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“Oh, this particular circumstance ismostuncommon, Miss Foxboro,” he replied with meaning, measuring me with a critical eye. He didn’t believe me. “The front door is locked. Ms. Dillard makes sure of it every night, and no one has come into this room, unless, of course, you count yourself.”
As he spoke, he walked toward me in a lazy, evocative amble, the half-finished glass in his hand. He seemed to be giving me time to retreat, but the tilt of his head, the satyric look in his eyes, suggested that if I ran he would pursue me.
“I didn’t realize this was your room.” I had nothing else to say. Trying to argue it would have made things worse. I needed to leave and process what had happened before attempting to face my mortification and all the new questions raised.
“Mmm, but I’m sure youdorealize we are here, alone together in the dark of night,” he replied, still advancing. “I feel like this has happened before.”
“Professor…” I tried to sound level-headed, chastising, but it was barely possible with his tall, broad body moving forward the way it was, prowling.
“Once again, you are in nothing but a threadbare nightdress.”
The words themselves weren’t what encouraged heat to quake through me. It was the timbre of his voice, low and dangerous, full of warning and promises a decent woman should disdain.
His honey eyes were set on me with such intensity that I felt bare, and I crossed an arm over my chest. The horror of the previous moments were dulled, replaced with an urgent awareness of my scarcely clad body, and the way his nearness made it hum with deranged yearning.
One corner of his mouth lifted into a mocking grin. “At a loss for words? You seemed perfectly capable of speech yesterday. Quite scalding speech if I remember.”
Still too warm and off balance, I used the only weapon I still had my wits to wield—indignance.
“You’re exaggerating,” I said firmly.
He took another of the smallest steps, and though my unhinged instinct was to lean into him, I forced myself to take a dignified shuffle back toward the exit, only to misjudge the direction and run my hip into the corner of a side table, hard enough to disrupt the vase there. I sucked in a startled breath, and the professor moved confidently to catch the urn as it fell, righting it again and bringing him closer than ever. We’d been this near in the library many times, scanning and notating manuscripts, but that had been business done in the pure light of day, and now, as he’d noted, we were alone in the dark.
Despite how my body responded, I remained defiant and didn’t attempt to shirk away again.
“What should I do to prevent you from forgetting my warnings?” he murmured, his gaze making a deliberate path from my mouth to the arm I still held as a shield against my chest. “Throw you over my knee?”
The image of being draped across his lap inspired a small tremor, and he smiled, slow and treacherous. I unwisely looked away, trying to gather my wits. This near, I could smell the rich scent of the whiskey on him, notes of oak and peat, smoky and dangerous. I was eye level with the smooth skin beneath his collarbones, and the pulse that moved in the hollow of his throat drew my attention. If I reached out, I could place a hand on his chest and feel his heartbeat.
“Or”—he leaned in a fraction—“maybe I should bend you over this table.”
My soul deserted me, but I somehow maintained enough sense to disguise my breathy gasp as a scoff. These advances were nothing more than a liquor-driven attempt to admonish me for heedlessness. Ever the instructor, he was offering a fable of what happens to careless girls.
“You’re drunk,” I said, trying to cool my feverish skin with condemnation. “Your moral lesson is noted, but you can’t frighten me, Professor Hughes. I’m not a maiden from a folktale, and you wouldn’t have your way with me like a monster just to prove a point.”
“Wouldn’t I?” he murmured.
He lifted the glass and pressed the cold bottom of it into the soft skin below my right ear, sending a jolt of sensation into my low abdomen. The condensation tear-dropped and made a chilling track downward, slipping over my shoulder and into the front of my slip. He tracked its journey with half-lidded eyes.
I didn’t consider my next words first. They surged from me with their own mind.
“Then do it,” I said.
To my credit, they sounded more like an exasperated challenge than a desperate request.
His brows arched up, and I was sure I’d shocked him, beaten him at his own game with the goading invitation. Instead, he laughed, the sound rich as a lover’s midnight, shattering my smug confidence.
“With pleasure,” he said, calling my bluff, and he inclined his head as though to kiss me, but bypassed my mouth, leaning farther to place his tongue at the slope of my shoulder, dragging it along the path the water droplet had fallen until he arrived at my ear. I became a pyre of lust, all the carnal images I’d conjured in my head inspired by his wife’s journals playing in an erotic loop. My breath barely left me.
“You don’t know the dangers of this game you’re playing, Millie.”
“Tell me what they are,” I whispered, my will to resist him decimated by the sound of my name in his mouth, a song I wanted to hear again. If we were playing a game, I wished him to be the victor if it meant he’d close the last small distance.
He straightened, his warmth receding as he moved sharply away from me, as though I’d slapped him. As he retreated to the fireplace, he drained the remainder of the whiskey.
“Go back to your room, Miss Foxboro, and resist roaming this house at night. I won’t be responsible for what happens next time you find yourself inclined to wander.” He took up a crystal decanter and poured the newly empty glass full, and did not look at me again.
The sudden shift in the direction of our exchange tipped me upside down, and I despised it. He hadn’t believed my fear then had teased my desires free only to reject them. I turned on my heel and escaped, attempting to keep my steps even, and not too eager to flee.
