Dear Professor(88)
“You became a hermit,” I said softly. “How did you meet Christina?”
“She was one of the girls on the site. I didn’t know she was my student until the first day of the semester. It was easy to get obsessed with her. Then, like you, when she needed her letter, it was easy to blackmail her.” He met my eyes. “I didn’t care. Same with Rhiannon. Same with you. Didn’t give a single fuck about what I was doing to you.”
The hardness of his voice sent a chill down my spine.
“I was hard and cold. My students all hated me—those two especially. Just like you.” He smirked, but there was nothing in his eyes that reflected it. “It was easy. There was no desire there for anything more than sex.”
“Carly?”
“Same thing. Drunken staff meeting. A one-off.”
“Except it happened twice.”
“Yes. I didn’t mean for it to happen after we’d entered into our agreement. I’m a bastard, but not unreasonable.”
“You don’t think demanding sex in exchange for a letter already earned is unreasonable?”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s not the point we’re discussing.”
“You’re right. Please carry on with your explanation as to how reasonable you are by blackmailing a student into sleeping with you and remaining faithful to that sexual partner.”
“Don’t push me, Darcy.”
“Don’t push me. You’re not the only one in possession of information that could fuck stuff up. Three student relationships plus one with a colleague?” I raised my eyebrows.
“It was simple until you,” he growled. Anger radiated off him in waves. “Something about you… I wanted to break you. Snap you in two. I was fucking obsessed with you, Darcy. It was an all-consuming need to feel you. To touch you. To own you.” His fists clenched and unclenched a few times. “And then you brought her up. Amanda. You’d managed to do what no one else had. You don’t know it, but that day, you changed every single thing about this relationship. You made me feel again. You forced me to remember and relive the pain I’d ignored for so many years.”
“I don’t understand how this pertains to my needing to listen to you.”
He wiped his hand down his face and hit me with a paralyzing, strong glare. “You made me remember what it was like to care about someone, because I fucking cared about you. You buried yourself in my skin. You became more than just someone I had sex with. You became someone I wanted to spend time with just because I fucking could. Shit—you are that person.”
“So, why would you do this tonight? Why would you try to make me have sex with another man right in front of you?”
“Because I needed something!” Jordan’s voice cracked. “I needed some kind of power over you, because damn it, Darcy. You make me feel powerless. You make me weak.”#p#分页标题#e#
His words were like a bullet to my heart—except they didn’t wound it. They wrapped around it and hugged it tight.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “If that’s true, when why did you sleep with Professor Banks?”
“I needed something that meant nothing. Between you and my damn memories, I was overwhelmed. I needed to step away from the shit and do something that didn’t mean a thing to me.”
I exhaled quietly and looked down. “Did you regret it?”
“Every fucking second. I hated myself for what I needed. I hated every second because she wasn’t you.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down. “That’s why I couldn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“This. Tonight.” Slowly, I lifted my eyes back up to his. The rawness I saw in his floored me. “He wasn’t you,” I said so softly that I could barely hear it myself. “I don’t hate you, Jordan. I don’t hate you at all.”
We stood there for a moment, staring at each other, three feet of space between us. My heart beat a hard, frantic beat against my ribs, and my skin tingled.
His inhale was loud.
That was all he’d needed.
He came at me like a lightning bolt. His hands framed my face, and I slid my arms around his neck as our lips found each other’s. Heat passed between us in a sizzling desperation as, for the first time ever, emotion ruled our touches. Desire took a backseat as he pulled me against him and I whimpered into his mouth.
It was my favorite kiss.
It tasted like hope.
Jordan’s teeth grazed across my bottom lip as he pulled away. I closed my eyes when he rested his forehead against mine, breathing heavily.