Chapter 14
CECE
I drove my dying Honda home half-blind on a mixture of disappointment, lust, and self-loathing.
The entire way I kept replaying that moment in the parking lot: his hands, the way he fixed my car, the way his hands almost found their way to my hips.
The way he stopped. Again. He was really good at stopping right before the point of no return.
I slapped at the steering wheel. “I’m losing my fucking mind,” I muttered. He was driving me crazy.
First of all, he was my professor. My boss.
The power dynamic was all kinds of fucked up, even if I felt like I held all the cards when he looked at me like he wanted to devour me whole.
Second, I had a job to do. Dean Carver was expecting me to dig up dirt on him, not literally throw myself at him like some desperate co-ed.
Three, I had worked too damn hard to get here.
I’d sacrificed everything to get this position.
I gave up time with my daughter, financial stability, my pride.
I wasn’t about to throw it all away because Professor Stone had magic hands and made my panties wet just by breathing in my general direction.
But God, the way he’d leaned over that engine, muscles flexing under his shirt, hair falling across his forehead as he worked. The casual competence of it. The way he’d looked at me afterward, like he wanted to press me against that car and finish what we’d started in his office.
I pulled to a stop in front of the house and cut the engine. I headed inside and kicked off the stupid boots and immediately felt three inches shorter and infinitely more grounded. I needed to get my head on straight. I needed to remember why I was really here.
Mom was already in bed. I checked in on Sophie before going back to the kitchen to raid the fridge. I quickly made myself a sandwich and flopped on the couch. I stared at the wall, chewing the ham and cheese without really tasting it.
The whole situation was completely insane when I really thought about it.
Dean Carver had specifically asked me to spy on Professor Stone, to catch him in the act of sleeping with students.
She’d painted this picture of him as some predatory professor who couldn’t keep it in his pants, who was using his position to seduce naive co-eds left and right.
But one student who was very interested in getting in his bed didn’t even turn his head.
Lina was beautiful and could have any man—young or old.
I was literally the only student he’d gotten anywhere close to being inappropriate with that I had seen.
And even then, when things had gotten heated in his office, the moment he realized I was a student, it had killed the mood faster than a bucket of ice water.
He’d practically launched himself across the room to get away from me.
The man who was supposedly preying on students had stopped mid-make-out session because I was a student.
I rubbed my temple with my free hand, trying to make sense of it all.
If Grady Stone was really the campus Casanova that Carver made him out to be, wouldn’t he have pressed his advantage?
Wouldn’t he have locked that office door and finished what we’d started?
Instead, he’d been the one to pump the brakes.
He’d been the one to remind me of all the reasons we couldn’t do what we both clearly wanted to do.
And tonight at the bar, with Lina practically throwing herself at him, offering herself up on a silver platter, what had he done? He’d been polite. Professional. He’d actually been irritated with her open flirting.
Was the dean going to be mad if I said I didn’t see him do anything wrong?
I’d never asked to be involved in Dean Carver’s witch hunt in the first place.
I just wanted to get my doctorate and start a steady career in the field I loved.
I hadn’t expected plotting faculty and catty TAs and a professor who was sexy as hell.
No wonder they called ZU the Zoo. Shit was getting crazy up in here.
I finished my sandwich and leaned back against the couch cushions, staring at the ceiling.
The whole thing felt wrong. Carver had made Grady sound like some kind of creep, but everything I’d witnessed suggested the opposite.
He was careful about boundaries. Professional.
If anything, I was the one pushing limits, not him.
So why did Carver want him gone so badly? What was I missing? Carver clearly had it out for him. Part of me wondered if her vendetta was purely personal. Was it possible he had rejected her in the past and she wasn’t taking it well?
It was possible, especially since I couldn’t see anything wrong with his conduct professionally. But if she was after Grady like so many other women on campus, that was a lofty goal. Even I knew I was punching above my weight with him. Grady was calendar hot.
I could see Lina landing him. Me? I had a passing chance, clearly. Carver? Pigs would fly first before she ever turned his head. Did he give her the impression there was a chance? From what I had seen, Grady was polite. Decent. Easy going. Maybe she took his easy-going personality for flirting.
I shook my head. It was ridiculous and a distraction. Finishing my degree was the prize. Not some fantasy about my professor that would only end in disaster for both of us.
So what if I knew exactly how his hard cock felt pressed against me through his jeans?
So what if I could still feel the phantom touch of his strong hands gripping my hips, pulling me closer?
So what if my lips still tingled from the memory of his mouth on mine, demanding and hungry and absolutely perfect?
None of that mattered. It couldn’t matter.
I squeezed my thighs together as heat pooled low in my belly, my body betraying me with its reaction to just thinking about him.
The way he’d looked at me tonight, like he wanted to consume me whole.
The way his knee had pressed against mine under that table, sending electricity shooting through my entire nervous system.
The way he’d almost kissed me in that parking lot before pulling back like I was radioactive.
My panties were already damp just from replaying it all in my head. This was exactly the problem. I couldn’t think straight around him, couldn’t even think straight when he wasn’t around, apparently.
I groaned and pushed myself off the couch. I needed to get my shit together, and I needed to do it now.
“Get a grip, Cece,” I whispered.
I turned on the shower, turning it to just above freezing.
I quickly stripped, desperate to put out the fire burning through my body.
The cold water hit my skin like needles but it didn’t help.
If anything, the shock made me more aware of every nerve ending in my body, every place he’d touched me, every place I wanted him to touch me again.
I pressed my forehead against the cool tile wall and tried to think about anything else.
Archeological methodologies. Diving safety checklists. My dissertation proposal.
Nothing worked. My mind kept circling back to the way his voice had dropped to that low, gravelly tone when he’d said he was in hell.
The way his eyes had darkened when I’d wrapped my lips around that beer bottle.
The way he’d looked at me like he was drowning and I was the only thing that could save him.
I turned the water even colder and gritted my teeth. This was insane. I was a grown woman, a mother, a graduate student with responsibilities and goals. I wasn’t some lovesick teenager mooning over her teacher.
I finished my shower quickly and wrapped myself in a towel, still feeling overheated despite the arctic water temperature.
This had to stop. I had to find a way to compartmentalize these feelings, to shove them into a box and focus on what was going to matter in ten years.
There would be a man eventually. The ache I felt would go away.
The cold shower did little to cool the fire within me, but it offered clarity. I needed to focus, to remember why I was here. I quietly shut my bedroom door and dropped my towel. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall.
I wasn’t skinny. My thighs were thick and I had the persistent pooch low on my belly that refused to go away. If I did somehow find myself in bed with Grady, this was the view he would get. Would he still want me if he saw me naked?
I wasn’t one of the sexy little co-eds he was surrounded by every day.
I wasn’t ashamed of my body, but I wasn’t a size two.
I had no aspirations to be a size two. I had a baby.
My body was forever changed. I was a woman, not some horny teenager.
Being a horny teenager was what made me a mother at the ripe age of eighteen.
I turned away from the mirror and pulled on an oversized T-shirt and cotton panties, then crawled into bed. Of course, the moment I closed my eyes it was him I saw. The man was under my skin.
I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, my mind replaying every heated glance, every accidental touch, every moment of tension from the evening. When I finally drifted off, my dreams were filled with strong hands and green eyes and the phantom taste of lips I’d barely gotten to sample.
I woke up hot and bothered, sheets twisted around my legs, my body humming with unfulfilled desire. The digital clock showed it was just after three. Perfect. I had class in six hours and I felt like I’d been hit by a truck driven by sexual frustration.
And I had a feeling the condition was going to be permanent. There was only one antidote, and it was off limits.