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Dread starts to shade my happiness, but I ignore it. I want to ignore it as long as I can. How am I supposed to tell her that being together could ruin me? I’m her professor. In charge of her grade. Board members are required to be above reproach—and fucking a student is the exact opposite. Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening. She’s my dream come true, but reality could keep us apart. “You’re a photography major,” I say gruffly, wanting to hold on to this moment as long as possible. “What do you like to shoot?”
“Silly things,” she whispers, her eyes sparkling. “My favorite picture I ever took was a drunk bridesmaid at my cousin’s wedding. She danced the entire cha cha slide with her dress stuck in her pantyhose. I want my pictures to make people laugh.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I murmur, planting a kiss on her bare shoulder. “You brought up saggy balls before you even told me your name.”
Her giggle warms me head to toe. “You can’t say I didn’t make an impression.”
“God, yes, you did.” The smile slowly bleeds from my face, a rupture taking place deep inside of me. “Alana, relationships between professors and students—”
“Oh come on,” she breaks in with a sad laugh, her voice wavering. “Can’t we pretend rules don’t exist just a little bit longer?”
That will teach me to underestimate this girl. When we walked into my office, she already knew this was coming. On top of being beautiful, intelligent and funny as hell, she’s astute. I can’t really be expected to let her go, can I? “I’m afraid we can’t pretend much longer,” I say, the tick of the wall clock echoing loudly in my ears. “I’m on my way to an interview for the university board of directors. I’ve been working toward this for years and it comes down to today’s vote.” I look her in the eye and I can see she’s already braced herself. “There is no official rule here against a professor dating his student. But the board would never allow it from a member. Especially…God, Alana, you’re a freshman. Eighteen.”
“Isn’t that one of the things you love about me, Daddy?” she whispers against my ear, her thighs cinching tighter around my hips.
The room spins around me. I can feel the throb of my cock in my stomach, my fingertips. I want to bang her against this door, to hell with the rules. But I can’t. “Play fair, Alana.”
“Sorry,” she breathes, a sheen glazing her eyes. “It’s out of my system now.”
Our lips graze and we both moan at the lightning contact. “Is it?”
“It has to be, right?” No longer looking at me, she drops her legs from around my lower body and wiggles out from between me and the door. “Look…” Breathing heavily, she stoops down and picks up her textbook, holding it in front of herself like a shield. “The last thing I want to do is hurt your career, Gavin. Especially considering you’re the reason I get to be here.”
“Don’t say that,” I rasp, loathing the distance she’s put between us.
“It’s true.”
She shrugs jerkily—and I can see I’ve lost her. I had her when we walked in here, but I’ve lost her now. Despite her astuteness, she followed me into my office with hope. That I would know how to make a relationship between us work. But I’ve let her down, haven’t I? The failure of it almost chokes me. In that moment, I’m desperate to take back everything I said. About the board of directors. About the rules. None of it seems to matter when that trust I won from Alana is gone from her eyes. Evaporated like it was never there.
It’s been a long-standing goal of mine to be on the board of directors. They will never vote me in if I—a thirty-three-year-old man—presume to date this fresh-faced teenager. But while my career makes me happy, have I ever been happier than when I’m with Alana?
Have I ever been more myself?
Oh Jesus, I’ve fucked up. I took too long to make the right decision.
And now I’ve lost her trust. An aching void exists where it used to be.
“Alana—”
“I’ll never tell anyone. I swear.” She smiles bravely, but it wobbles. “It never happened.”
The hell it didn’t.
To my utter horror, the tears are beginning to spill from her eyes and she lunges for the door, her face stained red. I catch the door as she opens it, intending to follow, then drag her back into my office and apologize until I run out of breath, but one of my colleagues is standing in my doorway, his fist raised to knock. “Oh.” He glances at Alana suspiciously, then over to me. “I was just coming to collect you for the interview. The board is ready.”
