She hitSendbefore the flood of adrenaline left her system, and she had a panicked moment of wondering if she’d made a mistake. But the reply was in her inbox as soon as she hitRefresh.
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re:(No Subject)
Come over.
She flew out her door. The cold air stung her cheeks—she hadn’t grabbed a jacket—but she didn’t slow her pace. She walked like a woman possessed, each step sure, each stride long. The campus had never seemed so expansive, each quad of inky-black grass somehow, impossibly, a football field now. She passed the late-night commissary on her left, the place where chicken fingers and quesadillas could be bought with a swipe of a student ID card after midnight, and managed to avoid a few drunken underclassmen calling out what might have been compliments in her direction. Ellsbeth kept her clip as her thighs burned until she was through campus and climbing the hill where Professor Rawlins’s Victorian house sat perched.
Once she reached his house, the dreamlike quality of the entire situation began to fade. She was standing outside her professor’s door, breathing heavily, with her sneakers and the hems of her jeans damp with mud. What would he say when he opened the door? There was a chance, Ellsbeth knew, that he would admonish her, send her home. Worse, that he wouldn’t open the door at all. Had she imagined his email response? She almost reached into her pocket to check her phone when the door swung open.
Rawlins was wearing a T-shirt stretched low enough to expose his chest hair, and a pair of jeans. She had never seen him in jeans before. He was barefoot.
“I saw you out on the porch,” he said. “Do you want to come in?” Ellsbeth didn’t answer.
It was like gravity, then, a movement so fast and inevitable that it would be impossible to know who had started it, and how it had started. Ellsbeth had been standing on Rawlins’s porch, and then she had taken a step forward through his door, and then they were entangled in each other, kissing harder and deeper than seemed possible. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her in closer and she felt her hands make their way behind his head, her fingers entangling themselves in his thick hair.
He pulled away quicker than she would have liked, and stared at her. “This is a bad idea,” he said.
Ellsbeth didn’t argue. She just leaned in to kiss him again.
They kissed as if they needed each other like air, their bodies pressing in to fill in all the empty space between them. Rawlins’s arms werethin, but they were surprisingly strong, pulling Ellsbeth closer into his warm chest.
Her brain was on fire. There were no rational thoughts to be had. The only thing in her mind wasmore.More of his tongue in her mouth, more of his fist in her hair, more of his lips as they made their way down her neck. She was drunk on his touch, hungry for him in a way she didn’t know was possible. Had this been what the movies and songs had always been about? Had everyone else been feelingthisthe entire time?
They were still standing in his foyer, Ellsbeth’s hands running down Rawlins’s chest, when he broke the kiss and pulled back.
“Ellsbeth,” he said, and the way he said her name sounded like prayer. His eyes moved over her, studying her, like he was trying to memorize her. It was nothing like the meticulous way she had seen him study the pages of books or proposals. He was gazing at her with such an earnestness, she knew with abject certainty that the strange and inexplicable hunger gnawing at her from the inside out—the vise-grip like a clenched fist in the center of her chest—was something he felt, too.
“Your eyes look different in this light,” she said. She had only ever been this close to him during the ritual, when her wrists were immobilized and her hands were around his neck. But now her hands trailed down his chest, feeling the ridges of his stomach muscles through his T-shirt. “They’re a little green in the middle, did you know that?”
Rawlins kept staring at Ellsbeth, kept his hands touching her body like he was afraid if he broke contact with her she would disappear.
After a moment of silence, he inhaled a ragged breath. “Ellsbeth, I don’t want to fuck any of this up. You’re…You’re brilliant. And your thesis is—” He swallowed. “Your work is so important. Your future is so important. If this is a mistake…” He trailed off, but she understood what he was trying to say, even if the words weren’t coming out the way he wanted themto.
There was a threshold they were crossing here, a step into the unknown with consequences that might unravel them both.
“It’s not against any rules,” Ellsbeth said.
“It’s against thespiritof the rules,” he said, but he didn’t remove his hands from her hips.
Ellsbeth leaned in to feel the rough shadow of his stubble against her cheek, nuzzling him like an animal, already addicted to his smell. “I’m twenty-four years old,” she murmured into his ear. “I’m an adult. Acolleague.”
Rawlins moaned and took a step back. “I’m finding you a new adviser tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Don’t you dare.”
And then they were kissing again, frenetic with the energy of teenagers, hands and mouths and tongues and skin pressing against each other until somehow they fell onto Rawlins’s overstuffed leather couch. Ellsbeth swung one leg over him, straddling him, pressing their foreheads together. She pulled off her shirt and then tugged at Rawlins’s. He understood, ripping the shirt off with a single clean motion, revealing his chest hair and his toned stomach. She could feel his erection through his jeans, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take off more clothes. His arms stayed wrapped around Ellsbeth, holding her tight, and his gaze stayed locked on her.
She mussed his hair and bit his ear. She ran her teeth down his neck and then took his hand and kissed every one of his fingers. He closed his hand around hers and brought her hand up to his lips to kiss it like an old-fashioned beau. Something in her heart burst open then, a back cellar she hadn’t even realized was boarded shut. His touch felt like yellow sunlight streaming through a clean window, and suddenly being here, touching him, was the only thing in the world that mattered. “Ellsbeth,” he said quietly, “how is it possible I want you this much?”
She kissed him and couldn’t stop the wide, spreading smile that caused their teeth to clink. She pulled away, wondering if her teenage thrill at touching him was visible on her face. “Do you have a condom?” she asked.
He blinked as her words registered. “Yes,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Somewhere. Don’t move.”
“You can always use writ magic on me,” Ellsbeth said as he strode to the bathroom.
