I lean against the door jamb, the fine mist of rain cooling my cheeks while it drenches him. “You could have emailed, you know.”
He holds up the application and the essay and rips it in half, right before my eyes. “I don’t want to be your research supervisor.”
Oh. It shouldn’t sting so much—I’m certain I’ll still land one of the other assistantships I applied for—but it does.
“Because I want to be yours. Your alpha.”
Oh.Oh.
“Technically, a relationship between any student and any professor is forbidden, and… and I don’t want to have to sneak around with you, but if that’s the only way we can be together and it’s still what you want, then I—”
I step through the wards and pull him into a consuming kiss.
“Yes,” I breathe. “A million times yes. I want you, not as my professor, not as my supervisor. I want you as my alpha.”
A blush floods his cheeks.
“But you didn’t have to tear my essay up. It was a good essay!”
“It was an excellent essay, you overachieving menace. You made an incredibly convincing argument. I don’t know what I’ll do without your help—”
“You’ll still have it. I still want to help with your research, but… but not as your assistant. Do you… do you want to come in?”
He looks up at the pouring rain, grins, shrugs and drags me out into it, making me shriek, before swirling me around as the warm summer rain pelts down around us.
And he kisses me. He kisses me like he’s been waiting to kiss me just like this since my heat.
“Saints, I wish I could do this right. I wish I could court you, take you on proper dates. You deserve the fucking world, Juniper.”
“I don’t need any of that,” I say, as water sluices down my skin, sticking my shirt to my skin. “Just you. All I want is to… is to read books and drink coffee with you and…”
“And?”
“And we should really get you out of those wet clothes,” I say, quirking an eyebrow.
He laughs, that rich, deep laugh I so love, uninhibited and joyous, and he lets me pull him back to the wards at my cottage.
He uses a spell to slice the tip of his finger and we perform the ritual for the blood wards, and the moment he’s in my cottage, I make him let me heal the cut.
He dries us with a quick spell, and we race up to my nest, laughing as we thunder up the stairs.
And I find myself suddenly timid. We’ve only been together during my heat, when I had no inhibitions at all. When he came to me, and I was already bare for him.
He must pick up on my hesitation because he asks me, “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“It is. I’m just… kind of nervous?”
He takes my hands and sits me down at the edge of my nest before sitting behind me. “So am I. We don’t have to do this today, Juniper. We can wait as long as you want to.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to wait. I just… we’ve only been together during my heat and heats are… intense. I’m afraid it won’t be the same for you.”
He takes my cheek in his hand, and I keen into his touch, dragging his scent into my lungs. “Then let it be different.” He steals a too-brief kiss, lips sweeping against mine. “Let me take my time and explore every inch of you.”
I let out a low whine.
“Let me kiss you everywhere I’ve dreamt of kissing you, touch you like I’ve wanted to since I knew you’d pull through that first time in the infirmary.”
“You watched over me.”
