“I have a meeting now, but after your next class you can come to my office if you’d like to discuss it,” Ethan says. I watch his lips as he talks, then follow up his face to the way his eyes are looking at me with that same intense heat.
“Your office,” I say. “Yes.” I pause, then reach out and touch his arm. “I’ll see you there,” I say, and turn because my class is in the opposite direction.
What am I doing? I so need to talk to Delia about this … but I don’t know if there’s really any ‘this’ to discuss. I don’t know if I even should.
Right now, I need to focus on my chemistry class. Later…well, these are matters to discuss with Ethan.
Alone.
In his office.
Emmaline
I’m waiting outside of Ethan’s office, fidgeting my fingers together in front of me. I can’t stop thinking about what I overheard. One of the gossip girls in my last class was in my chemistry class, and she was telling someone else that Aiden was leaving school because he's in the hospital. They were saying that he’d been in some accident, but Aiden’s only accident I knew of was fucking with me when Ethan was there to save the day. I’m worried about the whole affair — and I know maybe it's wrong but I’m actually worried for Ethan. I remember his knuckles and think that I should maybe feel bad for Aiden. But fuck that. He maybe got more of the shit beat out of him more than he deserved, if he’s in the hospital, but I just don’t want Ethan to get in trouble. Perhaps I should be frightened by him. But I want Ethan now, then, more than ever.
When I hear the clicks of his shoes heading toward his office, the dizzy sensation that sweeps over me almost knocks me over. The low heat burning in my stomach makes my cheeks heat. I look into his eyes, seeing the green glint along with the deep, rich brown of his eyes. The slight graying in his dark hair only makes Ethan look every bit as dignified as he is. The strength of his jawline makes me want to reach out and touch his face.
His is the first hands to extend, touching my hand softly. Not for any real reason, I suppose, other than to feel what he must be feeling too. The electric current between us.
“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Ethan says with a mischievous grin. I don’t know what to read into that, but I enjoy it all the same.
“Not much,” I say, suddenly out of breath. “Did you really get Aiden expelled?” I have to ask. I feel like if I don’t say something now then I’ll forget everything and just press my hands against his chest to feel him again. The idea of Ethan’s warmth beneath his shirt, making contact with my palm, well, I think that would just about knock me out. The idea makes my pussy ache with need.
“Please, step inside,” Ethan says. Despite the words, his tone is commanding. Ethan never asks a question without the answer being only part of the inquiry. Right now, there’s no question at all, but an order.
And like every order he offers me, I’m desperate to obey. Ethan gives me feelings I don’t understand and I can’t begin to ignore.
I step into his office and I realize this is the first time we’ve ever been truly alone. I close the door behind us.
Ethan is standing just inside the doorway, close enough for my shoulder to brush his when I turn around. Shivers run up my spine at the close contact.
“Did you know Aiden’s in the hospital?” I repeat the gossip, but state it as fact. I can interrogate relatively well, even if I’m not a pro like Ethan at getting the truth.
“He deserved worse for touching you,” Ethan says under his breath, almost like he didn’t mean to say the words. I could've missed them because he said them so lightly. “Yes,” Ethan says, pressing his lips together. He exhales. “Does that frighten you?”
Another question, fully loaded.
The double shot of question he offers up goes right to my belly. “Yes,” I say, my eyes on his shoes, in front of me but between my own legs, the way we’re standing. My heart, my skin is all fluttering. A nervous, anxious tide runs through me. “No,” I say now. I look up at him. “Why would you do so much for me?” I ask, and my question is at once purely what I need to know, coming from my mouth before I knew my voice was acting again, and has its own rider — I want to know where he is concerning me, period.
“The past repeats, and I seek to be a better man…but that’s not really all that’s changed,” Ethan says.
His cryptic remarks twist my stomach up more, make my breathing shallow, and then he fingers a tendril of my loose waves next to my face.
“My mother mentioned you were friends…are friends?” I say. I don’t even wish I hadn’t brought up my mother, even though the only real thing on my mind is Ethan. I crave him more than oxygen, and I feel so deprived, like I’ve never seen the sun. I want to burn with him.