Page 317 of The Winslow Brothers

Sleep.

Generally, my interest in a woman runs its course pretty quickly, but Rachel still feels fresh. I don’t know what it is about her, but damn, she’s a fucking enigma. An exception to my normally short-attention-span tendencies.

Maybe it’s the ripe shine of forbidden fruit, but there’s something about this woman that makes me want to keep playing. If the frequency of my masturbation over the weekend is anything to go by, getting schooled by someone on Tolstoy is evidently on my top five list of turn-ons.

I’ll have to be careful with that, though—some of the other professors in the department are experts themselves. And I just can’t picture myself getting a hard-on for ol’ Kip or Adele.

Anticipation builds as she clears the threshold of my office and strides toward the shelf that I instructed her to check for the paperwork. It’s there, of course, I’m not completely sadistic, but so are the panties, almost garishly displayed like a flag. She has atremendous ability to ignore and avoid, though—almost as good as my eldest brother, Remy. Her track record proves it.

She walks to the shelf easily, and I lean into the jamb of the door, waiting for our normal banter. I’m almost salivating like one of Pavlov’s pathetic pups, but she shocks me completely by bringing my drool up short.

“Oh, here they are,” she states so matter-of-factly as she snatches the most perfect delicate, sheer pink panties I’ve ever held in my hands.

After a weekend of anticipation—of planning and waiting—my brain short-circuits. Those are not the words I expected, nor is the expression on her face. We’ve never actually gotten to the point where she admits to being the owner of the underwear, and to be honest, I was starting to suspect we never would.

The game would either be laboriously infinite, or they would just disappear one day, no explanation given. Those were the only two possibilities I had even considered.

The ease with which she’s claiming them now almost makes me think I’m hallucinating.

“Huh? Here what are?”

“My underwear,” she says nonchalantly. “I’ve been looking for them.”

Wait, what?She’s been looking for those panties as much as I’ve been looking for a farmer to milk me from the teat. All she’s done for the last month is pretend underwear in general don’t exist. The president of the United States? As far as Rachel isconcerned, he goes commando. And now she’s acting like she’s Lewis or Clark on the Great American Panty Expedition.

“You have?” I can feel my eyes narrow in challenge, but she doesn’t flinch. Her face is a stalwart admiral in the Royal Panty Navy.

“Yeah. I’m really glad you found them. I forgot to put any on this morning, so I could really use them.”

“You…f-f-f-or…got underwear?” I slur practically drunkenly, surprising myself. I don’t usually sound like that. I don’t think I haveeversounded like that. I’m confident. Self-assured. And I can handle people slinging shit because I’ve slung enough to beat out everyone else for five lifetimes.

I clear my throat and tilt my head from one side to the other, glancing down to the hem of Rachel’s dress involuntarily.Relax, Ty. She’s fucking with you.I speak again, this time steadying my voice to something a lot closer to normal. “You forgot your underwear?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, licking at her bottom lip with just the tip of her tongue. I can almost feel my eyes dilate like a cartoon character, every ounce of cool, calm, and collected evacuating the building as though it’s been declared condemned. She nods then, to affirm all the things her hum only hinted at, and I almost can’t believe how sexually enticing the simple movement is.

I want to say something to taunt her back, to regain some of my control, but she’s relentless in her actions, holding out the panties in front of herself by the dangle of just one finger. Her eyes are warm and inviting, and the corner of her mouth is turned up in a seductive smirk. “You want to help me put them on?”

Excu-fuck-what?I open my mouth to answer and will my mind to signal my head to nod, but all I manage is the wooden gulp of a man frozen by mere surprise. She watches me closely, her head tilting just enough to make the bright green of her eyes turn dark and all the air from my lungs to get trapped in my throat.

What the hell is she playing at?

When I don’t say anything, she moves on to do the talking for me. And by the assumption she makes, she’s either the most torturous woman on the planet, or she doesn’t know me at all. Based on how vocal a college campus can be with salacious fodder, I’m betting on the first.

“No?” she says with a pout. “Okay. Some other time, then.” With a quick flick of her wrist, she postures her ankle out in front of herself and slips her pink panties on one foot at a time, shimmying them up her legs and into position under her dress.

I watch the hem flutter down like a sheet on a clothesline billowing in the wind. It takes everything within me to stop myself from stooping down to try to get a view of the promised land underneath.

She rounds the desk, grabbing the paperwork she needed off the shelf on the way, and I’m left standing there, my mouth gulping like a big, dumb fish. I wish I could remember all the types and species and shit from all the years fishing with Uncle Brad so I could at least come up with something to liken myself to, but I’ll be fucked if my brain can tap into anything other than hormones right now.

Our chests almost touch as she stops in front of me, her eyes traveling up the line of my throat until they capture mine. There’s a sparkle in hers. Playful, mischievous, challenging.

The normal Ty Winslow would lean toward her, push her back into her space. But I’m so out of equilibrium right now, I doubt I could say my own name aloud if someone asked me.

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