"You may notice a lack of keg, if you can see that far down from your tower, Quinn," Chelsea says, smirking at me. Suddenly she arches a brow and lowers her voice. "Uh, and speaking of ‘noticing', there's a tall dark and handsome over there noticing you right now." I turn to see a clean-cut, good-looking older guy with a beer in his hand quickly look away. Chelsea is wagging her eyebrows at me when I turn back, and she winks at me conspiratorially. "I'm going to go, uh, find my friends."
"No, Chels-!"
"Try to have some fun, okay, Quinn?" She grins at me before peeling away and pushing her way through the crowd.
Great, I grumble to myself, thanks, sis. I mean, granted, the whole point of tonight was a little distraction and to clear my head of Logan, but it's not like I came here looking for that kind of attention anywa-
"Please tell me you're not a student here."
I turn, started by the richly English-tinted accent behind me, and immediately blush at the steely-grey eyes looking intently into my own.
"Because I'm pretty sure I can't buy you a drink or try and get your number at some point if you are." He winks at me, and I can't help but feel a little thrill at it.
Uh, Whoa.
He's attractive, in that sort of chemistry teacher way, and that accent is certainly hitting all the right points with me."Uh, no, actually" I stammer awkwardly. "Definitely not a student."
"Oh thank God," he says with that charmingly English accent and an even more charming smile. "I suppose that means I can buy you that drink then."
I can't help but grin back at him, feeling my cheeks burn. "I suppose it does, thanks-" I look down at the name-tag sticker on the lapel of his jacket. "Ryan."
He chuckles and holds his hand out. "I've been getting ‘Professor Smalls' all night, but Ryan sure works too. Quinn is it?" He says, peering at my own name tag as I shake his hand.
"A Professor at a student party, huh?" I smile as I raise a brow at him.
He glances quickly around with a mock seriousness. "Yeah, just don't let the faculty find out."
I raise my eyebrows before he stops and grins at me. "It's a graduate student thing. I'm totally fine to be here." He smiles at me. "Plus now I've got someone else over the age of twelve to talk to."
We talk, and I'm listening to him, but I'm also stuck inside my own head trying very hard not to think about how this man is everything Logan isn't. Logan Dempsey is cocky, and arrogant, and inappropriate, and vulgar. The man buying me a glass of wine and chatting me up here tonight is sweet, and kind, and charming - and not in that cocksure way Logan is. Sure, he's a little fumbling, but at least he's not giving me that look that Logan gives me when he flashes that grin at me.
Of course, it's that exact cocky grin that gets me so heated around Logan. It's that look that has me hot and wet and wanting him more than I've ever wanted anything before. The thought sticks with me, and I quickly take a sip of wine, nodding at whatever Ryan is saying. Is that the reason I can't seem to cut Logan loose from my thoughts? Is the fact that he talks to me in ways no man ever has, or the fact that he's rough and dominant with me that has me practically begging on my knees for him, sometimes quite literally? I mean, God, here I am in a place I belong making quiet, intellectual conversation with a kind, much more appropriate man like Ryan, and all I can think about is Logan. Ryan Smalls is here in his nice, quiet, proper tweed jacket with conversation about literature and current politics, but all I can think about is a shirtless Logan Dempsey with the ink of his bare skin glistening with sweat as he jabs and hooks around a circle of jeering onlookers. The man across from me is smiling at me and asking me pleasant questions about my job, but all I can imagine is Logan's chiseled body, and that arrogant, sexy mouth opening wide to tell me exactly what he wants to do to me.
What is wrong with me?
"So then I said, ‘Hey, if we keep talking about Charlotte Bronte, and I'm gonna need some Erye'!"
I force a laugh out as Ryan doubles over at his own pun, and I'm just starting to think that maybe if I have enough wine, I can start to get Logan out of my head when the voice behind me drags me right back into reality.
"Oh hey, there you are, babe!"
I gasp and whirl at the sound of Logan Dempsey's voice, and my jaw practically hits the floor as I see him, in the flesh, sauntering through the crowd towards me. "Hey, sorry I'm late, just got caught up at the hospital." I'm standing there in absolute shock as he drapes an arm casually over my shoulder before kissing me on the cheek. "Hey bud," He sticks his hand abruptly into Ryan's face. "Dr. Jack Hoff, how's it going?"
Ryan looks completely startled before he quickly and awkwardly shakes Logan's hand. "Oh, uh, yes, hello." He looks quickly between my face and Logan's before smiling awkwardly at me. "I'm- uh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize-"
"Yeah, she gets that a lot, don't you, honey?" Logan kisses my cheek again in this thoroughly un-Logan way before turning that shark-like grin back on Ryan. "I mean she just doesn't look like an engaged woman, does she?"
I'm going to kill him, I think as my face turns dark red. I'm actually going to kill him.
"Well, I should- Uh, I should go find myself another drink!" Ryan smiles awkwardly at me again before he excuses himself.
"What the fuck is wrong with you!" I hiss, turning to Logan and shoving him away from me. I squint and shake my head at the sophomoric ‘Dr. Jack Hoff' scrawled across the sticker on his chest/ "Jack Hoff? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Yeah I thought ‘Seymour Butts' would be a little too overt." He grins. "Hey, it scared that guy away, so I guess it worked."
"That guy was nice, Logan. You should try ‘nice' sometime yourself."
He looks thoroughly amused and totally pleased with himself. "Oh, comon, that guy was a creep!"
He grins at me, and I narrow my eyes at him. "How the hell did you know I was here?"
He chuckles to himself. "Money buys all sorts of things, Quinn."
I open my mouth and stare at him. "What, like tracking devices! Are you fucking following me, Logan?!"
He spreads his hands like anything I'm saying is some sort of false accusation. "Do I look like a psychopath, Quinn? No, I mean money buys all sorts of things like the pint of mint chocolate chip ice-cream I used to bribe Reagan into spilling where you were tonight."
I make a mental note to give my sister a serious piece of my mind for selling me out for some fucking ice cream. Way to completely live up to that ‘crazy pregnant lady' stereotype, Reagan, I grumble to myself. "Why the hell are you here?"
Logan grabs a glass of wine off a passing tray and shrugs before taking a big sip. "To save you from douchebags like that guy!"
"He's a Professor here, actually." I say primly.
"Quinn, he's a teacher at a fuckin student party."
"So? He-"
"So, that's got predator written all over it. Ten bucks says he wanted you to wear a school- girl outfit and call him ‘Teach' later.
I roll my eyes. "You're disgusting."
He grins wickedly at me. "Says the girl about to go suck ‘Teach's' D for an A."
"Don't be crude." I say, wrinkling my face in disgust.
"Oh, you love it."
I'm gritting my teeth and turning away from him when I realize Chelsea is standing right across the room chatting with some friends of her. I whirl back to Logan; "You need to get out of here!" I hiss.
He shakes his head. "No way, I just got here. Plus I promised some football-player guys out front that I'd take ‘em for a spin in the Maybach later."
I give him a look. "You drove a four-hundred-thousand dollar car to a college party?" I roll my eyes. "Not a big fan of subtlety, are you?"
I gasp as his hand openly grabs my ass through my skirt, giving me a lingering and firm squeeze that has me shivering. "Nope." He says, smirking at me.
"Logan!" I hiss, darting my eyes around the crowded room. "Chelsea's here!"
His hand stays right where it is though, firmly cupping my butt. "Well, you should probably get your ass away from my hand then, Archer."
I can feel my pulse start to jump as I stand there with Logan's hand on me. On the one side, part of me is actually so okay with him touching me like that, but the other part of me is glancing wildly around the party just waiting for my sister to walk up to see Logan Dempsey at this party with his hand on my ass and put two and two together.
I start to squirm away from him, but I suddenly gasp as Logan's other hand comes right around the front of me and cups me right over my pussy.
"Are you fucking for real?!" I hiss at him, squirming against his firm hands holding me in the front and the back right in the middle of this crowded room of strangers. There's a horrible feeling of arousal actually start to tingle inside of me at his touch.
Thanks, body. Who's fucking side are you on, anyways?
"Quinn, jeez, quit touching me already," He grins at me, keeping his face a mask of neutral concern as his fingers begin to stroke me through my skirt and my panties, over the crack of my ass and over the front of my sex, making me roll my hips almost unconsciously against him.