Any other student would probably deflate at that, give up this wildly inappropriate fantasy. But not Maeve.
She just smiles, catlike.
And I get the feeling I just added accelerant to her fire.
“You don’t believe that,” she says, voice light, as if we’re discussing what we might order at a café rather than crossing boundaries that could get usboththrown from this academy. She straightens up and takes two steps, slowly starting around the edge of my desk, like a lioness closing in on her prey.
I stand firm, still feeling that internal battle between fleeing and fighting. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Miss Vandermere.”
“No?” She makes it around the desk, and she’s next to me now, her smell overwhelming my senses. “Let me explain.” Her hand finds mine on the desk, her fingertips tracing my skin, sending heat through my veins. “Do you remember the lecture you gave on the Tempest Cataclysm?”
I flick my gaze to her, eyes narrowing. “Of course. I’m the one who taught it.”
She ignores my brief irritation. “You said the conclave failed because they tried to anchor something that was never meant to be still. They thought restraint would make the storms safe.”
My teeth clench together. I believe I know where she’s going with this, and I don’t like it.
“But it didn’t make them safer.” Her fingers slip between mine. “It made them more dangerous.”
“That is an ungrounded comparison,” I say, though my voice is rougher now. I struggle to fight back the thirst rising inside me at Maeve’s close proximity. “The storms leveled the city.”
“And denial destroyed the conclave. You said it yourself, Professor: Control is an illusion.” She releases my hand, reaching up to touch my cheek, turning my head to face her. My skin tingles at the contact. “You’re doing the same thing. You’re trying to anchor yourself. And we know how that ends, don’t we?” Maeve tips her head, exposing more of her smooth throat.
I swallow hard. “This ends badly,” I whisper.
Her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “Maybe. Or maybe the danger is in trying to restrain it.” She moves closer, so close I can see the varying shades of purple in her eyes—from spring lavender to the purple clouds that threaten violent storms.
My whole life is about restraint: Restraining my hunger. Restraining my power. Restraining the predator that lurks inside me at every moment of every day. And I became proficient at it over the decades and centuries.
But all it took was one storm witch to start unraveling that tapestry of control, one shimmering thread at a time. And now she has those threads wrapped around her little finger.
“Maybe,” Maeve continues, voice lower now, “instead of trying to control this storm, you should let it rage.”
“You are the storm,” I whisper, my façade of restraint cracking bit by bit.
Maeve’s lips quirk up in the corner. “Are you afraid of getting wet?”
This warrants a small scoff from me. “No.”
Her fingers close around my vest, anchoring me to her. Her stormy purple eyes narrow. “Thenprove it.”
My foundation crumbles, just like it did in the stairwell, just like I’ve dreamt of time and time again.
In a fraction of a moment, I have my hands around her waist, and I’m lifting her onto my desk, then curving over her, meeting her hungry lips with my own. She tastes sweet, like honey and chamomile, and her smell wraps around me, making my blood race.
Her legs are on either side of my hips, and one of my hands finds her thigh. Her skin is smooth and warm, tempting in all the ways it shouldn’t be. My fingers press into her flesh, wanting to climb higher, wanting to slip beneath the edge of that maddening skirt and discover what’s waiting there for me.
Maeve pulls back from our kiss, pressing her hands to my chest. “Wait,” she gasps.
At first, I’m irritated at the interruption. But then my logic catches up to me.
This is good. Maybe she’s come to her senses. Maybe she’ll be the one to stop this, to save us from—
With a wave of her hand, a gust of air goes through my office, and the lock on my door turns, the tumbler rumbling loudly in the achingly quiet space.
When she turns her face up to look at me, wearing that smile that haunts my dreams, I know she has no intention of stopping this.
And neither do I.
