Tantalized Page 9

  Oh, for fuck's sake. What a kiss ass.

  I make the appropriate gesture and then jolt with a guilty start when I hear his disembodied voice say, “Miss Abrahams. I believe you're next?”

  Did I tell him my name?

  I'm pretty sure that I didn't.

  That disturbs me a little. If I didn't tell him, how does he know? There's no seating chart and it's a big class. Huge. At least two hundred when everyone shows up, and most people do.

  This loss of control shakes me a little but I'm determined not to show it. I stride into his office with my head held high, letting my arms swing naturally at my sides. “You wanted to see me?” I borrow one of his heartbeat-long dramatic pauses. “…Professor?”

  His smile disappears. “Close the door, please.”

  I do. Eagerly.

  “Lock it,” he says, with that same quiet insistence. “I'd rather not have anyone barge in.” He arches an eyebrow. “Unless the idea makes you uncomfortable.”

  The words are laced with irony. He needn't have bothered. Unashamedly, I'm already reaching for the latch before the words are half-out of his mouth. The moment it clicks shut, Delacroix is out of his chair like a shot. I'm stunned by how quickly he can move. Then his hands are slamming against the closed door on either side of me, caging me in.

  He towers over me. I'd be a little frightened if he weren't a professor, if he were some man I'd met randomly on the street. But he is, so I take a moment to appreciate how well his jeans mold to his muscular thighs, and the way his button-down shirt firmly adheres to what I imagine is an equally toned chest.

  He's Dela-licious.

  “What the fuck do you think you're doing, Miss Abrahams?” he roars. For a moment I think he is yelling at me for checking him out, but that's silly. The situation is far more serious and that would be like yelling at someone for not making their bed right after they've burned the house down.

  I sneak a look at him through my eyelashes trying for coy. “Isn't it obvious?”

  “Miss Abrahams.” His voice is brusque. “I am trying to give you the chance to explain yourself.”

  I take off my jacket and throw it on one of his chairs. “I think I've made my position clear.”

  “Yes, I suppose you have.” He raps the back of his hand against the wooden panels. “I've had quite enough.”

  “Have you?” I look right into his eyes. Difficult considering our current position. “I've seen the way you look at me. I'm not blind.”

  “Nor modest, either. Do you honestly think you are the first to have tried what you are attempting?”

  That takes some of the wind out of my sails. I'd hoped not, no, but if he can make me lose control like this, I suppose it stands to reason he could do the same to others. I set my teeth. “I don't care if I'm the first as long as I'm the most successful,” I inform him.

  He laughs at that, humorlessly. The laugh stops dead in his throat as I unfasten the top button of my silky blouse. Then another. His eyes are riveted and when he first tries to speak, he makes a sound like a stalling engine as the curve of my breast is revealed.

  “This little game of yours can get us in trouble.”

  But he doesn't look away from the exposed line of skin and I don't stop unbuttoning. “I've been in trouble before.” There's one left, just below my navel. The way Delacroix is staring at it, I'm surprised it doesn't burst into flame. “Trouble doesn't scare me.”

  “What about expulsion? I can see to it that you are expelled. All I have to do is make one phone call.”

  I flick open the last button. “Then do it,” I hiss, arching towards him so that my blouse falls open like a curtain to bare both my breasts. I practiced several variants of this move in my bedroom mirror, trying to get it just right. I can see from the expression of raw lust on his face that I have. He exhales deeply, his hands clenching as he lowers them from the door.

  “Fuck,” he says, barely audible. He watches my nipples as they pucker in the cool air of his office. His tongue darts out, tasting, wetting his lower lip. I bet he's imagining me in his mouth. If he plays his cards right, it doesn't have to stop at his imagination.

  “Are you going to call the dean, Professor Delacroix?” I circle one of my nipples with a fingertip. He sucks in a breath that sounds knife sharp, and I know if I press against him right now I'll feel his cock struggling against his trousers. “Call him. I'll wait.”

  “I'm sure you will, you little harpy.”

  His voice is tense. I may have broken him.

  Neither of us moves. The air is thick with delicious tension, and I wait for him to grab me, to tear off what remains of my clothes and put his mouth on me, hard, before replacing it with his cock.

  Delacroix is the first to break the silence, but not in the way I expect. He moves to stand behind his desk, using it as a barrier to put space between us.

  I feel terribly cold in the absence of his body heat but I'm not about to fold my arms or cover myself. I'm not doing a thing that might indicate embarrassment or a desire to hide myself. I put my hands on my hips and look at him, tossing my head a little. “Well?”

  Delacroix has composed himself. In an almost conversational tone, still a little ragged, he says, “I hope you'll understand if I don't ask you to sit down.”

  “Well, I do mind.”

  I plop down in the seat across from him.

  “You're very contrary, aren't you?”

  “Only because I know I've got nothing to lose.”

  He looks up from my open shirt. “Nothing?”

  “I could lose the rest of my clothing. But that's entirely up to you.” At his stony silence, I shrug and begin buttoning up my blouse. Inside, I'm furious, chastened and enraged. That son of a bitch. It's all I can do to keep the tears from coming, or to scream at him in rage. “Your loss, Professor,” I spit.

  “What do you want from me, Miss Abrahams?”

  “I want you.”

  “But why?” he wonders aloud. “Power? To have an older man wrapped around your finger? A better grade?” Delacroix looks at me sharply. “You are in danger of failing my class, you know.”

  “I'm not here to discuss my grade.”

  “I gathered.”

  Another pause.

  “I want you out of my class, Miss Abrahams. I'd prefer that you leave of your own volition, though I will remove you myself if you force my hand. You are an impediment to those who are actually there to learn, and I won't stand for that.”

  “I don't give a fuck about your students.”

  “Yes, it's quite evident where your school of interest lies,” he says, rather nastily. I should feel irritated. I am a little, that barb was sharp. But I'm proud of him for being catty and not taking my shit the way so many other men have. Delacroix won't let himself be pushed around. I like that.

  Smoothing down the front of my shirt, I say, “Are you filing a report against me to the dean or not?”

  “I should.”

  “But?”

  The ensuing smile is chilly. “My graduate students would tell you that I am quite the contrarian myself. One is never too old to have a rebellious streak, no matter how…inconvenient.”

  “How old are you, Professor?”

  “Old enough to know better.”

  “That isn't an answer,” I point out.

  “Leave my class, Miss Abrhams. I mean it.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” I ask, leaning forward. “Wouldn't you miss me?”

  He chooses his words carefully. “Because if you leave voluntarily, it will be easier to assume plausible deniability if we are ever discovered.”

  If we are ever discovered.

  Oh, how those words affect me.

  “So you do want me.”

  “It appears as though I have no choice in the matter. You are nothing, if not persistent.” He crosses his legs on the desk. “And the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Or so they say.”

  “Who says that?”
>
  “Oscar Wilde. Haven't you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

  I shake my head. “Is he erotic literature, too?”

  Delacroix sighs. “You must read Wilde. He was a brilliant man, and a wise one, with many cuttingly astute observations about the world that were far beyond his time. He also said: 'Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.'”

  I have to repress a shiver at his sheer intensity. Delacroix's, that is. Not Wilde's, though from the sound of those quotes, it seems as if the two of them could be cut from the same seductive cloth.

  “Do you agree with him?”

  “I do. Immensely. I thought that was clear.”

  He looks at me sidelong through those cold brown eyes. Lust swirls in their depths, and so does something else. Something darker, that lurks in their dregs. I desperately want to know what it is.

  “You are dismissed, Miss Abrahams. I have no further use for you at the moment, though I trust you will take our conversation to heart.”

  Fuck my heart. Our conversation went straight between my legs, where it rocked me, and shattered me, as if it were the world's best multiple orgasm.

  I nod, because this is the safest option. If I spoke now, I might say something stupid.

  “That will be all then. Please leave the door open on your way out, if you will.”

  “That's it?” I ask incredulously. He's dismissing me like a whore, which I find kind of thrilling. But I would have liked to have been used like one, first.

  “I expect to see notification that you have dropped my class in my in-box by tomorrow afternoon. Three o' clock, precisely. No later. No exceptions. Otherwise, this conversation never took place and this will be it. Am I making myself quite clear?”

  Crystal.

  As I'm leaving, he says, softly, “I do hope you know what you're getting into, Miss Abrahams.”

  His voice will haunt my dreams tonight.

  I drop out of his class the moment I get home.

  Of course, this takes my total units for this quarter from 12 to 9, which means I am no longer in good academic standing. I will have to take 17 units or more next quarter to make up for the deficit.

  At least, this is what the error message on my student account settings informs me. Not that I care.

  I click the stupid “agree” button that pops up at me, without reading any of the crap in the dialogue box. It's all a bunch of bullshit anyway. All that matters is that I have managed to drop successfully.

  Now the fun can really begin.

  Three days after dropping out of Comparative Literature, I receive an email from an address that I don't recognize. My email provider has helpfully marked it as spam because there is nothing written in the subject line, and there is nothing written in the body apart from a date, a time, and a location.

  But I think I know who it is from.

  Oh, yes, I think I have a pretty good idea.

  I smoke the last of my pot stash before meeting him, in order to calm my fluttering nerves. I smoke in the shower with the water running, cupping my hand around the joint to keep it from getting wet.

  All the scars on my arms and legs seem to rouse and itch at once, stirring up years of bitter history. All those memories of fucked-up angst and stupidity. I scratch at my dampening sleeves roughly, in an attempt to shut them up.

  The address Delacroix gave me takes me to a field. All the grass is dead, the color and texture of straw from the dry, sweltering heat. Across the field is a gas station and a row of old stores that look like they're leaning against each other for support. This is an older part of town, I'm guessing. Not exactly on the wrong side of the tracks, but definitely next-door to it. I loop my thumbs through the belt loops of my skirt and eye one of the cigarette shops, wondering if I have time to buy a pack.

  The crunch of gravel makes me turn my head swiftly in the other direction as a Mercedes pulls up to the curb. The glossy black surface gleams darkly under the light from the setting sun, and it reminds me of a shark gliding through the deep in search of prey. I guess that's me. I'm the prey.

  The window rolls down and I recognize Professor Delacroix in the driver's seat, but only barely—he's wearing a rather conspicuous pair of Marc Jacobs sunglasses that cover nearly half his face.

  “Get in,” is all he says. It's all he has to say; his voice says so much more.

  Getting in is probably one of the stupider things I've done in my life, but I do it anyway. It's like a scene from a movie. I'm involved but also detached. Another item in a steadily growing catalog.

  The passenger door shuts behind me as I slide in one leg at a time to keep from flashing him in my skirt. Almost immediately I hear the thunk of the child safety locks being activated. I look at him nervously and clear my throat. “Professor—?”

  “Don't talk.”

  I know I should feel scared—like maybe at the end of this trip there's a shovel and an unmarked grave—but I also feel like anything could happen, in a good way. Like I said, stupid. It's the middle name my parents forgot to give me.

  We drive on in silence unbroken by music or words. There are fewer buildings now, mostly ranch-style houses, and the spaces between them are growing wider by the minute. Delacroix parks in a pullout just outside one of these houses. It's surrounded by cypress trees that throw the car into deep, cool shadow.

  He takes off his sunglasses very deliberately and tosses them into the backseat. He turns off the ignition and folds up the retractable cup holder that has served as a barrier between us this whole time.

  Not anymore.

  I open my mouth again—“Professor”—cutting into a yelp when he yanks me back by the hair, fisting his hand into my dark curls to silence me with a rough, thorough kiss. He yanks my jacket behind my shoulders to pinion my arms behind my back, simultaneously forcing my spine to arch against his body. I can feel his erection, and shudder violently.

  “I told you not to talk.”

  I snort air through my nose, struggling a little in my surprise. I didn't think he'd be so rough. Delacroix slams me up against the glass window with a growl, and I feel a wave of lust so intense that it is nearly blinding in its intensity. I feel moisture between my legs. I'm half-afraid someone will see us, but the windows of his car are tinted. Then my fears veer towards the opposite direction: that perhaps nobody is around to see us at all.

  “Professor,” I choke, around his probing tongue.

  “Alexander.” He pulls away from me, tucking a few strands of hair behind my ear. His voice when he speaks again is a sultry hiss. “Call me Alexander.”

  I nod my agreement.

  He bites my lower lip, catching it between his teeth and sucking it hard for a moment before freeing me and moving down my body to subject my throat to the same treatment. His hand has migrated from my hair to my thighs. I feel his fingers splay over my skin possessively, sliding up and down the length of my leg, moving higher each time, until he's teasing beneath the hem of my skirt.

  A low moan escapes me when his thumbnail grazes the outer edge of my labia, promising pain and even greater pleasure. He traces through the slick folds, watching my face as greedily as I undoubtedly watched his in his office. “No underwear,” he says, and I slowly shake my head. A frisson of deep desire blossoms within me, unfurling hot, silky petals of spine-tingling sensation. This is punishment, I realize. Punishment for almost causing him to lose control.

  Casually, he brushes his other hand over the front of my blouse, smiling a wolf-like smile of satisfaction when he feels my nipples pressing against the thin fabric. “No bra, either, it seems.” He rubs one between his fingers, and the pads of his fingers feel rough even through the slippery material. “You are a very bad girl, Miss Abrahams.”

  “Oh yeah?” I pant, very much aware of his other hand. He's stroking the outside of my opening, but not where I need him to touch. No, not even remotely close. I close my eyes and draw in a shaky breath when his knuckle runs around the perimeter
of those nerves, and buck against his hand. In a throaty voice I do not recognize as my own, I ask him, “How bad do you think I am, Alexander?”

  He laughs, delighted. “You could be a specter from one of the books in my class.” He lets the tip of his finger enter me, just for a moment, and my spine melts like hot glue when he begins to stroke my clit. “You are a manifestation of every man's fantasy. The guileless wanton whose lust knows no limits, whose willingness no bounds.”

  “Is that…is that your fantasy, Professor?”

  He yanks my blouse aside in response, deftly undoing the buttons with his free hand. He flicks his tongue around my aureola, raising goosebumps, before taking the tip of my breast into his mouth. With the fingers of his other hand he is stroking, squeezing my clit, and I arch against the seat. I'm unable to get comfortable, because I'm all tangled up in my seat belt and the sleeves of my coat.

  “I wanted to fuck you right where you sat in the middle of my lecture hall. My students could watch for all I cared as long as it meant that you were mine.”

  “Oh my God,” I choke, as my nipple pops free from his mouth, and he blows cool air on the skin, as wet and glistening as I'm sure I am between my legs.

  He bares my other breast.

  “Do you know what you have been doing to me with your teasing, Miss Abrahams? I have never wanted to claim a woman as much as I have you. Thoroughly. Ruthlessly. Until no inch of you is left untouched.” He takes the nipple between thumb and forefinger, twisting sharply. I let out a hoarse cry and feel my lower body constrict with just as much force as the warmth drips from my lower belly like golden beads of honey under his careful ministrations. Yes.

  “When you came into my office it was all I could do to keep myself from flinging you to the floor and taking you there. My God. I have had female students approach me before but never with such meticulous, cold-blooded calculation. My cock has not been subjected to such abuse since I first discovered the joys of self pleasure.”