Page 26 of Christmas Candy

I trembled at his nearness, at the scent of his aftershave, at the deep growl of his voice. I was afraid and wanting and anxious and desperate for him all at once.

“I don’t know what you mean.” I knew exactly what he meant. He must have seen me watching him.

“I think you do.”

Where is the elevator?

“I-I don’t.” Was that my breathy voice?

“I watch people for a living, Jess. I see them, everything about them, and then I capture them.” His voice lowered and I could feel his breath whisping through the dark brown strands of hair covering my ear. “Would you like to be captured?”

He was …He was coming onto me?My body was on fire. I turned to him, his gaze bearing down on me like a weight. My heart had long since run away, the beat far too fast to stay put. A five o’clock shadow graced his angular jaw and the eyebrow piercing caught the light.

His eyes were flecked with a lighter hazel and his dark brows were drawn down, as if he were concentrating. I swallowed thickly when it became clear he was concentrating on my lips.

The elevator dinged. I hurried inside and turned around to face him again, something inside me screaming that putting my back to him was a mistake. He put a hand up, holding the doors open and putting the expansive ink of his full sleeve on display. I would have loved to follow the pattern, memorize every line, but I couldn’t escape his gaze.

There was no air, not even a puff of it, anywhere near me. Those green eyes pinned me until I backed into the steel wall, my chest rising and falling rapidly. The doors started buzzing, as if irritated by his interference. He didn’t move, just let his gaze rove slowly down my body and back up before focusing on my eyes with an intensity I’d never seen in anyone.

He smirked and backed away.

The doors moved together in slow motion. “Don’t be late to class, Jess. I’ll see you when you get back.” His words flowed around me and then I was sinking.

Jess

Class was happening. The professor was talking, my classmates were answering, and there was a general hum of note-taking on keyboards and the scratch of pencils or pens on paper.

I wasn’t there. I was still in the hallway on the fourteenth floor, standing with Michael at my back. His voice whispering darkly in my ear. Heat coursed through my body at the memory and I shifted in my seat, the tingle between my legs demanding some sort of movement.

“Ms. Shakoor?” Professor Ball asked.

“What?” I looked down to him from the fifth row of the classroom’s stadium seating.

“You volunteered, did you not? So, what’s the answer?” His glasses were slightly askew as he looked up at me.

“I volunteered?” I looked at both of my hands on my laptop keys. I definitely didnotvolunteer.

“I asked whether the tort of negligence carries a two-year or four-year statute of limitations in this state, and you made a sort of a high-pitched grunt.” The class snickered around me. “I thought you were volunteering.”

I wanted to sink under the table and stay there until class was over, everyone had gone, and the cleaning staff had turned off the lights for the night.

“I apologize. It’s two years.”

“Correct. Moving on . . .”

His voice faded out as I ducked my head lower, letting my long layers of dark hair hide my bright red face from the people around me. I never volunteered, and I especially did not volunteer by making a sex sound when thinking about Michael. Not that I’d know a sex sound if it bit me on the ass. A vibrator sound? I knew all about that.

Once class was over, I kept my head down and walked two doors down for my next hour-long lecture.

“Oh, and before I forget, Happy Valentine’s Day tomorrow everyone,” Professor Ball called.

I’d completely forgotten that the holiday was the next day, Saturday. It didn’t matter. I intended to stay in and study while making sweet tongue love to a pint of gelato.

It was my last semester in undergrad, and I was wrapping up my pre-law degree. I had already been accepted to law school and intended to get through it in two years instead of the regular three. I was determined to make it, to rise farther and faster than anyone in my family ever dreamed. Not that they would notice or care.

After my last class let out, I headed to the library and finished up my reading for the next week, just like I usually did on Friday nights.

By the time I got back to my apartment, it was almost 11 p.m. I would have stressed about possibly running into Michael again, but he was a night owl. He rarely stayed home once the sun went down.

---