Page 67 of Teach Me Your Ways

27

GRADY

Isat alone at my desk, the late-afternoon light highlighting the dust in the air. I was used to the dust. I kind of thrived in it. I didn’t spend a lot of time in my small office and couldn’t see the need to regularly clean the place. It was slightly chaotic. I didn’t have all the neat and tidy bookshelves like other professors. I had a few trinkets from digs I had been on, but nothing of real value.

I had quizzes to grade from all of my classes. I had them in neat stacks to keep them sorted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting very far. My mind kept drifting, pulled back to Cece and the way she’d looked at me when I told her she couldn’t go on the dive trip. That fire in her eyes and the anger that practically bubbled out of her. It was hot. Sexy as hell. It had taken everything in me not to pull her into my arms and tell her I was an idiot. But I couldn’t. I was an idiot, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d made the right call.

I rubbed my temples, trying to shake off the image of her storming away from The Library, her red hair catching the sunlight like a flame. She was so damn stubborn, so determined to prove she could handle anything. And I suspected she could, but that didn’t mean I was wrong for wanting to protect her. Did it?

I forced myself to check the quiz, using my red pen to write a note in the margin. Cece had more diving experience in her pinky finger than most of my students had in their entire bodies. She didn’t need me to protect her from a storm. She needed me to trust her.

The quizzes should have been easy to grade. Mostly multiple choice, but the essay questions were where things got tricky. I couldn’t seem to focus on what I was reading. They could be writing about what shoes to wear with a skirt and I wouldn’t know the difference.

“Dammit,” I muttered.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. About the way she’d felt in my arms, the way her body had responded to mine. The memory of her skin against mine, the sound of her moans, the way she’d looked at me with those fiery blue eyes—it was all burned into my brain. I could still feel the heat of her. And then there was the way she’d tasted, like salt and sweetness, like something I could never get enough of. My cock jumped, practically pounding against the underside of my desk.

I shifted in my chair, trying to focus on the quiz in front of me, but it was no use. Sexy images kept flashing through my mind. There was no stopping the slide show of her on my kitchen counter. Her on the couch. Me between her thighs in the locker room.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I knew I’d screwed up. I’d thrown out all my rules and made a mess of things. But damn if I could bring myself to regret it. Not when it had felt so right. Not when she had felt so right.

Don’t fuck Cece. Don’t fuck Cece.

I picked up the next quiz. This was a job for my TAs. They should be grading the quizzes. It was simple enough work, but I was being a big fat coward. I couldn’t face Cece. And I didn’t want to deal with Lina. So, instead of using the assistants as they were intended, I was hiding and doing the tedious job myself.

A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts, which might just be a good thing, considering I was stuck in a Cece spiral.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Lina walked in, and it wasn’t a good thing at all.

She smiled. “Hi, what are you up to?”

“Working,” I answered.

I didn’t mean to sound annoyed, but I was. Lina was the kind of person that found your last nerve and played it like a banjo. I didn’t know if it was intentional, but it felt like it.

“I can help with that,” she said. “Those are the quizzes from the other day, right?”

I didn’t miss the fact she was dressed like she was going out to the club. Did she actually walk around campus like that? Sit in some boring lecture with her hair done and her boobs practically falling out of her shirt. Her hair was perfectly styled, and her shirt was cut low enough to leave little to the imagination. She flashed me a bright smile and I was grateful it was all she flashed at me.

“Don’t you have class?” I asked.

“Nope.” She perched on the edge of my desk, crossing her legs in a way that was probably meant to be alluring but just made me want to roll my eyes.

“Then sure, I could use some help getting through this,” I said, handing her a stack of quizzes. “Start with these.”

She took them with a smile, but instead of getting to work, she started flipping through them like they were some kind of gossip magazine. “So, what’s new with you?”

I sighed inwardly. “Not much. Just trying to get these graded.”

She grabbed one of the pens and moved to sit in the chair on the other side of my desk. “You know, you should come out with us sometime. We’re going to The Library tonight. It’ll be fun.”

“I’m busy,” I said curtly, focusing on the quiz in front of me. I didn’t want anything beyond a professional relationship with Lina, and unlike with Cece, I actually meant it.

She got quiet, which was not normal. I glanced up to find Lina still flipping through the quizzes, not actually reading them. She was twirling a pen between her fingers and giving me that look—the one that said she was more interested in getting me naked on the desk than actually grading anything.

“I was thinking maybe we could be dive buddies,” she cooed, her voice taking on that breathy quality that some women thought was sexy. To me, it sounded like she needed an inhaler. “You know, for safety.”