Page 40 of The Naughty Professor
“Lorna,” I started, “please—”
“Please what?Don’t ‘please’ me.”She fanned herself with one jeweled hand, laughing loud enough to turn heads.“Honey, if that man doesn’t put glitter on your pillow by sunrise, I’m gonna be pissed off.At least one of us should get to try him out.”
Beside her, Joan stood stiff as a lamppost, every muscle in her face fighting to maintain dignity and failing spectacularly.Her lipstick was smudged at the corner, her hair askew from the earlier chaos, and her eyes—God help me—looked ready to ignite.
She let out a brittle laugh that belonged in a drawing room, not a gay bar.“Well, I must say,” she began, voice quivering under the weight of suppressed hysteria, “that was… educational.I didn’t know our esteemed faculty were so, ah, well-rounded.”
Lorna cackled.“Oh, honey, that boy’s got more than a degree—he’s got tenure in temptation.”
Joan shot her a glare sharp enough to cut glass.“Some of us still have standards, Lorna.”
“Standards?”Lorna’s grin turned wicked.“Sweetheart, Professor Carr just got kissed senseless by an Adonis in body glitter.Standards don’t apply.”
Joan’s mouth opened, closed, opened again.Then she made a strangled sound somewhere between a scoff and a whimper.
Lorna hooked an arm through hers before she could spiral further.“Come on, Joan.Let’s get you a drink before you explode.”
“I’m not exploding!”Joan snapped, even as Lorna dragged her away toward the bar.“I’m perfectly composed!Perfectly—”
The rest was swallowed by the music restarting.
I exhaled, pressing a hand to my temple.My pulse hadn’t settled.The world felt slightly off-kilter, colors too sharp, sounds too close.
Sean appeared then, grinning like a devil who’d just won a bet.“You,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder, “are the luckiest bastard in this club.Did you see his face when he looked at you?Jesus, Thorne, I thought he was gonna melt right into your lap.”
I gave a vague nod, though I barely heard him.My thoughts were spinning in their own orbit, louder than the music.
“I—uh—need a minute,” I said.
Sean raised an eyebrow.“Sure you do.Don’t do anything I wouldn’t—wait, forget that.Do everything I would.”He winked and disappeared into the crowd.
I moved toward the back hallway, where the music dulled to a distant pulse.The air was cooler there, tinged with the faint smell of sweat and cologne.A red EXIT sign buzzed overhead.I leaned against the brick wall outside the dressing room door, folding my arms to keep them from shaking.
The noise of the club faded behind me.
And then it was just me—and my thoughts.
The first kiss since the divorce.Four years of carefully built walls, undone in a heartbeat.Years of silence pretending I was content grading papers alone in a too-quiet apartment.Four long years of looking at the world like a philosopher examining a theory instead of a man living a life.
And then there was him.
Felix Sterling.Dr.Sterling.The shy, bumbling chemistry professor who’d once apologized for existing too loudly in a faculty meeting.I’d spent entire semesters forgetting the man existed.
But damn, he most definitely was real.
Because apparently, beneath the cardigans and stammered small talk, Felix Sterling had a secret life—a stage name, a glittering persona, and the kind of confidence that could stop time itself.
Jax.
And he’d kissed me like he’d been waiting years to do it.
I pressed the back of my head against the wall, closed my eyes, and exhaled.
What was I doing?This was madness.Sterling was a colleague.And now, my department head, Joan, hated me for reasons that multiplied hourly.Dating anyone at VCU was out of the question.
But damn it, I hadn’t felt this alive in so long I barely remembered what it felt like.
The dressing room door creaked open.
