Page 26 of Working for the Teacher

“Come for me,” he says against my mouth. “I want to feel it.”

The words push me over. I come with his name on my lips, body tightening around him in waves. His thrusts deepen. His breathing turns ragged. I can feel how close he is. He stills suddenly, buried deep, and looks down at me with an expression I haven’t seen on him before.

“You’re trouble,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because I’m falling for you.”

My heart stutters. Before I can answer he starts moving again. I pull him down into a kiss to bury everything I haven’t figured out how to say yet.

When he comes, it’s with a groan against my mouth, hips pressed tight to mine, pulsing inside me. I hold him through it, legs still wrapped around him, hands stroking slowly up and down his back.

We stay like that for a long time afterward. His weight is a comfortable pressure, his breath gradually steadying against my collarbone. Eventually he shifts just enough to keep from crushing me, and one of his hands finds mine, lacing our fingers together on the pillow beside my head.

I turn toward him, but I don’t know what to say. The words are there. I can feel them sitting in my throat. He watches me, his thumb moving over the back of my hand.

I think about how quickly he’s gotten under my skin. How different I feel when he’s here. How somehow, in the middle of everything falling apart, being with him feels like the one thing that’s together.

“I’m falling for you too.”

Something shifts in his expression, and suddenly I feel exposed. So I do the only thing I can think to do.

I lean in and kiss him.

He kisses me back, and for the first time in months, my heart doesn’t ache.

8

RYDER

Dave's truck is in the school lot when I pull in, which is the first sign something's wrong, because Dave doesn't do site visits before eight unless there's a problem he doesn't want to explain over the phone.

He's leaning against the tailgate with his arms crossed, and the second he sees me his whole posture tells me this isn't about a change order or a materials delay.

“What's going on?” I ask.

“Reyes wants us both in his office. Now.”

“About what?”

“He wouldn't say on the phone. Just said it was urgent, and it involved you.” Dave pushes off the tailgate, and I can see the tension sitting in his shoulders.

We walk into Coach Reyes’s office together, and some old animal instinct in me is already reading the room. He's sitting behind his desk with his hands folded, wearing the expression of a man who's been waiting a long time for a moment exactly like this one.

“Sit,” he says.

“I'll stand.”

“Suit yourself.” He glances at Dave, then back at me, taking his time with it, savoring it, and anger settles in my stomach even before he opens his mouth again. “I got a report that you cornered a student in the hallway and threatened him.”

“What?”

“Mason Delgado. You got in his face, told him you'd hurt him if he didn't apologize to his teacher.”

“That's not what happened.”

“That's what was reported to me.”