“Fern, will you keep an eye on the littles?” I ask my oldest. I get a nod from the teen, and then I follow Maddie inside, no idea how to say what I’m going to say next, but also knowing with certainty that I’m going to say it.
Maddie has drifted from the kitchen to the dining room, which in my house is lined with bookcases, and is perusing the spines of some vintage gardening books with a dilatory finger.
“Ms. Kowalczk,” I say, and she huffs.
“You can call me Maddie, you know.”
“Ms. Kowalczk,” I repeat, “do you want a dry T-shirt to change into?”
Maddie turns to face me. And with the warm glow of sunlight pouring in from the west, I can see through her wet shirt in here just as clearly as I could out there.
I drag my eyes up immediately, my entire body tight and breathless and eager to fuck, but she sees, of course she sees where I was looking.
“A dry T-shirt,” she says. “Hmm. Is something bothering you, Dr. Loe?”
I step closer to her and she draws closer to me, and I see that challenge again in her face, like a dare—like a question too, maybe—and I study her eyes, her flushed cheeks, the teeth digging into her bottom lip.
“You,” I tell her softly, “have a smart mouth.”
“You going to fix it for me?”
We are so close now. Close enough that she has to tilt her head almost all the way back to look at me. Her neck is flushed. Her pupils are massive pools of black.
I say in my sternest voice, “I think someone should teach you how to behave.”
Her lips part on an inhale . . . and she shivers.
I nearly do it. I nearly break our rules and reach up to touch her.
Rub my thumb along a furled, pink bud until her knees buckle and I can push her back onto the table.
I’d peel the wet silk from her skin and taste her nipples and kiss my way down her stomach.
I’d slide her trousers off her hips and toss them to the floor, and then I’d get to my knees and lick her until she shuddered out a climax with her thighs by my ears.
I’d unzip my trousers and push all the way inside.
I’d show her everything I’d been thinking about since Saturday night—relay every depraved, quivering, sweat-misted detail.
I take an abrupt step back and scrub my hand through my hair. Without looking at her, I say, “I know you must be cold. I have T-shirts or I have some button-down shirts, if you’d rather.”
Maddie doesn’t answer at first, but when she does, her voice is largely devoid of emotion. “It’s fine, Dr. Loe. I have a change of clothes in my car.”
“You can call me Bram,” I offer, looking up right as she starts walking to the front door.
“When you call me Maddie,” she counters, a bit petulantly, and I can’t help but smile a little as she goes outside to her car.
I watch as she pops open the trunk and starts rummaging through what look like plastic containers, the big ones meant for storage.
She must not have unloaded her car after getting here from California.
She pulls out a shirt, slams the trunk closed, and when she looks up to see me watching her through the window, she visibly flinches.
My small smile slips into a frown as I watch her bypass the front door and go around back with the girls instead.
The frown stays on my face as I go outside myself to finally shut my car door.