I let out a deep sigh, resigned to doing this. I look at Annie to start introductions but jolt with surprise to see she isn’t paying him any mind. She’s reading me instead, her little eyebrows furrowed. Concerned.
“Annie, this is Professor Damien Turney. He was my advisor for a hot second.”Before I finally dropped his ass. I look atTurney, who’s predictably salivating over the insanely magnetic woman standing next to me. “Turney, this is Annie Li, my?—”
When I analyze this moment later, I will realize that the next minute is a calculated power move byscaryAnnie Li. Because in the span of a few moments, Annie reads my body language and tone of voice, analyzes his sleazy look and the maybe twenty words he’s said, figures out this guy is a piece of shit, decides I am in need ofprotectiveAnnie, and chooses to do that by eviscerating him.
“Girlfriend,” she finishes for me. She seems to vibrate with a low hum of terrifying energy. Turney looks disappointed. Even more so when Annie glances down at Turney’s outstretched hand and doesn’t take it. Instead, she looks down her nose at him even if she stands half a foot shorter. “You must be the ‘has been’ who’s been trapped at Duke for the past forty years,” she says with absolutely no fuckin’ shame at all.
Both Turney’s and my mouths drop open.
This might also be the moment that I fall a little bit in love with Annie “My Lord and Savior” Li.
He takes a second to recover. “I’m only forty years old,” he sputters.
“Oh,” she says, which roughly translates toI know, but I wanted to emasculate you.
I can’t help it. I wrap my arm around her neck and pull her into my side. She takes my hand, the one hovering by her shoulder, links our fingers together and brings them to her mouth for a kiss that I feel all throughout my body.
Turney blinks. “So how is the Times Square Olive Garden? Heating up frozen breadsticks?”
My ears still get hot when this dude talks to me like this, but the woman under my arm has surrounded us in a force field made of knives and barbed wire. “Postdoc, actually,” I tell him. “I work with some of the best restaurants in the world.”
He chuckles. “Oh, wow, listen to you. You probably fit right in with the kitchen staff.Fuhgeddaboudit!”
I am ashamed to say this gets past the force field. I wince. I’d forgotten to use my academic voice, probably ‘cause I’ve been spending the last several days with someone from home.
Don’t matter though.
Annie moves forward.
Turney steps back.
For a moment I’m halfway convinced Annie might unhinge her jaws like a snake and swallow him whole. Instead, she bares her teeth before tearing him limb from limb.
“How does it feel to be churning out the same research for forty years that no one cites?” she hisses. “Advising undergrads who surpass you before they even graduate. Watching them go on to careers you’ve dreamed of while you’re still stuck here, recycling the same lecture notes from the ’90s.” I love that she’s chosen this decade to ruin him with. “Must be humbling. Or maybe you’ve convinced yourself that tenure is just another word for relevance.”
Turney seems to shrink into nothing while Annie only grows sharper and more lethal.
“That must be the real research project—figuring out how to stay important when the world has already moved on. But hey, at least your name still shows up somewhere… even if it’s just in the acknowledgments. Maybe one day they’ll even name a garbage can on campus after you, though I’m sure it’ll be the one in the basement of waste services.”
Am I levitating?I look down at the ground to make sure I’m not. Then I take pity on this motherfucker (sad Damien Turney, sorry Damien Turney) and pull Annie back towards me. “Retract your claws, honey,” I whisper in her ear, then kiss the top of her head. “We gotta go,” I tell Turney, who looks asif he’s just been disemboweled. “I hope you continue to have a mediocre life.”
I pull Annie out of the building.
“Nico,” Annie laughs.
“That was so hot,” I say as I drag her around the corner. “That was the hottest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen.” I find a giant bush and pull her behind it before pressing her into the wall of the building and kissing her senseless.
She lets me in immediately, her hands flying into my hair, her hot little tongue in my mouth. Dragging against and dancing with mine with the same sort of skill and confidence and energy she just tore Turney apart with. I band an arm around her back, arching her into me and feeling her tits against my chest. It’s frantic and aggressive and far too vulgar for broad daylight.
“Shit,” I mutter, tearing myself away.
She looks up at me with swollen lips, her dark eyes heated and sparkling. Fists my shirt and pulls me back in.
I offer no resistance, take her mouth immediately and all but shove my tongue in.
This time when I try to step back, she pulls my bottom lip between her teeth. Traps it there while I move, the slight tug going directly to my dick. I rest my head against hers and try to catch my breath. I get Annie’s whole addicted-to-adrenaline thing, because I’m gone for the way she has my heart rate up. “I could tear you up against this wall right now,” I admit.
She laughs, shakes her head a little. “Bad idea,” she whispers. But she takes me in her arms for a hug. I rest my head on her shoulder while she scratches my scalp through my hair. “Are you okay?”
