His blue eyes stared back at me, calling to me, reminding me of that night at the Afterglow, when his eyes first drank me in.
“What’s the deal with your stocks, anyway?” I asked. “Or is it real estate? Property? Gold buried somewhere? I’ve heard rumors, but nothing straight from you.”
“I got lucky in the stock market a long time ago. After that, it was a little of everything.”
I could see that, dabbling in the different ways to make money. He seemed like someone who would be good with that. “When do you have time to deal with any of that?”
“I have estate and financial managers,” he said. His tone was nonchalant, as if everyone had people like that working for them. As if he didn’t realize that I was a poor, broke graduate student, like he had apparently never been. “When I was in my twenties, I found the stock market enticing, the rapid nature of change. But none of that matters anymore.”
I wondered what was different now. Had age made the excitement less appealing? Is that why he was teaching? “Do you find working at the university satisfying, then?”
“In a way, yes,” he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, eyes locking with mine, “when I meet people like you.”
If my cheeks weren’t already flushed from the alcohol, I’m sure I would have blushed. I was crumbling under his attention. And his eyes were so blue. Magnificently blue. Like a sapphire stuck at the bottom of a well, sparkling in this magical garden of noodles and sauces.
Where the hell had my mind gone?
“You said you wanted to leave,” I said, trying to shake myself out of it. “Shouldn’t you be at the Afterglow? Not dealing with me.”
“I’m here, Mara.” He stared at me, daring me to fight it, “It’s not ‘dealing with you.’ I’m going to wait with you until I know you’re safe. It’s too easy to be roofied in this town.”
Roofied? Did he want to protect me from being drugged? My mind raced with the contradictions that waltzed inside of Dr. Evans. On the one hand, he wanted to protect me from being taken advantage of in a club, and on the other hand, he had spanked me so hard that I thought for sure my ass would bruise. How did those opposing sides live in one person?
“But it’s okay to spank me?” I asked.
“You weren’t under the influence then,” he said, and somehow, that made it worse, more embarrassing to admit that I couldn’t blame my desires on anything else. “We’re adults. You reminded me of that.”
I had to stop myself from shrinking. There was nothing to be shy about.Hewas the one who had been at the club, spending his weekends demonstrating how to properly use a paddle. I had gone there for one reason: to convince him to be my partner.
But that wasn’t it, was it? As soon as Hazel mentioned the type of club, I knew I had to go. I was curious too.
“Do you really like that stuff?” I asked. Dr. Evans leaned forward. “Bondage. Spanking. Discipline. Whatever.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Have you ever made someone bleed?” I blurted out.
I don’t know why my mind went there. I guess it was the alcohol. But a part of me wanted to think of the extremes: making someone bleed, consensual or not, was out there. And I figured it was a test. Was Dr. Evans more of the furry handcuffs kind of guy, or the more Smith & Wesson legit restraints kind of man?
His eyes flickered away, his mind traveling elsewhere. I waited for a moment, wanting to hear the details of his strange desires, but when nothing came, I itched to keep the conversation going. The buzz was starting to fade, but Dr. Evans didn’t know that. I could pretend I had liquid courage for the rest of the evening, and he wouldn’t know. “I’ve always wondered about that kind of sexuality, you know?” I started babbling, knowing full well that my cheeks were definitely red. “All of it. Dominance as an innate part of the self, submission too, surrendering to desire.” I met his gaze, and his eyes were suddenly focused on me. “It’s interesting.”
He studied me. “Are you trying to flatter me, Mara?”
“Why would I want to flatter you?” Underneath the table, I grasped the fabric of my bag in my palm, squeezing it like a stress ball, trying to keep composure. But Nate’s eyes were on me, observing me, watching my every move. “I never want to live a life where I feel like I’ve wasted my time. Where I regret not doing something I wanted to do.” I don’t know what came over me at that moment, but I felt like I needed to say it. Like he needed to hear it. “I don’t want to die young and wonder about thosewhat-ifs, you know? I want to take full control of my life. I don’t want to feel like I missed out.”
The two of us stared at each other, neither of us willing to be the first to speak. None of what I had said really had to do with BDSM, not directly anyway, and yet it had everything to do with it. There were so many things keeping us apart, that I had to say it.
Keeping us apart.
The fact that he was my adviser, my professor, my mentor. And I was his student. That he was years older than me, maybe decades older, and I was barely twenty-one. What would that look like to other people? Manipulation? Taking advantage of the situation? That I was fucking my way to the top of my class?
Why was I even considering any of that right now?
“What are you afraid of missing?” he asked.
The question was like a knife cutting through the frantic questions, his low voice giving me subtle shivers that crawled up my stomach. “Well, that kind of stuff, I guess.”
“What kind of stuff?”
