5. Felicity
5
Felicity
“ I can’t,” I whisper-moan. “I just can’t.”
Then I push him back with enough force that he tumbles into the seat across from my desk, intended for students who come to discuss literature, my class topics, or request more time to complete their papers. Not meant for smoldering hot twenty-five-year-old singers with sinfully sweet mouths and rough hands that know the shape of my body.
Fuck. Is it hot in here?
I scoot around the corner of my desk, yanking open my office door.
A cool breeze filters in from the hallway and I nudge the doorstopper in place to keep the door propped open a respectable couple of inches. It’s enough to communicate that privacy is needed, but nothing untoward is happening.
Then I drop into my seat behind the desk, pussy pulsing with need I shouldn’t—can’t—feel.
Damn the man.
Why couldn’t he stay a beautiful dream? A lovely fantasy?
Why did he have to turn up as a student of all things?
This ruins everything.
“Dr. Felicity Navarro,” he says, craning his neck to look at my framed degrees on my walls. “Professor of English literature at SBU. Shit. I mean, what are the chances?”
“Pretty damn good if you’re an SBU student,” I grumble, pulling off my glasses and pinching the bridge of my nose. “What are you even doing here?”
His blurry form shifts in the seat across from me, removing his hat and resting it on his exposed knee.
I slip my glasses back on, bringing him back into sharp focus with daylight cutting across his fine features, sharp cheekbones, and deep blue eyes fixed on me.
Desire winds through me, swift and savage.
I fight to shut it down as I lean back in my chair and grip my armrests.
Power. Control. Balance.
From behind my desk, I can project the image I want. My restless, bouncing knee is hidden from his piercing view. He can’t know he’s got an effect on me, or I’m done.
“I told you.” Jonas’s eyebrows raise. “Or have you forgotten me and that night so soon?”
The night was unforgettable, but I’m not about to admit that right now. It’d be highly inappropriate.
“You told me that you were going to be finishing up your final semester to get your degree before joining the family business.”
“There you go. I wasn’t lying.”
“Why are you taking my class?”
He shrugs. “It sounded interesting and I needed an elective. Your class met every requirement I had, including time slot and meeting days.”
Relief seeps through my bones. So he doesn’t actually need my class to meet the requirements for his degree. He can take something else. Anything else. Drama or music or physical education for all I care.
“Great, so you don’t need my class. You can drop my course and add a different one to meet your degree requirements,” I say, tidying up my desk unnecessarily to busy my hands and give me something else to focus on that isn’t his ocean blue eyes or the enormous bulge in his too-tight pants currently jutting up from the center of his splayed legs.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think I will.”
I go still, my gaze flying to his as irritation burns inside me at his use of the word ma’am .
“Why not?”
“Because it suits my schedule and my needs. And studying under Dr. Felicity Navarro sounds like an excellent way to spend my final semester at SBU.” His hot gaze traces over my face, my neck, and over the curves he can see. My body responds instantly as if his glances incite the memory of his hands ghosting over my breasts, teasing my nipples, and slipping between my thighs as they had that night. “Makes things interesting.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I think about how much trouble this could present. On one hand, we’re both adults. The circumstances of our meeting had nothing to do with the university and neither one of us knew that we’d be in this position when the semester started. We were innocent, even if the activities we’d consensually engaged in were far less than innocent.
On the other hand, I still feel an inexplicable pull toward him, a connection that snapped into place so fast and reawakened the second those blue eyes met mine in the classroom. It’s a connection that could be a problem, but only if I let it become one. Surely, I’m strong enough and smart enough to not let it become an issue.
And I’m a professional. I can maintain my professionalism for fifteen weeks… right?
“Besides, says right on the school website that you’re one of the top literary scholars in your field. I looked you up while I was waiting in the hallway,” he says, rising to his feet and striding to the door. “And heaven help me, but I can’t get the way you topped me out of my head.”
I choke on air, heat rising in my body, cunt clenching on nothing.
“You understand that can’t happen again.” My voice is tight, tremulous. “What happened before was an anomaly. Entirely out-of-character for me.”
“Can’t happen again,” he repeats, smirking. “Not won’t, huh?”
“I mean won’t !” I whisper-yell.
Jonas shakes his head and rises to his feet. With an easy, practiced sweep of his wrist, he flips his hat back onto his head and leans over my desk, knuckles rapping against the dark wood. “See, Doc. Now I think you’re the one lying.”
“How so?”
“I think you weren’t out-of-character at all. I think the Felicity I met that night is the real you. The honest version of you. This version of you is how you want people to see you.” He points at my framed degrees on the wall. “Dr. Navarro, scholar. Dr. Navarro, Ivy League graduate. Dr. Navarro, respectable university professor.”
I rise to my feet, plant my hands flat on my desk and lean over until our faces are inches away from one another.
“That’s exactly who I am.”
His eyes flicker over my body, and that heated gaze ignites my blood. My erect nipples poke through my blouse, and I squeeze my thighs tight to ease the needy pulse between my legs.
“It’s not all you are.” He raises a hand to tug on the heavy ring hanging from a slender chain around my neck. “You’re also the only woman I’ve ever been willing to bend a knee to, and if you asked it of me right here, right now, I would. I’d get on my knees, I’d crawl right around this desk, and I’d bury my face between your thighs and help you with that ache I know you’re trying to hide from me. All you have to do is ask.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue do exactly that. To demand he make me come with just his mouth, right here in my office, but that’s insane.
It’s wrong.
I can’t.
“I’m asking you to drop my class, Jonas.”
“You’re asking me to delay graduation and the rest of my life, Felicity.” He makes a tsking sound in the back of his throat. “My naughty little professor is supposed to be encouraging me to finish school, isn’t she?”
Lord, give me strength. I stare at his mouth, my breath coming like pants. When he speaks to me like this, in that low, dark rasp of his, I feel it everywhere. Scraping against my skin, arrowing down to the apex of my thighs.
“Pick a different elective. Literally any other elective.”
“I don’t want a different elective, Doc. I want you and yours.” He reaches up, twirls a finger through a tendril of my hair, winding it around and around his index finger and giving it a little tug so my head tilts towards him. “And now that I know I’ll be able to catch you twice a week for fifteen weeks, why would I give that up?”
“Because you have to,” I whisper.
“I really don’t. I can get my degree and my woman. All in one fell swoop.” He releases my hair to collar my throat, and my eyes drift shut as I feel the cool kiss of his rings against my pulse.
“I’m not yours,” I whisper the lie, willing it to be true.
Because if it’s not, this man can wreck me. My heart, my whole carefully curated life.
This is what happened that night. We’d both fought for control, pushing and pulling each other until we yielded. Strength and power, willfully exchanged along with heat and truths I hadn’t shared with anyone. Not even my closest cousins, who were my best friends.
And that weakness has come back to bite me in the ass.
Because all I want is for this man to have me. All of me. Heart, body, and soul—it’s too bad that I can’t give it to him.
Not while he’s my student anyway.
“Maybe not yet. But you will be.” Then he releases me and my eyes fly open. He gives me a wide grin that has my heart stuttering in my chest, then he flips his hat on and slips out of my office door. “See you in class on Wednesday, Doc.”
* * *
I’m running late to meeting my cousins for our monthly Monday wine and cheese dates Cork and Screw, located on the Soltero Beach boardwalk. Scurrying down the sand-dusted path, past the palm trees swaying in the dusk autumn evening, I nearly bark at a rollerblader who’s going so fast, they nearly take me out before I can get in the door.
Then I slide onto the sleek sofa at our usual table and promptly face plant into the oak table with a groan.
“Ha! I beat you by three minutes,” Cora announces cheerfully, alluding to the fact that our family notoriously runs late. “Wine’s on you tonight.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Charisse asks. “Poor baby’s had to go back to work after having a whole three months off?”
I lift my head to glare at her. “Hey. We can’t all be pop stars with professional hockey player husbands with multi-million dollar salaries, okay?”
“Amen to that,” Cora says, raising a hand for me to high five.
I high five her back, but only because we’re the two single ladies left standing in our cousin crew now that Nina’s married Nicholas.
Charisse leans back in her seat, crosses her arms and gives me a pointed look. “We can’t all be Ivy League doctorate-holding scholars either, but you don’t see me rubbing it in your face.”
“Ugh. Right now, I wish I wasn’t one.” I cover my face and groan. But through my fingers, I can see my cousins exchange a worried look.
“Honey, is this about Nicholas and Nina?” Cora’s mouth falls into a sympathetic flat line.
Charisse takes a sip of her rose and quirks a brow at me. “And their news?”
“What news?”
“They’re expecting,” Cora whispers, eyebrows lifted.
“Oh, good for them. Congratulations.” I wave a hand in the air. “That’s not even on my radar. I have bigger problems.”
“Oh?”
“Like what?” Cora leans in, eyes flashing with mischief. “Problems like trying to track down the hottie you hooked up with at the wedding?”
Charisse gasps, clapping a hand around my wrist and bugging her eyes out at me. “You did what? Why didn’t I know?”
“No one was supposed to know,” I grumble. “His name is Jonas and the hook up was supposed to be my own little secret, but Nosy Nellie over here was spying.”
“I wasn’t spying, I was wondering where you went and happened to look over and see you making out with the lead singer from the wedding band. Not my fault you were making out in front of a glass wall.” Cora snorts, then points at Charisse. “You were preoccupied with Romi, so you missed it.”
“The cover band?” Charisse squints, trying to remember. “The rock-n-roll one? I’m sure I’ve seen them around town. They’re local and the lead singer guy seemed really familiar to me.”
“Information I could’ve used earlier,” I grumble, looking for the server and shoveling a slice of cheese directly into my mouth from the platter dominating the table. “I’m going to need a whole bottle of pinot. And maybe a new battery operated boyfriend.”
Cora barks out a laugh.
“Why?” Charisse asks, eyes wide.
“Because I don’t need to look for that man anymore. He found me.”
“That’s great, isn’t it?” Cora’s eyes twinkle as she pops a grape into her mouth and wiggles her brows at me. “It’s high time you found another boyfriend. One who’s into all the stuff your previous ones weren’t.”
“No chance of that happening,” I say darkly. “He turned up in my class this morning. So not only is he young, he’s off-limits.”
“What, so now he’s your student?” Cora slaps her hands down on the table, then bursts out howling with laughter while Charisse tries to shush her.
“Yes. I’m so fucking screwed.”
“I’ll say,” Cora smirks. “In the best possible way.”
“What’s the big deal?” Charisse asks. “It was just a fling, right? Happened between two consenting adults before the semester started. Unless you’re saying you want something more with this guy?”
I swipe her wine glass and drain the rest of its contents while they stare at me.
Then I set it down with a clink and twirl the glass between my fingertips.
“I’m not saying anything.”
But I meet their gazes with an expression that must say it all because they exchange a look. Charisse throws an arm around my slumped shoulders and Cora squeezes my hand while murmuring, “Oh, honey.”