Chapter 2
AUGUST
I’ve performed open-heart surgery on a man whose chest I sawed open with my own hands and I did not break a sweat.
I’ve lectured five hundred people at the Edinburgh Medical Symposium on the biochemical function of the thoracic cavity while running a fever and wearing shoes that were half a size too small. I received a standing ovation and even signed books afterward in the hallway.
Still, I did not break a sweat.
I’ve never lost my composure or failed to complete anything I set my mind to in the thirty-six years I’ve been on this Earth.
Not until she walked in and sat down.
I stare at her, and my brain simply stops working. It only takes a millisecond. One moment I’m standing at the podium going over my opening remarks that I’ve delivered every first day of the fall semester for the last five years. And the next, I’m awestruck by the girl sitting in the front row.
She’s got dark hair, enormous brown eyes, and a body that is so perfect it should be taken in for study and examination.
By me only, of course.
She’s eighteen, maybe nineteen, and has the face of beauty that belongs in a museum. The way she looks at me as she uncaps her pen and opens her spiral notebook—it’s like she’s ready to learn everything I know. And not just class-related.
Get it together, August.
I’m a thirty-six-year-old professor of anatomy with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, and for the first time outside of the gym, I’m feeling myself start to perspire.
I clear my throat and look at my notes, but my eyes move right back to her as she twirls her pen between her fingers. Such delicate fingers.
God help me.
It’s not just the sweat starting either. My heart is racing, and blood is rushing between my legs. I clench my jaw, even chew the inside of my cheek. No, I cannot get hard right now. Not here.
She smiles innocently at me, completely unaware of the depraved thoughts flooding my mind. Knuckles going white as I grip the podium, I look away.
I’m not going to think about those eyes, that smile, the fact that she’s clearly not wearing a bra beneath that vintage band T-shirt. I’m just going to look out into the crowd of students and deliver my lecture as I always do. And I’m definitely not going to look at the front row again.
My plan doesn’t even last a minute.
The gorgeous girl is writing in her notebook. Already. I have barely gotten started, and she’s writing. A distant thought echoes in my mind. Maybe she’s writing about me…
Professor Holt. Tall. Intimidatingly hot. Great jaw. Obviously works out—
No. She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d be writing that sort of stuff. She seems like a girl who’d be writing down reminders to herself, organizing her study schedule. The kind of girl who does all the assigned reading and then a little more just to be sure.
She seems—and this thought just comes to me from somewhere I can’t explain and has no roots in academia—like she’s never been touched. There’s just such innocence about her. I can’t even picture her with a guy.
Or maybe I just don’t want to…
Suddenly, I realize I’ve spaced out completely. Not only that, but I’ve lost my place in my lecture notes. I’m just sort of staring like I’ve been hypnotized. And not up at the board behind me but at her. The girl I swore a moment ago I would not look at again.
She writes something and underlines it. My teeth grind against each other.
What is it? What did you just underline?
This is nuts. Seriously nuts. I’m a man who has held a human heart in his hands—a literal, beating, human heart. And here I am, losing my mind over a girl with a green pen underlining something in her notebook.
Clenching my stomach, I snap out of it and go back to my lecture. I go over the syllabus, office hours, required texts, and my grading rubric. I can see her out of the corner of my eye writing it all down.
She’s going to be the best student in the class. I can already tell.
But more than that, she’s going to be a problem. A big one.
By the time I start going over the anatomical planes of the body, I’ve developed a coping strategy to deal with her, which is to focus on the guy sitting just behind her. This way I can pretend I’m not completely ignoring her. And it seems to work too, until she raises her hand.
I want to laugh, and I want to explode. Who raises their hand on the first day’s lecture? I’m doing everything I can to keep myself from focusing on her, and she raises her hand?
Shit.
“Yes…?” I say, my voice sounding weaker than it should.
“If these anatomical planes are just theoretical frameworks we use to talk about location, does that mean all of anatomy is basically just a language we invented to describe something that doesn’t have clear divisions?
” She pauses. I realize I’m frowning at her and quickly shake it off. “Sorry…is that a dumb question?”
“Of course not,” I reply. “In fact, that’s maybe the best question anyone has asked me in all my years of teaching.”
She blinks those beautiful eyes, and a faint red color sweeps up her cheeks. She looks down at her notebook, and I feel a sense of loss like a punch to the gut. I watch her scribbling. Christ, I’d pay money to know what she’s writing.
“What’s your name?” I ask. I have to know.
“Jessica,” she replies. “Jessie. Everyone calls me Jessie.”
“Jessie.” I nod. “Jessie…?”
“Monroe. Jessie Monroe.”
Her voice is angelic. Like a magical song. All I can do is nod and turn back to my notes.
Somehow, I manage to survive the rest of the lecture without tripping over myself or getting a full-blown erection.
I have no idea how. But when I dismiss the class, she lingers in her seat, capping her green pen and sliding her notebook into her bag that has three different keychains on the zipper.
I stand at the podium. Do not watch her leave.
I watch her leave. I can’t help it. And as far as I can tell, she has no idea. No clue that my eyes are sweeping up her body as she moves, analyzing every perfect inch, from the way her hips move to the hint of smooth skin that shows as her T-shirt rises up.
Christ, even her ankles and hair are sexual to me. Like I’m some kind of gallant knight back in medieval times.
This cannot happen.
I left my surgical career, left medicine, everything I had built, and came here to teach. I built a nice quiet life for myself. I do my research, and I do not make mistakes.
But this girl…she might just be the end of me.
Forty minutes later, I’m doing my best not to think of her as I stand outside the coffee cart by Whitmore Hall. And that’s when I hear them.
Three girls, chatting at a volume loud enough that they’ve either forgotten they’re in public or simply do not care. They’re behind me in line and close enough that I can hear every word. And they’re talking about her.
I realize it immediately. I don’t know how. I can just feel it in my gut. And when one of them says Jessie, something responds in my chest. My heartbeat picks up, and despite wanting to turn, I face forward.
“I say we check in with her,” the first girl says. She sounds like she’s accustomed to being in charge. “You know—ask her if she’s opened it yet. If she read the instructions.”
“They come with instructions?” a second voice asks, laughing.
“Everything comes with instructions, Dani. And Jessie loves reading instructions. That’s the whole point. Maybe she’ll actually follow them.”
“I still cannot believe she didn’t know what it was,” a third voice chimes in, nearly a whisper. “Like, she said she thought it was for ‘personal tension relief’ like she was reading a brochure.”
“Well, it sort of is. Technically.”
“She’s like a little baby rabbit.”
“Or a cute little fairy.”
“She’s the best-looking girl on campus and has literally never—” The voice drops off like she was about to say something totally inappropriate.
I should stop listening. I’m thirty-six years old and eavesdropping on students. I need to just order my coffee and go back to my office. But they’re talking about her, so I simply can’t stop myself.
“Not even once,” she continues. “Her mom interrupts her once and she just…stops trying?”
“Right?” one of them giggles. “If I go more than two days without one, I turn into the bitch from hell!”
Jesus, are they talking about what I think they’re talking about?
“Yeah, well, even if she reads the instructions,” a voice whispers, “she still has to, ya know—find her clit!”
“Shhh!” the boss girl laughs. “Shut up! This isn’t the dorm!”
They giggle, but my entire body goes tight. I was right. Jessie is an innocent. These girls are her friends, and they’re saying she’s never even had an orgasm.
Christ. Someone’s going to have to change that.
I nearly crush my coffee cup as the server hands it to me. The world seems to muffle around me as I stride across the quad, a singular mission in mind.
It takes me eleven minutes to find her.
It’s not hard. I’m a man who spent years locating vital organs in dying patients. Finding one girl on a campus of a few thousand students is not a challenge. I just think about where she’d go.
A girl like her, super organized and ready to learn? The outside courtyard by the science building.
There she is…
More blood rockets to my center as I stare, watching her as she sits on a bench, sunlight glowing through her hair, scribbling in her notebook with her green pen. My breath catches in my chest, and I’m forced to brace myself against a tree to stop from falling over.
It’s not just me, either. I catch a handful of guys glancing over at her, obviously checking her out. She doesn’t even notice. One of them looks like he might want to approach her, but there’s no way in hell that’s happening.
I stride quickly over, no plan in mind. I just need to reach her, talk to her, show everyone around that she is off-limits.
That she’s mine.
She senses me before I reach her. Her pen slows, and she looks up. When she sees me standing over her, her eyes go wide, and her lips part as if daring me to kiss them.
“P-Professor Holt,” she stammers.
“Miss Monroe.”
There’s a brief moment as she glances around the courtyard the way people do when they’re trying to figure out if they’re in trouble. “Is there…a problem with my enrollment? I checked the form online three times, but I—”
“There’s no problem, Miss Monroe.”
“Oh, good.” She closes her notebook and looks up at me. Christ, just look at her. I want to take a big bite right out of her.
This is the part where I am supposed to tell her that I enjoyed her participation in class and that she should keep up the good work. Then walk away.
That’s what I should do. Instead, I lean in closer than I should. “You do, however, have a serious gap in your education.”
Her adorable brow furrows. “I…I do?”
“A pretty significant one.” I reach down and take her pen from her. Just holding something she’s touched causes my pants to tighten. I sit down beside her, and she turns to face me.
Her eyes…I start to lose myself in them.
Brown like expensive wood or really good coffee.
Warm, deep, and filled with something I desperately desire.
“Your question today was good. You’re clearly intelligent, Jessie.
But there are…entire systems of the human body.
Critical systems that I believe you are unfamiliar with and the current curriculum will not cover. ”
She looks back at me with those trusting eyes, and for just a brief moment, I see a flicker—a tiny twinkle that she might just know what I’m getting at.
“Okay…”
“So, Miss Monroe. I’m going to tutor you. Supplemental sessions in my office.”
She blinks. So innocent. So na?ve. “That’s…so sweet of you to offer, Professor, but I wouldn’t want to be a burden—”
“It wasn’t an offer,” I say firmly. “It’s happening. And I expect to see you today, in my office, after your last class.”
My words come out with a bit more bite than I’d intended. Not the calm, cool, precise voice I used in the operating room when I needed to get something done with no mistakes.
No, I’m cracking inside. Losing hold of the thing I pride myself on most: my control.
Jessie remains very still. My eyes rake her body, down her T-shirt to her jean shorts, the smooth skin of her long legs. I can already tell she’s incredibly fertile. It would be a crime not to breed her as soon as possible.
Finally, she nods. “Okay. That should be around four-thirty.”
“Good.” I don’t want to go, but if I stay here any longer, it’s going to cause a scene. Get people talking. So using all my strength, I stand.
“Um, Professor?” she asks, her sweet voice bubbling up through my bones. “What will we be covering? Maybe if you gave me something to look at, I could prepare in advance—”
“No need for that,” I reply, looking down at her one more time. My eyes will simply not focus anywhere else. “Just come. Today. Four-thirty.”
“Should I bring anything?” she asks. My mind instantly goes to the conversation her friends were having. Shit. Keep it together.
“No,” I say, forcing a smile. “Just your body.”
I should not have said that. Before I say too much again, I turn and walk quickly away. I don’t look back. I know if I do, and I see her sitting there in the sun, looking like the absolute goddess she is, I will lose all control.
I’ll take her right there, right in front of everybody. I’ll fuck her senseless and lose my job and ruin her life forever.
No. Not now. Four-thirty seems like an eternity away, but if I have to wait, I will.
She’s worth it. And she will be mine.