Page 7 of My Forbidden Professor

His mouth slows and gentles and his fingers smooth over my shoulder when I tremble. I break the kiss, needing to take a breath. To peer into his eyes, so dark, his pupils so blown they consume the irises. He’s as affected as I am. Can’t be helped. Can’t be taken back. I will commit this moment to memory to relive in technicolor for the rest of my life.

The reality is this moment was a mirage. Not only because I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. Or that I’ll never risk entering another relationship. But in all the time I’ve lusted after Professor Jacob Black, I’ve never seen him with another woman and that reality smashes over my head. He’s squeaky clean. The type of clean that’s carefully cultivated. The clean that screams “Career Professor” and if anyone caught on to this, it would mean the end of everything he’s worked for.

God. What am I doing? How can I be so selfish?

I open my eyes, press both palms to his chest and push away. “We should stop.” The words are strangled. My entire body throbs for this kiss that had to stop.

Jacob steps away, the air instantly cooling my body. He runs his fingers through his hair, making wayward curls stand out everywhere. The devastation in his eyes kicks my gut. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have. If…if you want to press charges, I won’t stop you.”

I pick up my bag where it dropped on the floor and slide out from between the cage of his body and the desk. “Please be assured I won’t press charges.”

His gaze is bleak as he stares at me. There’s a war behind his eyes that makes my stomach roll. I’ve overstepped a clear line in the sand. “Can we talk?”

My lips twist as the boulders turn and tumble inside me, weighing me down, heavier and heavier. He can never find out who I truly am because that will change the way he looks at me forever. “You don’t have to worry, Professor. As we’ve established, I have no one to tell anyway.”

I mentally remind myself to change my business analytics class. It will be a special kind of torture to sit in a lecture room knowing I can’t have him. Not now I know what it feels like to be kissed by someone who wants me. Not because of my money. Or my name. Or for what I can do for them.

I want more with him, and that’s the danger. Anything I hide can be used against me.

He looks as destroyed as I feel. If he’s nervous not knowing what I’ll do, he doesn’t need to be. We both have as much to lose as each other.

I jump when a knock sounds at his office door. “Professor? It’s Doug Spencer. Your 3pm appointment? Hello? Anyone there?”

The lips I can’t get enough of silently form my name. A question. A plea. I don’t want to know.

I can’t know.

For both our sakes.

I turn without looking at his face again and push through the door, startling the student waiting outside. I recognize him from my business analytics class. I mutter a hasty apology and rush past him, through the outer administrative rooms, down the stairs and out the building exit that swings closed behind me with a finality that makes me shudder.

Chapter Four

Steph

I dash across Lake Shore Drive, the main road that snakes through the campus, my gaze flicking side to side without really seeing. A car honks as I charge blindly across. I keep my head down and jump over the curb on the other side. I don’t look up when the driver shouts something after me. In the distance, I can see the library and my chest eases a touch. I can lose myself inside the library.

I slide through the revolving door and inhale the dry smell of print on paper. The place is packed. Students sit at computer chairs behind desks, squeeze onto long benches, or lean against the ergonomically approved bright orange stools the college insists are posture perfect.

I ignore the help-yourself free candy the college entices students with and walk between the shelf stacks, wishing I could lose myself in here and never be found. I recognize groups of students from my class, probably working on Professor Black’s assignment. They talk and laugh and are totally engaged while they work or share notes on study sessions.

Sometimes I wish I could experience that camaraderie. Simple friendships and chatting with carefree people.

But it never stays that way.

I slide into a cubicle at the very end of the library stacks and hunker down. It takes long moments to realize I’ve been staring unseeing at the partitioning. I reach into my pack and withdraw my computer, plugging the cord into the socket. I plan to be here longer than the battery will last.

I’m a coward. A coward whose lips still tingle with a kiss. A kiss I’ll remember for the rest of my life. My breath shakes when I touch my fingertips to my lips. I still taste him. Then the full weight of what I’ve done falls on my shoulders and threatens to bury me alive.

I’m so stupid. So utterly, carelessly, devastatingly stupid.

I don’t want to know what he was about to say, but it would be nothing good, I’m sure. I recognized that questioning look. That interest. I’ll never find out. Going back there would ruin both of us.

As soon as Student Services opens in the morning, I’ll request a change of class. The university is busy with thousands of students. I’ll lose myself in the crowd. He’ll never see me, or my stupidity, again. I open my computer and bring up the Business Analytics group assignment I’ll do on my own. It will take me four times as long to complete as it should, but I have nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do.

Eventually the library quiets as students filter out one by one. A glance outside tells me night has arrived. Lights blink at the closest sorority house and a bass sound thumps through the library windows from a party I wasn’t invited to.

I turn my attention to my studies and lose myself for a few hours until a headache threatens and my eyes are dry. I take a short break and walk to the coffee vending machine. I select black coffee and a bottle of water and take it back to the cubicle.

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