Pushing off from the wall, he strides over to the glass table and knocks the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray. He then sits down on one of the ottomans, legs spread, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees as he stares straight at me. “What. Do. You. Want. Professor Blume?
And that's the question, isn't it? What do I want? Why did I ask to see him?Whatdo I wantfromhim?
With a heaving sigh, I lift my shoulders to my ears then let them carelessly fall. “I don't know.”
“Since day one…” He scoffs and shakes his head. “You’ve never known what you wanted since day one. Funny, you're always reminding me that you’re twelve years my senior, butI’mmature enough to know exactly what I want.Exactly. There's never been a doubt in my mind about what I want.You. Always you.” He glares at me through the red hue of the room. “But you, thirty-two years old, and you still can't figure out if you want a fantasy, a fling, a relationship, or a puppet on a string.”
I try not to wince. He’s calling me out on my biggest weakness, and it stings. “Tell me that you’re sorry for what you did to Professor Fitzpatrick.”
He sucks on his cigarette. “I regret it, yeah. But, nah, I'm not sorry.”
“Because he was encroaching on your property?”
“You're not my property anymore, are you?”
Wrong. You own me in every possible way.“Is she a virgin or not, Nero?”
“You been screwing anyone?”
I laugh as if that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. “Like you wouldn't already know if I were. Cookie would’ve reported it to you. Nothing misses her, does it?”
He shakes his head no. “Nope. She's more loyal to you than she is to me.”
Yeah, right. “Oh please. She's as loyal to me as a rat is to a cat.”
Silence stretches between us for a long time, with him sucking and puffing his cancer stick down to the very stub, and me pressing myself back against the pole as if I'm trying to disappear into it.
As he crushes the stub into the ashtray, I confess, “I miss you.”
“I wanna eat you out,” is his reply.
It's rough, and crass, and filthy, and not at allwhat I expected him to respond with to my confession, but I can’t ignore the instantaneous rush of arousal between my legs from those raw, nasty words. Why do I like this? Why does his crass coarseness turn me on? Why am I addicted to his bad boy, bossy, demanding sexuality?
Crossing my legs to clench my thighs together, I barely get out, “Seriously, that’s your response?”
“It’s what you want,” he says. “Know it's why you called me up here. You don’t wantme. You don’t a relationship. I’m not good enough, remember? You want mycock. You want my mouth on you.”
My neck heats, my nipples harden; there’s a pulsing between my legs. “You’rewayoff base.” I deny. “That’s not—”
“Come here.”
Just like that, I'm under his command again. As though I have no will of my own, I push away from the pole and am moving across the room to him before I can even think about it, before I can form the word no.
Chest heaving up and down with desire, I stand before him. He hasn’t even touched me and I'm on the verge of combusting.
“Closer.”
Obedient, I step between his legs.
He glides his palm up my bare thigh, all the way under my dress until he reaches my soaked center.
Air hisses through his teeth as he mumbles, “I knew it.”
He rubs two fingers back and forth over my cotton-covered sex and my traitorous body shivers under his touch. I’d not known what I wanted from him, but apparently, my subconscious and orgasm-starved body do. I’m last to the party.
“Beg me to eat you, Professor.”
“Oh, god,” I gasp out, rocking into his touch.