Page 81 of Wicked Little Secret

Theo takes the hint and leaves only minutes later.

But the rest of the afternoon’s hardly productive. The papers to grade and lessons to plan that I had mentioned turn out to be a false alibi. Instead, I spend the time locked in my home office trying to resist the urge to seek Nyssa out.

I breathe through the fervid temptation and force my mind elsewhere.

Current events. Recent legal studies. Projects around the house that are in progress.

Anything to take my mind off her.

The obsession’s taken a life of its own. It’s left me thick in an addiction I promised myself I’d never fall prey to again…

You feel things intensely, Theron. If you need someone to talk to…

My heart races in my chest as I slam shut my laptop and leap to my feet.

“This isn’t that,” I grind out, then I start pacing the room wall to wall. “That was years ago.”

I go from denying the past to feeling the warm sunshine on my skin.

Josalyn’s smile was like no other. It was a flower blooming before my eyes. It was in the way her entire face glowed along with the spread of her lips and flash of her pearly teeth.

I sank down beside her in the grass, feeling anemic against the spring rays of the sun that shone down on us and signaled winter was finally over.

I preferred the dark. The moody and rainy season where I could bask in my brooding.

But Josalyn made me feel alive. She made me feel eternally young…

I rumple fingers through my unruly hair and banish the past.

Theodora has no idea what the hell she’s talking about. I’m a man of reason and logic and I’m in control of myself. The supposed reemergence of the Valentine Killer has no bearing on me or my life.

“It’s not real. She’s never coming back,” I mutter under my breath. I snatch the textbook for Criminal Law One off my desk and pop it open to the last page of the required reading I’d given. “It’simpossible.”

“Any questions?” I ask the class Wednesday afternoon.

The two dozen empty-headedcows blink and gape back at me like I’ve asked them the most complex mathematical equation imaginable. A scowl clenches onto my face as I incline my head toward the door.

“That is all,” I say. “If you have nothing else, get out of my face.”

Students scramble. They hustle to shove their books and laptops into their bags and crowd at the door in their eagerness to exit.

All except one.

Miss Oliver.

She sits obediently at her desk, shiny gaze stuck on me.

Jose Zardoya’s last out, letting the door thud heavily behind him. The silence takes over from there, swelling with the unfettered passion that’s grown between us in even just a few short hours.

From the last time we were together, experiencing each other.

I nudge my black-framed glasses further up the bridge of my nose. My right brow raises, my stance at my desk authoritative.

“Well?” I say into the loud silence. “What have I told you, Miss Oliver?”

Her head tilts to the side and her teeth graze her deliciously plump bottom lip. She hesitates only a second longer, then does as instructed—she sinks lower in her chair and spreads her legs obscenely wide.

Offering me an unobstructed view of her sopping wet cunt.

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