Rawlins’s mouth was tight. “I suppose if—” He caught himself, shaking whatever thought he had out of his head. “No.”
“What?”
“This is all academic, of course. It’s not as though you would ever have any intention ofusingobscuration, even if you could—and I’m not saying you could—produce a functional ritual.”
“No,” Ellsbeth said quickly. “Of course not.”
“Well then,academically,I might have a few ideas of where to start.” Rawlins turned away from the bookshelf and took one step closer to Ellsbeth. “Give me a few days, and I’ll pull some material for you on your…pet project.” The word “pet” curled in his mouth as he said it, and Ellsbeth felt a shiver run from her belly button up to her chest.
“I suppose my pet project will wait until then. But don’t take too long,” Ellsbeth said. “I’m terrible at being patient.”
“You are,” Rawlins said. “I’ve noticed.”
“It’s too bad I haven’t mastered obscuration yet. I could get you to give me those books right away.”
“But then what would be the point? If you mastered obscuration, you could write the books yourself.”
Ellsbeth smiled at that, and the familiar electric charge between them caused that buzzing sound in her brain again. On instinct sheslipped past Rawlins and sat in his office chair. “Maybe I would just want the fun of bossing you around.” She swiveled a few times in the chair experimentally. “Comfortable,” she said.
“It’s a small office,” Rawlins said. “But it has its perks.”
“Such as?”
“Such as…there are no other professors on this side of the floor, which affords me a level of quiet and privacy I find conducive to my work. When I’m not distracted.”
“Have you been distracted lately?” Ellsbeth asked, spreading her legs slightly, and hoping he would notice. He did.
“Yes, Ellsbeth. I have been very distracted.”
“Good.”This is strictly professional,Ellsbeth reminded herself. It had to be. And yet she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Have you?” Rawlins said, and Ellsbeth was delighted to hear the lilt of longing in his voice. “Been…distracted?”
“No,” Ellsbeth said matter-of-factly. “I haven’t thought about you at all.” She didn’t let him break eye contact, and she let herself smile, just a little.
Rawlins groaned then and let his head loll on his neck. He leaned back onto his desk, and looked over at her. “This shouldn’t be possible. I shouldn’t be feeling the way I feel about you right now.”
“What way is that?”
“Wanting you this badly.”
Ellsbeth felt a pulse between her legs.
And then Rawlins leaned forward and bracketed her in the desk chair with his arms. He loomed over her and hovered there, waiting, like a ball caught in the moment of zero gravity at the top of its trajectory.
Ellsbeth let her eyes trace over Rawlins slowly, drinking him in—his thick brown hair only beginning to be streaked with gray, his strong arms in a dress shirt pushed up to reveal the sinews of his forearms, and his perfect blue eyes that were still looking directly at her.
There had probably been other girls in this office before, Ellsbeth knew. She wasn’t a fool, and she wouldn’t let herself become one. He probably slept with students every semester. Every pretty graduate student he advised for years had probably come here and melted under the power of his gaze. Girls probably threw themselves at him,hoping that his genius was sexually transferable, or that sex with him would make them more interesting or prove something about themselves that they didn’t believe. Sex with her professor wasn’t just a strategically terrible decision; it was a humiliation. It turned her into a cliché, a joke. It did seem like he cared about her—that he really wanted her—but that might be all part of his larger game: Show a girl your bleeding heart, pretend you’re desperate for her, pretend she’s unique so that she feels special.
As soon as his conquest was over, Rawlins could dismiss her thoughtlessly, leaving behind only the crumbled remnants of what had once been her dignity and his respect for her academic promise.
So why were her legs parting? Why did she feel herself take her right hand and move it up her thighs inside her skirt? Rawlins bit his lip—heactuallybit his lip. Ellsbeth had never seen a man do that outside of the movies. “Should I close the blinds?” he said quietly.
Ellsbeth just nodded, and in a heartbeat Rawlins was up and across the room, adjusting the shades. Ellsbeth reached down to peel her underwear down her legs, still sitting in his desk chair.
In an instant, Rawlins was back at the chair and had lowered himself onto his knees, between her legs. He pushed her skirt up to her waistband. “I want to taste you,” he said. And he looked up at her with an expression that she knew then would play on repeat in her mind for the rest of her life. His voice was low and soft. “But you’re going to have to beg for it.”
Now Ellsbeth groaned. She could feel the wetness between her legs, the hot, pulsingwant.“I want you,” she said.
