Page 45 of Bad Professor

Tilly might be holding back because I’m her professor, but there are other reasons there as well, and I want to know them. She’s a mystery that I need to solve.

“I’m a student,” she says reluctantly. “And you’re my professor.”

“I won’t be forever.”

Hope ignites in her eyes. “What if we can keep it between us?” I offer. “Keep it secret. No one needs to know.”

“How is that possible? How can I sit in your class and not want—” She stops herself before she can say anything more.

“You can want,” I tell her. “I will want, regardless of what happens here tonight. I’m just suggesting not telling anyone about it. And pretending we don’t want.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” she admits. “I don’t like secrets. My ex-husband kept secrets.”

“This isn’t like that.”

“Isn’t it? He kept his mistress a secret for three years. How is this any different?”

I’m losing her. I can see it in her face, from the way she draws her hand out of my grasp. “It would only be until the end of the semester,” I offer. “And we don’t have to keep anything quiet in public—just not around the school. I don’t want to keep you a secret.”

“What are you asking for, Dexter?” She gives a nervous laugh. “I told you I don’t know how to do this.”

“When was the last time you went on a date?” I ask her.

“About twenty years ago.”

I catch my breath. She really means that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her not texting me wasn’t a calculated move, but there must have been reasons.

“I think we had a connection,” I say quietly. “Have one. That doesn’t happen often for me.”

“It’s never happened to me because I’ve never gone on a date since my husband. Ex-husband. Carlos is very much my ex-husband.”

“He’s an idiot for letting you go.”

“You don’t even know him,” Tilly chides. “Or me.”

“I know you smell amazing, like cookies. And you have the sweetest smile, even when you’re asleep. I know the perfect way your ass fits into my hands and the little whimper you make just before you come.”

I need another metaphorical glass of water poured on my cock because it’s hard enough to raise the table.

Tilly’s face flushes, but she smiles. “You’re only the third man to hear that,” she whispers.

I want to be the last.

But I don’t say that, because it’s too much. I don’t even know if I mean it. But—yeah. It sounds pretty good in my head.

“I’m forty-five years old and I have no idea what I’m doing,” she says. “You should know that upfront.”

“I wouldn’t care if you were sixty-five.”

She looks at me wryly. “Yes, you would. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six, but I can make it forty-six if it’ll make you feel better.”

She smiles. “I’m nine years older than you.” She pauses, her face flushed like her age embarrasses her. “I thought I should get that out in the open.”

“Ok.”

“Just… ok?”

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