“A member of staff who believes you’ve been conducting inappropriate research without IRB approval.”
I sit back with a laugh, rapping my knuckles on the table. “Inappropriate research. That’s creative.”
“There’s nothing funny about this, Professor Rooke.”
“It’s a little funny.” I study her with a tilt of my head. The flush creeping up her neck. The way her jaw tightens when she’s trying to maintain composure. “If you had anything actionable, you’d have acted. Instead, you drag me to a bar on a Friday night to deliver a threat you can’t execute.” I tilt my head. “Unless you’d hoped this meeting would go another way?”
Her flush deepens.
“I’m trying to help you,” she says, voice dropping. “The board is asking questions. There’s only so much I can?—“
“So fire me.”
She blinks. “What?”
“You’ve been threatening since last spring.” I finish my bourbon, setting the glass down with a soft click. “Do it, or stop wasting my time.”
Frustration tightens her lips and eyes, but there’s something else there too. A flare of admiration that I dare disrespect her.
Yolanda Winslow solovesto be disrespected.
I remember the sounds she made in her office six months ago, bent over that ridiculous mahogany desk of hers. The desperate mewls that came out of her stern mouth. The eagerness with which she accepted the degradation and humiliation I doled out to her.
Then the rage in her eyes when we next saw each other…days later.
She’d expected me to call. Fucking ironic, after the way I treated her.
“All I’m asking is that you behave yourself,” she says through a petulant purse of her lips. “Surely it can’t be that hard.”
“You, of all people, should know how hard it is.” I smirk at her. “In fact, you’ve commented on it several times. In your office, when I fucked you on your desk. When you sucked my dick in the backseat of your car. Once, quite memorably, in the faculty bathroom during the?—“
“Keep your voice down!” she whisper-shouts.
“Yes,” I drawl, smiling. “I forgot how much you value discretion.”
She stares at me, chest rising and falling a touch too fast.
Could be arousal. Could be fury.
“You’re a fucking disgrace,” she hisses. “It will all come out, eventually. You realize that, don’t you? The complaints, the rumors, your littleproject.And when it does, I won’t be able to protect you.”
“I never asked for your protection.”
“No,” she agrees, irritation slowly replaced with a bitter smile. “But you sure as hell need it, Bastian.” She taps her nails against the side of her wineglass. “Unless you’d rather start all over again. I’m sure you could find another pathetic college town to corrupt.”
I pick up my empty glass, rolling it between my hands as I keep my eyes fixed on her.
We all make mistakes.
Mine was drinking too much wine around Yolanda before I realized there was a brain in that pretty head.
When I say nothing, she smooths down her hair, pretending to be unaffected. “Fine. You want to burn yourself down, be my guest. But leave my students out of it.”
I still don’t answer, and she seems to take my silence as an admission of guilt. Her face softens, and she considers me over the rim of her glass before taking another sip.
“I miss it. Don’t you?”
For a moment, I think she’s referring to the few times we fucked. Thankfully, before I can answer, she lets out a husky chuckle.
