“Interview, huh? I suppose that’s as good a story as any.”
Miriam visibly bristles. “It’s not a story. Why else would I be dressed like this?”
“Maybe you were hoping to do some role playing.”
“Role playing?”
I stop in front of her, and realize for the first time just how much bigger I am. She always wore sexy-as-fuck high heels at school, but flat-footed she’s probably only five-five to my six-three. She has to tip her head all the way back just to maintain eye contact with me this close.
Smirking, I say, “Yeah, role playing. You be the bad teacher and I’ll pretend to be your wicked student.”
“Devin, you are my student.”
“Not anymore. I graduated.” I give my abs a lazy scratch and pretend not to notice that her eyes follow the movement and her cheeks turn pink. “Got the diploma, the gold cords, and an acceptance letter to Notre Dame to prove it.”
She huffs in that adorable way that means she’s hit her limit with me. I heard it a lot this past semester. “It’s a moot point, Devin. I was your teacher. I will not now, nor will I ever, role play or anything else with you.”
Turning away from me, she notices the glass in her hand, which she then thrusts in my direction. I purposely graze her fingers with mine and internally puff up with male pride when goosebumps appear on her arm despite the ninety-degree heat.
“Just drink your lemonade and do…” She looks around her yard helplessly. “Whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing. Which is not rinsing your sweat off in my pool. If you want to cool off, use the garden hose.”
I don’t bother to hide the huge grin on my face as I answer in a husky voice, “Yes, ma’am.”
She gives me a prim nod, then she spins around and walks briskly toward the house. Before she shuts the French door, I call out to her. “Ms. Fox.” When she looks back at me over her shoulder, I ask, “Did you get the job?”
I know she was hoping to land a permanent position at the high school. I haven’t heard of any teachers retiring, but I stopped caring about Daley High as soon as I threw my cap in the air.
Her features soften and I’m rewarded with the smallest upward curve of her lips. “I won’t know for a couple of weeks, but…” She shrugs. “I think it went well.”
“Glad to hear it,” I say sincerely. “Thanks for the lemonade, Ms. Fox.”
“My pleasure, Devin.”
Not yet, it’s not, but it will be.
I convinced my parents to go on vacation and let me handle this job myself so that I had an entire week of uninterrupted time with the insanely sexy Miriam Fox. Now it’s my turn to teach her a thing or two, and I have a feeling she’s going to be a very, very good student.
3
Miriam
For having my Masters in Education, I can be really stupid. Case in point: telling Devin to use the hose if he needed to cool off. I didn’t care about his sweat in the pool; I just made it up so I wouldn’t be subjected to any more super tempting slo-mo poolside photoshoots. But I didn’t think my plan through. Because if Devin dunking his head in the water was super tempting, Devin drenching himself with a garden hose is goddamn torture.
I saw him do it yesterday—Day Two of Operation: Don’t Fuck Your Student—from between the blinds of my bedroom window. It started out innocent enough. He spent the morning planting lilac bushes along the back line of the privacy fence that encloses my backyard, then watered them to finish it off. As one does.
But then he angled his body to the side and started to drink directly from the hose, which then turned into him intentionally soaking his white ABC Landscaping shirt until it was see-through and plastered to every hard ridge, which then turned into him slowly peeling it off before running the water directly onto his god-like body. Seriously, what kind of teenager looks like that? It’s completely unfair.
As Devin got wetter, so did I. To my lust-fogged brain, the fact that he’ll be nineteen next month (yes, I checked) was enough to justify slipping a hand into my panties to touch my aching clit. It felt dirty and shameful and…so damn hot. I came on my fingers in less than a minute.
When my breathing finally started to slow, Devin turned the hose off and peered up at my window with a hint of a smirk. I gasped and plastered my back against the wall, breathing heavy for whole new reasons—shock, embarrassment, guilt.
It took me a good hour to talk myself into leaving my bedroom. I needed to act like an adult and confront him about being a Peeping Pervert, or at the very least, lie my ass off and tell him that I have trust issues and wanted to make sure he was doing the job he was hired for.
But when I approached him where he was weeding the flower beds, he acted like nothing had happened. There was no smug looks, no obnoxious innuendos or calling me out for spying on him, regardless of my reason. Nothing. In fact, he immediately greeted me with a friendly smile and jumped right into talking landscaping, double-checking I hadn’t made any changes to the original plan drawn up by his father.
Since he didn’t bring up my indiscretion, I did the mature thing—I chickened out and stayed in the house until it was time for him to leave for the day. Yep. Super mature.
Today, I decided to plant the flowers that hang from the lanai on the back patio. I refuse to hide in my house all week because of Devin. It’s ridiculous. I was around him almost every day for six months at school; I didn’t feel the need to avoid him then. He’s just a student. Which is what I’ve been chanting in my head for the past hour as we worked within twenty feet of each other.
“Goddamn, it’s hot out here.”
On auto-pilot, I say, “Language, Mr. Adler,” before I catch myself and wince. “Sorry, habit. Forget I said that.”
Ten feet away from me, he picks up the hose and turns the water on. “Now why would I want to forget something I like so much?”
“You like being scolded?”
Chuckling, he shakes his head. “I like you in teacher mode. Everything you say sounds like a collegiate lecture instead of casual conversation.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Why would you like that?”
“Because I like the idea of stripping you out of your Ms. Fox the Prim outer shell to get to your Miriam the Needy Vixen creamy center.”
My lips part on a silent gasp, words completely failing me. As he leans forward to take a drink from the hose, his piercing gaze tells me the water isn’t quenching his real thirst. I swear he projects an image straight into my brain of his face between my legs, drinking every last drop I give him and still wanting more. A fire sparks in my belly and sinks lower to dampen the denim crotch of my cut-offs.
Something wicked possessed me to forego panties today. I told myself that with the extreme heat, the less layers I wore, the better, so I slipped on a pair of faded Daisy Dukes and a pale pink tank with a bikini top underneath. In case I need to remove another layer. Because of the heat. Not because of Devin.
Liar, liar, cut-offs on fire.
Okay, fine, it might have been a teensy-weensy bit because of Devin, but I can’t help myself. It feels like ages since I’ve been looked at the way he looks at me. Like I’m a decadent dessert he can’t wait to devour. So maybe I’m encouraging the flirting a bit. It’s not like I would ever in a million years act on it.