Perhaps she felt out of place because I was there.
She had only invited me because I was her adviser, her mentor,her partnerin the contest. Perhaps she had invited me to sweeten the deal, to get me to ease up, to be on her side when I vowed never to stick to one argument. Mara would flip sides as soon as the weather favored it, like everyone else. She couldn’t be trusted.
I downed the rest of my beer and moved to leave. There was an Afterglow party that I could make. It was more of my scene anyway.
“I should go,” I said.
“What? No!” Mara whined. “Stay with us. Stay with me.”
Her tone caught me off guard, a weakness in the request. What had reduced her to such tactics of manipulation? She couldn’t have actually wanted me there.
“You only invited me because I’m your adviser,” I hissed. “This is no place for discussion—”
“What? Are you afraid I’ll win an argument about Berkley again?” she asked, suddenly playful. Her hand landed on my arm, and I looked at it, where her hand touched me. It was purposeful, wasn’t it? She smiled, and there was flirtation in her eyes as she wandered toward me. The tight shirt over her breasts, snug, made her chest look ample. I remembered how glorious her ass had felt in my hands.
Again,she had said, as if she had won the first argument. I begged to differ.
“Are you taunting me, Mara?”
“Oh, Dr. Evans, on the contrary,” she squeezed her grip on my arm slightly, then relaxed, “I’m inviting you to a friendly game of wits.”
There was no doubt in my mind that she was flirting with me. Her lips were pursed, and like a minx, she was baiting me. She had what she wanted; I was in a partnership with her. Now she wanted to tease. My mind wandered, thinking of the ways I could teach Mara a lesson, discipline her like a teacher ought to. Spank her over a desk. Show her what happened when you played a game of wits with an expert. I licked my lips.
And then she stumbled into me, tripping over her own feet.
I grabbed onto her, holding her upright, the scent of lilac and sweat wafting up to me. How the hell did she always smell so good? She balanced herself. The other students looked at her, then at me, as if wondering why I was holding her up, but I didn’t move. With balance like that, she could easily lose her stance again.
“You all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her cheeks reddened, matching her shirt. “I knew something like this was going to happen.”
“Something like this?”
“I’m not used to alcohol.”
I studied her for a moment. Mara was young, but most graduate students knew how to handle their alcohol. But this was Vegas. You had to expect the unexpected, especially when it came to partying, even at a graduate event.
The concerned teacher came out in me. I didn’t take Mara to be a partier. Had she been drugged?
“You watched the bartenders pour the drinks?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“It’s my third beer.”
“Your third tonight?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, then added, “and ever. Like ever, ever. Like I’ve only had a few drinks of alcohol in my entire life.”
Jesus. How young was she? “You’re over twenty-one, right?” I couldn’t believe I had to ask that. It’s not like I was out with a teenager straight out of high school. This was why I didn’t fraternize with students.
But she had only tripped. It wasn’t a big deal. The truth was that I was mad at myself for flirting back.
“Twenty-one years and about sixteen days. Maybe it’s sixty-one days? I don’t know.” She looked around sheepishly. “Math is not my subject.”
Twenty-one and a handful of days? The third alcoholic drink in her entire life.
