Page 39 of Director's Cut

Her lips and teeth pull at my skin. “Two teachers kissing?”

I glance around the office for just a moment. “On school property.”

Maeve snorts a laugh. “No, it’s a private school.”

She pulls her hips up, bucking against me. And god, just that one tease, that one promise of what we could do to destroy each other. My own breath picks up with hers, that knot of pleasure clenched, growing bigger by the second. I mount her, pressing all my weight and contorting my body in such a way that the pressure hits hardest between our hips. And as I grind against her, I muffle the sweet taste of her moans with my mouth on hers. She tastes like salted caramel and chocolate still, and I’m starved for her. Nothing’s ever tasted better. Nothing’s built this fast before. My heartbeat is throbbing in my lips, my fingertips grab her ass to pull us closer together, my stomach jumps, and the desire between my legs deepens as we dig into each other.

Her hands slide against the GG buckle on my red belt, and I feel like I’m nineteen in a dorm room, hooking up with a girl for the first time, her hands running along my waistband. I grin through our kiss, pulling away. I know this game. I know what I am, how I look, what to do with the hunger in Maeve’s eyes as she watches me place one set of fingers on the end of the belt and the other on the clasp.

Charlie and I did one late-night interview together very shortly after I came out, before things went sideways. We’d decided beforehand on a bit where Charlie, me, and the middle-aged host would show off our abs to tease out a few whoops and laughs from the studio audience. I looked great then, plus Charlie had to be subjected to the same amount of objectification, so I didn’t care. But my stylist had put me in high-waisted pants, cinched by a Hermès belt. I knew exactly how to control showing a late-night audience only my abs, but it still involved unbuckling my belt and sliding the front of my pants down. Charlie, lovely and hyperaware of the fact that my part was extra sexual, made some joke about how everyone in the audience should know this is just what I looked like on the toilet. It’d gotten its belly laugh from the audience; I’d gotten to finish the bit without feeling uncomfortable.

But the thing is, here with Maeve, I know Charlie wasn’t right. Pulling off this belt is the fucking sexiest thing in the world. Maeve is drinking in my movement, the crooked smile on my face, the tendons in my hands as they flex. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like this. Like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Maeve grabs the clasp and zipper on my pants. God, just the pressure of her touch has me nearly ready to burst—

And someone knocks at the door.

I barely manage not to fall back on my ass in the space between the couch and Maeve’s desk. Still, I’m on my back trying to zip, clip, and resecure my belt. Maeve runs a hand through her clearly makeout-tousled hair, but otherwise looks much less worse for wear than I do.

“Ty?” Maeve says to the other side of the door.

“Uh, yeah. I was gonna pick up the midterms.”

Maeve looks down at me. My pants are now secure, but my blouse is buttoned a few buttons too low and our shoes are scattered around the room. She motions to the door, as if asking me if she should let him in. I roll back to my knees and stand up. Maeve moves to the door, grabbing the midterms as she goes.

Ty looks perfectly innocent as he steps into the office. Some Elton John mix is now playing from the laptop. I’m curious to see how many songs played during that makeout. “Hey, Val.”

“Hey.” My voice is hoarse. I clear it back to its signature dumb Valley girl range. “How are you?”

Maeve shoots me a look, but Ty doesn’t notice. “Good, how are you?”

I press my lips together, the light pink lipstick I had on for lecture totally gone. “Not bad.”

“These are our samples,” Maeve says, her voice back in perfect professor mode. In fact, if I didn’t still have the taste of her skin and mouth in mine, I wouldn’t know she was about to stick her hand down my pants less than a minute ago. “Let’s all aim for a week from today to get these marked, but if you have to give them back in sections next week, that’s fine too.”

“Okay, cool,” he says as he accepts the papers. “Have a safe drive home!”

Ty steps out of the office and leaves the door open. My muscles are taut, but that ajar door feels more symbolic than it should. Maeve and I hold eye contact for a long moment.

She sighs. “I…think we should be heading out too. Traffic’s down.”

I glance at the laptop clock. Yeah, it’s almost seven.

I take a deep breath, hoping the aching feeling will fade fast. “Yeah. Of course, traffic.”

The mood’s killed. I can accept that much.

She grabs my shoulder as I try to walk out with my stuff. Leans in so her breath is back on my ear. “But worth the risk.”

My heart’s speeding again, and I choose action over thought. I turn to her, tug our lips together quickly before she pulls away.

We separate for real this time.

Not even my long car ride can unwind the knot of desire from inside me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As I make my way through LA after leaving Maeve at USC, an old memory overwhelms me. Back when I was a teenager forced to work at the Huntington, there were these scholars in residence—researchers, college professors, combinations of the two. Being the antisocial shit that I was, I had insisted that I take a gig that involved as little human interaction as possible. I spent my first year working in the office—copying, filing, delivering mail, standard stuff. But there was this one woman who worked in the library. She was a tenure-track professor at USC, actually, and one of the first people who said I had a brain for history and the humanities.

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