“I do not,” Danny said with another stab at his ice cream. “She’s a professor.”
“So? Half the professors here have hooked up with students.”
“Just drop it, Kylie.”
“No.” Setting her ice cream aside, she shifted up onto her knees beside him. Regardless of her own feelings, she wasn’t going to let her best friend turn his back on something he wanted. “If you like her, you should do something about it.”
“I said drop it, Kylie Anne.”
There was an undercurrent to his voice she’d never heard before. Even when he’d spanked her in the past it had always been playful. He’d never sounded so… stern.
She kinda liked it.
Curious to see how far he’d take it, she rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You’re not the boss of me, Daniel Hollis.”
Looking up from his ice cream, finally, he raised a brow in a look that had her tummy fluttering. “You’re on thin ice, little girl.”
Little girl. A phrase she’d heard dozens of times from other people, and yet it had never made her heart pound the way it had today. First with Professor Renard, and now with him.
“Listen to you, trying to sound like a big, bad Dom. If I didn’t know any better I might actually?—”
Her snarky response ended on a gasp as Danny pounced, tackling her, pinning her on the couch beneath him. Taking her wrists in one hand, he held them above her head, his knee pushing her thighs apart.
“Is this what you want?” Temper and need turned his voice to gravel as his hand ran up her bare thigh. “Someone to pin you down and make you listen?”
“M-maybe,” she gasped out, her own need pulsing between her thighs. “That what you’re going to do, Danny? Make me listen?”
“Fuck, Ky.” The words came out as a low moan. Closing his eyes, he dropped his forehead to hers, his breathing ragged. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know. But I really, really wanna do whatever it is.”
“Me too.” He laughed, but the sound was strained. “But we shouldn’t.”
Disappointment stabbed at her. “Because I’m not her.”
“What?” Confusion twisted his features. “Not who?”
“Nobody. Get off me, please.”
For a moment, she thought he might refuse. And god help her if some part of her didn’t want him to. He could easily overpower her if he had half a mind to, and that knowledge thrilled her on a deep, primal level.
But that wasn’t the kind of man Danny was. Sighing, he pushed up off of her, rising to his feet. “We should talk aboutthis. Tomorrow, when we’re both feeling less… whatever it is we’re feeling now.”
“Right.” It was the mature thing, the right thing to do.
She just wasn’t feeling very mature or very much like doing therightthing just then.
For a long moment, he simply stood there, watching her. Waiting, it seemed like, but she wasn’t sure what the hell he was waiting for.
Finally, he dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it a rumpled mess she found undeniably adorable. “Tomorrow. I’ll come by before breakfast.”
“Sure.”
Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Sleep tight, Ky.”
With her heart in her throat, she watched him leave. And tried with everything in her not to break down sobbing when the door shut behind him.
Chapter Four
