Page 45 of Teach Me Your Ways

19

GRADY

It was the hottest single kiss of my life and I had to end it. The second my brain cleared from the fog, reality crashed down like a cold wave. What the hell had I just done? I’d gone down on my student in a university locker room. My teaching assistant. On campus property.

I stepped back, running a hand through my damp hair, trying to process the magnitude of my stupidity. “Fuck. Cece, we can’t—this was⁠—”

“A mistake,” she finished quietly, reaching for a towel to clean her hands. Her voice was steady, but I caught the slight tremor underneath. “I know. We both got carried away.”

“We crossed a line that we can’t uncross.” I pulled my swim trunks back up, my hands shaking slightly. “This could destroy both our careers.”

She nodded, pulling her bikini bottoms back into place. “You’re right. We just needed to get that tension out of our systems, right? Clear the air? We didn’t technically have sex.”

The clinical way she said it stung more than it should have. Like what we’d just shared was nothing more than a biological function that needed addressing. But maybe that was exactly what it was. Maybe that was all it could be. We both got off. It wasn’t exactly the way I had imagined, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Right,” I agreed, though the word tasted bitter. “Just releasing tension.”

She stood, wrapping a towel around her waist. “It won’t happen again.”

“It can’t happen again,” I corrected, hating how formal I sounded. How distant.

“No,” she said, meeting my eyes briefly before looking away. “It can’t.”

We stood there for a moment in awkward silence, the weight of what we’d done hanging between us like a wall neither of us could tear down. I didn’t know if I should apologize. Was that a dick thing to do? I had never felt the need to apologize before.

“I should go,” she said finally.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“See you in class, Professor.”

The formality in her voice was like a knife to the chest. “See you in class, Ms. Monroe.”

I drove straight to the beach after leaving campus, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles went white. The taste of her was still on my lips, the memory of her soft moans echoing in my head like a song I couldn’t turn off. What the hell was wrong with me?

I parked at the public access and kicked off my shoes, not bothering to change into proper running gear. The sand was still warm from the afternoon sun. I took off at a punishing pace, trying to outrun the images burned into my brain. The way she looked at me when I was on my knees in front of her. The way she’d whispered my name. The way her hands had felt wrapped around my cock.

Dining on her was not enough. It was a tease. A promise of what would be a mind-blowing experience. Sex with Cece would forever change me. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I felt it in my bones.

My feet pounded against the packed sand near the water’s edge, each step harder than the last. A couple of early evening joggers passed me going the other direction, probably wondering why some maniac was sprinting down the beach and growling.

I’d been teaching there for four years. Four years of maintaining professional boundaries, of keeping appropriate distance from students, of never even being tempted to cross that line. And then she walked into my life and my carefully constructed world was blown to pieces.

Why her? Of all the women I could be attracted to, why did it have to be one who was completely off-limits? The one person who could cost me everything I’d worked for?

I slowed to a walk, my lungs burning, sweat dripping down my face. The logical part of my brain kept trying to minimize what had happened. We hadn’t had sex. Technically, we just had separate orgasms. But even as I tried to convince myself it wasn’t that serious, I knew I was lying. The way I’d felt with my mouth on her, the way she’d responded to my touch—that wasn’t just physical release. That was something deeper, something dangerous.

It wasn’t just the sex—it was everything. The way she looked in the water, graceful and confident, like it was where she belonged. The way she’d made me laugh with that pirate name nonsense.

She was dangerous. Not just because she was my TA, though yeah, that was bad enough. No, the real problem was that it felt like more. It felt like something I wasn’t supposed to have.

The dean’s voice rang in my head like an alarm bell. If Lina found out about what happened, I had no doubt in my mind she would twist things. The thing with Cece would be turned into something ugly.

I flopped down in the sand, sweat-soaked and raw. The tide was out and the sun was starting to go down. Everything was all yellow and gold and it should have been relaxing but I couldn’t shake off the dread.

What the hell was I doing?

I wasn’t built for relationships. Not the kind that required dinner plans and remembering anniversaries. I traveled too much. I taught too much. I wanted to do too much.