Not really. At least, not to the degree she was taking it. I cuffed my arms too. “I wasn’t your student when we got together, Brielle.”
“Oh, yeah. You were. I just didn’t know it. That was two weeks ago, Ramses.” She held up two fingers. “Two weeks. You were obviously enrolled in my class.”
“And?”
She groaned. “And I can’t do this. I can’t. I…”
She was panicking, needing to stop before her mind ran off with shit and she got crazy. She’d given me a teaser of it before, and I think that was why I did what I decided to do next.
I grabbed her, just her wrists, but it was enough to make her look at me, to get out of her fucking head for just two seconds.
To feel me, my hands on her and that she was innocent in all this. That we did nothing wrong and there wasn’t any reason to think we had. I knew the school had an ethics policy, that she could get in trouble depending on the context, but that most certainly wasn’t our situation. We’d gotten together before we even knew our roles in regard to each other.
“What are you doing, Ramses?” Her breath shallow as she looked at me, but I noticed she placed no distance between us. Didn’t push me away.
So, I pushed.
I angled against her, hitching her up to me, and her throat jumped.
Mine tightened. “I want you to listen to me. You’re not in trouble. We didn’t do anything wrong, and you acting this way is just messing with your head.”
And messing with mine, but clearly in an entirely different way. Her flowers hit my nose, hard, and I wet my lips.
She noticed, followed it down my neck and completely across my chest. In fact, her gaze took complete inventory over my shoulders, my arms, my hands before settling on their place at her wrists. Her body knocked fluid, all but languid in front of me.
Shit. Is she still…
Into this, into me, her student who was twenty-two to her thirty-five? I didn’t fucking care about that, but she sure seemed to.
“Ramses…” The warning in her voice contradicted the dilation of her pupils, her irises darkening, her eyes hooded. “Please.”
Please what? Kiss her?
Just give me the go.
I had no problem taking this woman, right here, right fucking now, the growl on my lips as my chest met hers. Her ass hit the table, my hands too, when I caged her between my arms.
“I can drop the class,” I rasped, gliding my breath along her ear. It took every ounce of strength within me not to fucking touch her. “Just tell me, Jersey girl.”
At the sound of my nickname for her, what I said in general, or whatever the fuck, she sucked a breath through her teeth.
Okay, it’s on.
Unable to fucking fight it, my hand slid between her legs, pinching her sex through her tight little pants. The moan escaped her lips in an instant and I buried my face in her neck, a single kiss before she forced me off her and headed me straight toward the valley of fucking blue balls.
“I told you. I’m not…” She worked her way through her hair again. “Just no. No.”
“Why?” I growled, tired of this shit. Tired of this. She was clearly attracted to me, and me to her. I cleared hair from my brow. “I’ll get out of the class. It won’t be a big deal.”
“It’s not about the class,” she shot, my eyes twitching open. Seeing that, she pressed palms to her eyes. “I mean, it’s about the class now, but this can’t happen. It won’t happen.”
“Why not?” I repeated. Was there something else? She had been acting weird that day, right before I’d left. I’d passed it off.
Shit, was there something?
I witnessed that all over her face, something when she cleared her hands from it. She fisted her knuckles. “Ramses, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re both a hot mess and you’re completely unavailable.”
“How so?” Intrigued now. “What are you talking about?”
She put out a hand like it was obvious. “I heard you in the bathroom with your friend. Your friend who’s married and you were talking to the day after said marriage, who also just so happens to live next to you, and oh, yeah, you were in love with back in high school.”
I frowned. What the fuck? “Where are you even going with this?” And wait, she heard me? Fuck. “I didn’t mean to sneak around with the call. But she’s my friend and I couldn’t leave her hanging.”
Her brow jumped. “That’s all you got out of what I just said?”
Was there something else? Confusion, clearly on my end, and her response to that was grabbing her bag. She instantly fled toward the door, but I got her by the arm.
“Bri.”
“It’s Professor Whitman-Quintero.”
Like a chill immediately into the goddamn room. Polar ice, a wintry glaze.
And just like that, I pocketed my hands, my shoulders shrugging. “Professor then.”
Her expression fell instantaneously, but she’d drawn the line here. She pressed a hand to her head. “You won’t drop the class because this won’t work. I’m your professor. You’re my student. I’m thirty-five. You’re twenty-two and even outside of that,” she paused, adjusting the bag on her shoulder. “We both used each other that night—clearly, and I’m pretty sure you know that.”
I stayed silent but not for long. It took me a second, but I think I got what she’d been getting at before, and she was a wrong, completely wrong. My jaw shifted. “That may all be true, but what you may or may not be insinuating about me and as you said, my friend is not. That is all December and I are. Good friends, and it is not like that with her. She’s married, and I’m not unavailable.”
At least, when it came to the situation with my friend, again, not like that. I maybe would have argued against that in the past when what happened between us was fresh, but not now. Now, I was just prone to getting into stupid shit.
And Brielle didn’t believe me.
I saw that all over her face too. She chewed her lip. “I wish that we both could have come at each other differently that night. That there weren’t so many variables. That maybe if I hadn’t been so sad and you yourself weren’t…” A shallow breath, an eye pinch before she thought better about what she’d been about to say.
Instead, she chose to leave, block herself and whatever she was going through from me. It felt very familiar, chillingly so.
“I need to go,” she said, backing toward the door. She touched it. “And don’t drop the class. It’s not necessary. I’ll deal if you can.”
“Bri—”
She didn’t correct me because she let the door slam in my face again. I pinched the bridge of my nose but, this time, didn’t go after her.
I wasn’t confident she’d actually let me this time.
Chapter Nine
Ramses
“Ramses?”
My sight lifted to find more than one board member’s eyes on me, but the only one who appeared to be in right form today was Duncan Salsbury, the one who’d spoken.
His lips pinched tight and his back ramrod straight, he lifted his chin. “Are we boring you, son?”