It wasn’t meant to happen. The movement was too small, too human, but the contact was fire. His skin was warm, the faint scrape of stubble catching against my own, and the shock of it made my breath stumble. Every thought in my head disintegrated.
Neither of us moved. Not right away. The stillness was its own confession, our cheeks pressed together, our breaths tangling in the small distance between our mouths. I could feel the shape of his inhale, the slow drag of it, how close his lips were to mine. The proximity was punishing, a kind of ache that burned through the calm I’d built around myself. My heartbeat slammed against my ribs in uneven bursts, each pulse rough and frantic, driven by something dangerously close to need. My body betrayed me, leaning into that heat, my pulse ricocheting through my chest. My thighs tightened, my stomach clenched, a slow ache blooming low inside me until it pulsed between my legs. All I could imagine was the pure ecstasy I'd experience if those talented hands roamed my body, those deft fingers still entwined with mine. The untold pleasures they could awaken if he so chose. If only he'd abandon this charade and indulge in the passion between us, but he held back.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, my voice breaking under the weight of want. “You shouldn’t be this close.”
“I shouldn’t be here either,” he murmured, the sound rougher now, scraping the edge of restraint. “Not like this.”
“Then why are you?” My whisper trembled, a mix of defiance and need. The silence that followed was thick, alive, pulsing between us.
“I wanted distance, but I keep coming back to this.”
“To what?”
“To you.”
The word sank into me, heavy and certain, dissolving every wall I’d built.
He released a breath, measured and restrained, the sound weaving through the space between us, a thread drawn to its breaking point. “Go home, Edwina,” he said softly. “Before I forget where we are.”
I met his gaze. Held it until it hurt. But I was the one who broke. “Fine,” I said, though my voice was raw, the word trembling on my tongue. “But don’t think for a second you’re the only one struggling to stay on the right side of the line.”
He didn’t answer. When I stepped past him, careful not to touch, I felt the air shift, as if my body left a trace of heat against his. I was two steps from the door when his hand closed around my wrist.
His grip wasn’t cruel or forceful—it held just enough command to still the world around us, to make time hesitate between one heartbeat and the next. The touch went straight through me, cutting through sleeve and fabric, searing into skin. My breath caught. Slowly, I turned to face him, my pulse drumming against his palm.
And for one throbbing, breathless moment, I allowed my most carnal fantasies to run wild, envisioning those same adept fingers traveling lower, teasing the contour of my ribs, the hollow of my waist, scorching forbidden territory where no other man had dared venture. The exquisite rapture that would consume me if he threw caution to the wind and succumbed to temptation. If I ceased my virtuous act and begged himto unleash the passion we both craved. The raw, primal need pulsing between us, a smoldering ember threatening to ignite into an all-consuming inferno of lust and desire. He stood too close, so close that the air between us felt alive, a taut thread stretched thin enough to snap. Any sane person would have stepped back, drawn a line, remembered where they were. But he wasn’t sane where I was concerned. And God help me, neither was I.
“Don’t go,” he said, his voice roughened, drawn from somewhere deeper than his chest. It wasn’t a command, it was a confession torn open and left bleeding.
I swallowed, pulse leaping against my throat. “Professor—”
“Don’t call me that.” The word shattered in his mouth, jagged and desperate. “Not right now.”
His hand didn’t leave my wrist. It slid upward in a slow ascent, the pads of his fingers tracing the inner seam of my arm as though mapping something sacred, learning what should never be touched. Each brush of his skin set off a pulse beneath mine, a current that crawled upward and bloomed hot in the space between my ribs.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he murmured.
His voice carried through me, rough around the edges, uneven in its control, threading into my veins and refusing to leave. When I met his eyes, the mask was gone. What I saw instead was something unguarded, stripped bare, raw enough to hurt. It felt as if I’d reached into him and torn down the wall he’d spent his life building. Neither of us spoke. The silence between us swelled, thick with heat and hesitation, heavy with all the things that would ruin us if we said them aloud.
His thumb brushed over the inside of my wrist, a faint stroke that sent shivers spiraling through me.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, voice scraping low, roughened by restraint. “But you make it… damn near impossible not to.”
I didn’t know whether he meant this, his touch, or the wanting, or the weeks of tension simmering between every breath we’d shared since the semester began. Maybe all of it. Maybe more.
The edge of his suit jacket brushed my arm, the fabric whispering against my skin. His nearness was unbearable; heat rolled off him, sinking through my clothes until it pooled low in my stomach. When I looked up, his eyes had locked onto mine with the gravity of a collision.
His hand lifted slowly, hovering near my jaw but not quite daring to touch. The space between us turned molten. My skin burned where his gaze lingered. It didn’t matter that his hand hadn’t yet found me, my body was already responding to the ghost of it, the promise.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore,” he said, voice rough, cracking open at the edges. “You… you make me forget the rules.”
Our mouths hovered apart by a breath, no distance worth naming. The air was electric, trembling, charged with everything that wanted to happen and couldn’t. One movement forward and I would’ve felt him, the rasp of stubble, the weight of his lips, the taste that would have destroyed every last defense I had left. I could almost feel it, heavy and inevitable, the kind of kiss that claimed instead of asked.
His breath caught, unsteady, and mine followed, each inhalation feeding the next until we were both drowning in it.
And then—
Rrrring.
