by Kahlen Aymes
My eyebrows rose and my lips pursed before a grin slid across my mouth. “Not at all.”
She threw her napkin on the table; her expression almost an indignant sneer. “I thought you said you were burned out!”
“I’m burned out on writing right now. I’m in a block. I need time to decompress.”
“So, take a trip! Use it to research a setting, but do something that won’t ruin my contract with SS—”
I sat up and leaned my elbows on the table, my eyes narrowing. “You don’t have a goddamn contract until I sign it, and you know it, Gloria.”
Her face softened almost immediately, reaching for my hand again. I pulled it back. “I know, Jax. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry I’m upset, but I’ve worked so hard to get you to build your success, and I just don’t want to take any chances.”
“Publishing a shitty book is taking chances. I won’t put something up for publishing until I’m sure it will do well, and you shouldn’t either.” I was calm in the face of her almost- tantrum.
The truth was, I just didn’t want to write. I didn’t have writer’s block; I just wanted a break so I could write at a more leisurely pace, plus my university schedule was tight this year. I refused to do either thing half-assed.
“I guess,” she said, pissed off, but knowing she had nothing to sell until I wrote it.
Our food was delivered, and the delicious aroma of the perfectly cooked steak wafted up from my plate. I picked up a taco and took a bite while Gloria ignored the platter with the green dip and romaine lettuce leaves instead of chips.
“I may have another author for you to represent,” I said between bites. “One of my students.”
Her eyes shot up to lock with mine and she crossed her arms across her chest defiantly. “Goody,” she said sarcastically. “I get to work my ass off for some no-talent newbie in your stead?”
“Something like that, except she does have talent.”
Gloria’s red stained lips pressed together, and she blinked once. “Yeah, who says?”
“I say,” I said, smiling. “The first assignment of the semester blew me away. It’s sexy as hell; trust me.”
She finally acquiesced and picked up one of her lettuce boats and filled it with the guacamole. “What genre?”
“Well, it was only a chapter, or so…”
“Are you telling me you don’t even know if it’s even a finished novel?” she asked, her tone turning pissy once more. She shook her head, putting her food back on her plate.
“I’m betting on a work-in-progress. There was too much backstory for it to be just a writing assignment.”
“Uh huh,” she said accusingly, and I ignored her, choosing instead to take another drink of my beer.
“As to genre; it’s erotic romance. It was for my sex writing class. It was hotter than fuck, Gloria.”
“I see the big picture now,” she accused. “You’re fucking this girl, is that it?” Her eyes seemed to read my mind.
“It’s really none of your business, but no,” I stated firmly, trying to quell the memory of beating off to the fantasy of just that an hour earlier. I shook my head, swallowing a bite of my taco. “Her piece was brilliant, though. I mean, the sex scene blew me away.”
“You mean your dick got hard, right?” She took a sip from her glass, not breaking eye contact.
I grinned because I couldn’t help myself and nodded, tongue-in-cheek. “If I’m going to be honest, yes.”
“Ah ha!” she pointed a finger at me. “I knew it!”
“Look, isn’t that what you want when looking for new talent? Someone who can make a reader actually experience the book?”
“Yes, but we both know it doesn’t take much to get your dick hard.”
I knew that if I just said the word, I could take her home and have her naked a half hour after the meal. I didn’t want to play with her emotions, so that meant I couldn’t play with her body. I’d already been down that road and it got messy; almost making it impossible to work together.
I leaned forward so I could speak in lower tones. The restaurant was busy and noisy, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “She’ll get every man’s dick hard, and every woman’s pussy will weep… I promise,” I said urgently. “The scene I read didn’t even have penetration in it and it put me in physical pain. That is talent.”
Gloria’s eyes softened and her body echoed my language and her voice became pleading. “Maybe I should read it.” Her words and eyes held a hint of suggestion.
I shook my head. “I can’t let you without asking my student’s permission, but I will.”
“Well, maybe we can go to your place and I can relieve some of your pain.” She reached across the table, offering me her hand again.
I sat back and away from her, deciding not to go down that road. I had another woman I wanted in my bed and no amount of fantasy would allow me to fuck Gloria and imagine it was Addison Tomms. “No.” My head moved a minuscule amount in the negative. “Thanks.”
Gloria’s eyes clouded over. “You know just because you’re beautiful doesn’t mean you can be a dick,” she said sadly. I realized that if Gloria thought I wanted to fuck my student and she was already jealous before reading her piece or meeting her, she’d never agree to help get her published.
“She is one of a hundred and fifty students and who knows? I might come across another potential client or two for you. Relax Gloria; I want to get into this girl’s head, not her pants.”
I knew it was a blatant lie before I even finished the sentence. My teaching experience told me the odds were against another student even coming close to her talent.
I did want to get into her head, but her pretty little panties, too. In that moment I knew that over the weekend I’d be reading and re-reading Addison’s piece, and I’d be hard-pressed to stomach the rest of the pile.
4
I was nervous as hell.
My eyes were trained on my professor as he spoke at the front of the room. He was the most perfect specimen of a man, I think I’d ever seen; his voice oozed over me like honey. I blinked and swallowed hard, licking my lips to minimize the dryness in my mouth. I didn’t like the way my body was reacting, and from a distance of fifty feet! I felt flushed; my heart was pounding; I felt feverish.
I ran a shaky hand through my hair. Glancing around, I noted how most of the women in the room and several of the men, too, were all captivated, their eyes locked on the professor, hanging on his every word. One guy, three seats down in the same row, kept tugging at the crotch of his cargo shorts, obviously effected by the subject matter of the lecture. I wouldn’t have noticed but he was the only movement anywhere around me and my peripheral vision caught it, so I did a double take. I needed a distraction from the sexy professor at the front of the room, so I nudged Michelle and nodded in the guy’s direction and right on cue he reached down and tugged it again.
“No, he didn’t…” she murmured softly, her voice full of incredulity as she blinked. Then, her eyes met mine and both of us tried not to laugh; I bit my lip, but my friend let out a snort then deliberately turned it into a cough when others glanced toward the sound.
It was Monday morning of the second week of the semester, and I’d been worrying all weekend; would Dr. Michaels like the piece I’d submitted? I was particularly anxious because it was a scene from my novel. Maybe he hadn’t even read it himself. After all, he had several hundred students across all of his courses, and they all had writing assignments. I cringed that I’d looked up his entire class schedule. I didn’t want to be a quivering bowl of hormones like so many of the others; I wanted to be professional and the quintessential academic, taking these assignments with the dedicated determination with which I approached all of my classes and professors. I would stay focused, I promised myself silently. After all, he was just a man. An incredibly hot, built, and virile man.
I sighed as my thoughts went off on a tangent, but then I shook myself back to reality. If he didn’t like m
y writing, it wasn’t the end of the world. Was it?
“So, in reading your assignments, I sensed a bit of a struggle,” Dr. Michaels stated, and my heart fell even as it began to beat faster. I’d selected a chapter from the novel I was writing, thinking it was the hottest scene I’d written, but apparently it wasn’t as good as I thought. He was more casually dressed in tight dark jeans, a white button-down sans tie, and a lighter blue suit jacket. “What did you find was the most difficult about it?”
Brandy and Cheryl managed to find Michelle and I on our way into the auditorium and were seated next to us, with Brandy on my left. Lucky me.
“Ooh, that man is delicious,” Brandy muttered. “Damn. He can butter my bread any time.”
My eyes got wide without looking at her. Obviously, she didn’t give two shits that our professor just said we all sucked. All of us. That would mean, me, too.
“Anyone?”
“Maybe you should speak up, Brandy. This is your chance to get his attention,” I goaded.
She looked at me, and instantly her hand went up.
“Yes?” The professor pointed in our direction. “What was your challenge?”
“Should I stand?” Brandy asked, and I felt myself sinking down further in my chair.
“Sure.” He planted himself facing her and folded his arms across is his chest.
“My name is Brandy Dickenson,” she stammered. “Nice to meet you, Jax, I mean, uh, Dr. Michaels. I’ve read all your books, I mean like read and reread, them,” she gushed.
Oh, God, I thought. How embarrassing. It was all I could do not to shield my face with my right hand.
His brow furrowed impatiently. “Thank you, but can we please keep our focus on class? What was your issue with the assignment?”
“Oh, sorry, sir. Um, well,” Brandy began. “I was nervous about you reading it.”
“Hmm… then I guess you shouldn’t have taken my class,” he said, annoyed. “Who did you think would read it? William Shakespeare?”
I inhaled a deep breath. Suddenly I felt bad for the infatuated woman who was quickly turning red in the face. He was beautiful and extremely talented, but did he have to be a prick about it? Even though I knew Brandy was not a serious writer and was only taking the class to ogle him, he didn’t need to demean her in front of everyone.
Brandy’s hand went to the base of her throat as she struggled for words. “Well, I mean, you’re so good at writing, and—” she stopped.
“And…” Dr. Michaels said, “you’re here to learn from me so that works out well, don’t you think? Anyone else have a better answer?”
Brandy slowly sank back down into her seat, clearly defeated. “Oh, shit,” she said under her breath. I thought she was tactless and even a little crude, but now I felt sorry for her. “Now he thinks I’m a complete idiot,” she muttered.
Another student answered that she was embarrassed writing about the sex act and that dirty talk wasn’t in her wheel house.
“Anything can be learned,” Dr. Michaels stated. “I don’t expect perfection on your first attempt, but I do think that you have to be honest about why you struggle so it can be addressed and overcome. Sex scenes, even dirty ones, don’t have to contain dirty talk. Again, it’s about your audience.”
“He makes it sound so clinical,” Michelle whispered.
I shrugged. I understood why the two women were disappointed, even I was a little, and I was the only one of the three of us who actually aspired to be a writer. If he treated me, like he’d just done Brandy, I’d be devastated and would most likely conclude I should look into another profession.
“Yeah, what about the romance factor, huh?” Cheryl asked in a whisper. “That’s what we’re here for.”
The professor answered her question as if he’d read Cheryl’s mind. “In most cases we’re trying to build a romantic ambiance, but writing it is a skill, and it will get easier with time. I bet you were wondering why the textbook requirements for this course included one called The Human Zoo! Because at base level we are all animals, and nature requires certain steps before mating can occur. People are animals at our basic level, and the different levels of intimacy between people have a specific order. If you picked up one of my books and I had them humping and bumping before they made eye contact or kissed, it wouldn’t really be believable, would it? It all starts with attraction eye to body. The first step is noticing someone, being attracted from a distance, then eye contact, hand to hand, and so forth from there. Understanding the process is a good place to start.”
I found the rest of the lecture interesting as I listened to the professor lay it out, it made perfect sense. At the close of class, he gave us our assignment to read the first two chapters of Intimate Behavior: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of Human Intimacy by Desmond Morris and write a short assignment using the first two steps. We were then directed to line up and make our way to the front of the room where he and his teaching assistant would return our graded papers, adding that those of us with names ending in A-K were to proceed to the left and those with names beginning with L-Z to move to the right.
I had butterflies in my stomach as I waited my turn on the stairs leading little by little downward toward the lecture platform in front of me but hidden by the rows of students. I was unsure if my uneasiness was due to being afraid of the grade I’d earned, or if it was because I was getting in closer in proximity of Dr. Michaels. I was disappointed in the way he’d treated Brandy. Maybe he’d just fallen off of his pedestal a bit, and maybe that was okay. I needed to get my head in the game and get Jaxon Michaels out of my fantasies.
“Here we go,” Michelle said breathlessly.
“Yes,” I agreed. I hadn’t even told her how nervous I was, or how much this man’s opinion mattered to me. Maybe I didn’t want her to feel worse for me in case I’d tanked the assignment, and she would if she knew how worried I was.
“I wish I could crawl in a hole right now,” Brandy added. “I’m so humiliated.”
“It’ll be okay, Brandy,” Cheryl comforted.
I felt sorry for the other woman. She’d taken this class solely to meet this man, and then I’d egged her on to ask the question. I felt like the biggest ass. “I thought he acted like a dick,” I said to ease her discomfort.
“The best I can hope for is that his TA has my paper. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I pray to God that Dr. Panty-Melter has the end of the alphabet.”
If Dr. Michaels did have the last letters it would mean I’d be face-to-face with the sexy professor within minutes. I felt my heart begin to thrum; I could almost feel it beating in my wrists and throat. There were too many students between my place in line and the desk to allow me to see which side the professor was seated on. To ease my nerves, I tried to make small talk with Michelle and my two new friends, laughing absently when Michelle told the others about the guy yanking on his jock during the lecture.
When we got to the place where the line split, the three of them went right while I went left. It was then I could see that the professor was in my immediate future. I cleared my throat and clung to my book bag, holding it in front of my body as a sort of shield; from what, I had no clue.
Four students in front of me, then three, then two… I could now hear his voice asking their names and it made a shiver run over my skin. My breathing got uncomfortably shallow, and then, an instant later his intense and brilliant blue gaze landed on me.
His eyes locked with mine.
“Miss Tomms,” he said my name without asking who I was. A shiver ran through me that he remembered; like it foreshadowed some earth-shattering scene about to come. Those intense eyes framed by incredibly dark lashes. The strong jaw. The broad, muscular shoulders. God, that face. That fucking sex hair. Up close it was criminal how incredibly sexy he was. He was utterly stunning.
My breath left me in a soft rush, and I sucked in another so I could speak. “Dr. Michaels,” I acknowledged with a small nod.
He had a f
ile box in front of him that held the graded papers separated alphabetically by dividers. He reached in and slowly pulled mine out. Maybe this weird tradition he had of insisting the first assignment was printed out was his way to bring his students face-to face in order to press upon us just how intimidating he actually was. And, he was.
There was admiration in his eyes as they roamed over my face and hair, lingering on my mouth. I couldn’t help looking at his. His lips were as perfect as the rest of him, the lower one full and begging to be bitten. I cleared my throat. I felt like helpless prey; paralyzed by a mixture of fear and adulation; the venom of his incredible eyes and his scent. Whether it was his will to eat me alive or seduce me, it was certain that I would succumb to either in that moment. My heart thrummed inside my chest, blood rushing in my ears, wetness pooling between my legs. Oh, God, my legs went weak and I struggled to stand without wobbling.
His long fingers bent the stack of stapled paper so that the grade was hidden from view when he held it out to me. I held the book bag to me with one arm and reached for the document with the other hand.
He pulled it back for a second, denying it to me, his brilliant eyes still burning, but now teasing into mine. I cocked one eyebrow in question and a hint of a smile graced his luscious mouth. “I’d like to see you in my office, tomorrow. I have office hours from nine to eleven. Does that work?”
My mind was racing; wondering at the reason behind his request at the same time as my heart fell into the pit of my stomach. Did I totally screw up the assignment? I felt like I was about to throw up and wished the earth would open up and swallow me.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Tomms? Does that work for you?”
“Ummm," I stammered. "Yes, Professor. See you then.”
“Excellent.” He handed me the paper then; his eyes still not breaking contact. I felt like I was falling into the deepest end of the ocean, drowning, and only he could save me. I was in serious trouble.
“Yes, sir.”
My heart felt as if it would fly from my aching chest as I took the paper and turned, concentrating on walking, without rushing, to the far left of the room, taking the side stairs up to the marble lobby and then walking out of the building. I wanted to look at the grade as I clutched the still folded assignment in my hand, but something inside me hesitated. My heart felt like it would explode as I opened the folded pages and then, in astonishment flipped through the rest. There was no grade. No editorial mark-ups. Nothing.
