“Sorry,” I heard her whisper.
“No problem,” the guy at that table replied.
When I turned around, she had found her way to the front of the room and sat perched in a chair. Nothing too spectacular, although I couldn’t see her well with the ballcap she wore pulled low over her eyes. She wore frayed cutoff shorts that showcased some pretty fucking nice legs, though, and a silver toe ring shone in the sunlight cascading through the windows. A little bit of tantalizing sparkle.
Fucker, I berated myself. Nice legs didn’t mean she was hot everywhere. She wore a baggy hoodie that hid her entire upper half, and her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail tucked through the back of her ballcap.
Oh, but what I could do with that ponytail…
Dammit.
I don’t fuck students. I don’t fuck students…
She continued to dig through her pack. Unloading the contents onto the narrow table in the front row as she searched, quietly at first, but then growing louder and more disruptive. She precariously piled more and more on her desk before she bumped the stack with her elbow. The whole pile hit the floor with a crash followed by a quiet “shit” as she leapt from her seat to start picking them up.
I was so incredibly pissy already that any patience I had for shit like this was long gone. Stepping in front of her, standing over her, I stared down in disapproval. After a moment, I could see her tense as she took note of me.
“I’m sorry,” she softly whispered, still not looking up as she struggled to gather her books. “I can’t find the book for this class.”
I reached down to pluck one from her collection, holding it out.
“This one,” I said. Truthfully, I was a little grouchier than I probably had any right to be, but I felt like being a dick.
“Thank you,” she whispered, shoving her remaining books back into her pack. She reached out to take the one I held, looking up to gaze at me in sheepish embarrassment. A flush colored her cheeks. That was evident even under the ballcap she wore. Her full lips were pressed into a frown.
But shock and recognition hit her features as she finally looked up at me. She gasped.
She froze.
I froze.
Holy fuck.
Those same beautiful, wide brown eyes.
Eyes that had gazed up at me a month before while she sucked me off. That had stared into mine as she came all over my cock.
“Oh my God," she whispered.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I don’t fuck students…
I don’t fuck students…
I don’t fuck students…
My little mantra hit high speed. It whirled through my mind. It squeaked like Alvin and the motherfuckin’ Chipmunks.
She’d been so good. Cole had been so good. That night had been fucking amazing. The best sex I’d had in forever. Everything since had paled in comparison, feeding into my overall dissatisfaction.
Shit. Damn.
I don’t fuck students…
…but I had totally fucked this one.
She swallowed hard, and I swear I felt her throat close around my dick again. I thought for a second I even heard her moan as it all came rushing back to her, too.
Fuck.
Struck momentarily dumb, I finally wrenched my gaze away to look around the room at the rest of the class. A few looked a bit terrified, as though I was going to be a complete hardass teacher. A few looked like they were trying to ignore me being a dick to a student. A few seemed to find it all very amusing.
None really seemed to click that this girl and I had a history.
Without looking at her again, I turned back to the board to point at where I’d written my name. My mind on autopilot as I spoke.
“Okay, everyone, I’m Professor Dorsey here to teach you about the wonderful world of Pressure Transient Analysis, but you can call me Professor Badass.”
Chuckles sounded around the room, and the general sense of awkwardness slowly began to fade as the daily grind took hold. Mechanically, I took them through the basics on the syllabus, my expectations and their responsibilities. My scoring rubric. What I hoped they’d glean from this class and how it would help them in the future.
And it was all one-hundred-percent rehearsed and perfunctory.
The whole time, my little brunette sat in the front row with her eyes downcast. Clearly attempting to be unobtrusive, even though, front and center like she was, I had a hard time concentrating. I almost dismissed the class without taking attendance, which would have sucked ass since I needed that information to turn into student affairs, and the student affairs officer already had it in for me.
I began to read off the names, looking around the room to see who was who, realizing that the one mystery I had from that night was about to be solved.
“Jeffrey Falkner… Denise Feist… Tony Graham… Rain Hartmann…”
“Here,” she quietly said, and her voice sorta grabbed me by the balls. Husky and smooth, yet muted with uncomfortable reserve. She still focused on the book before her, still avoiding eye contact.
Rain Hartmann…
Rain.
Beautiful and unique. Fresh. Cool.
Wet.
She had been so fucking wet.
Fuck.
I don’t fuck students… I don’t fuck students… I don’t fuck students…
I stopped by the Copperline on my way home. I couldn’t get her or that night out of my mind. I felt all hopped up over the mess that could come about over this. It was like a bad high.
I sent Rain an email through the school system, a simple request to stop by my office before class the next day. Now I was stuck waiting. Would she? What the fuck was I going to say if she did?
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were going to be my student when my friend and I were fucking you a few weeks ago…
Based on the class she was in, she was earning an advanced degree. And, lucky me, that class was a requirement for a masters in petroleum engineering. She needed it, and I was the only one who taught it.
So, as I turned my pickup towards Ophir, my mind whirled to figure out a way out of this mess. I finally turned into the Copperline’s lot, doing everything I could not to think of it because I couldn’t see any solution that didn’t mean one of us should leave.
I threw my truck into park and jumped out. It was a Wednesday, an odd starting date for the school year, but one that allowed for orientations and student events to help ensure they knew where to go and what to do before the start of classes. Scanning the lot, I saw a few cars I recognized, hoping that at least one of the bar sluts was close.
I was dying for the mindless release that could take me out of my tangled thoughts.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the low light inside, but I spotted Laura and Pauline perched on stools at the edge of the bar. Laura had started working at the Copperline, filling the slot once taken by Cody’s wife, Ilsa, when she went back to school to earn her bachelors.
Pauline caught my gaze as I came through the door, nudging Laura, who turned to shoot me an inviting smile.
I walked right up to the two of them with determination and set my hands on my hips.
“How’s your mouth today?” I asked Laura.
Her lips parted and she gave me a seductive smile. “Far too empty.”
I turned to Pauline.
“And yours?”
“Hungry,” Pauline replied.
“Out back,” I demanded and turned on my heel, not waiting for a response, but knowing without a doubt they would.
And they did.
On their knees behind the bar, they played their roles. They sucked me off, taking turns until I had finally shot my load into their waiting mouths. It was dirty and wrong, but so was I, and I needed something to try and get those wide brown eyes, full of shocked recognition, out of my mind.
The damn thing was, as I allowed the euphoria to seep into my consciousness, those eyes were all I
could think of.
I slept for shit. Tossing and turning. Unable to get her, that night with her and Cole, out of my mind. I wondered if she’d show up at my office. We had to get something straightened out.
Dragging myself into my cramped little office that was really a glorified closet, I sat and waited. I shuffled through some papers on my desk and fiddled with my pencil. I took a sip of my nasty, half-cold coffee, then another, grimacing as I swallowed. I thought about making a quick run to get a shot in the dark from the espresso counter, something to fuel my morning, but I didn’t want to miss Rain when she arrived.
If she arrived.
My colleagues filtered in, and the sounds of more and more footsteps filled the halls. My ears were fine-tuned, waiting for light, feminine steps to patter along the floor.
Growing restless, I stood and began to pace the tiny room. I stared at the bare walls I’d never bothered to decorate aside from the annual calendar I got from the Bureau of Mines. The clock ticked slowly, every second echoing through my head. A quarter after. Twenty after.
I sat back at my desk and drummed my fingers on the surface.
Nine-thirty.
I dropped my head into my hands. She wasn’t coming. Fuck. I needed to talk to her.
Then, just before nine-forty-five, I heard a light tap on my open door. I jerked up my head to see her chocolate-brown eyes full of apprehension. Her cheeks tinged a warm pink.
For a second, we just stared at each other, almost as though we were afraid to speak. Finally, I shook the dazed feeling from my head and stood, gesturing to the chair in front of my desk.
“Ms. Hartmann, come in and have a seat.”
She took a step inside, gently closing the door behind her, before she perched in the chair with her book bag on her lap.
The clicking of the ticking clock had all but disappeared with the sound of her shaky breathing. Of the blood rushing through my veins. She inhaled, seemingly drawing up the will to speak. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She closed it, and her eyebrows narrowed.
“So,” I began, breaking the silence, “I don’t suppose you’re just taking my class for the hell of it.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
“You’re getting your masters in petroleum engineering?”
“Yeah,” she finally replied. “I’m on track to graduate in the spring.”
“So, you can’t even really move classes around.”
“Not really.”
“I can’t—in what little good conscience I have—tell you to switch classes. This is a requirement for your degree, and it’s a prerequisite for one you have to take in the spring.”
“There’s gotta be a way to shift a little. Go into a different section. There’s got to be—”
I shook my head and interrupted her. “This is the only cohort this semester, and I’m the only one who teaches it.”
Her eyebrows came together as she sighed heavily. The silence that followed was deafening, both of us frantically trying to come up with a solution to this mess.
“What are you gonna do?” she finally asked in a small voice.
“Policy says I have to report this… situation, to disclose it to my supervisor.”
“And? What will your supervisor do?”
“I don’t know. It would be my first. I’ve managed to avoid this sort of situation before this. I don’t fuck students.”
The last bit sorta slipped out. My mantra. I didn’t really mean to say it out loud, much less with a rough, grating tone to my voice. A tone that sounded a bit like I was trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t fuck her again… and failing.
Because, even with the uncomfortableness of this moment, even as wrong as I knew it was, even as much as she was clearly trying to downplay her beauty with a baggie hoodie and faded jeans, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
About devouring the sweet, hard bud of her nipple.
About sinking into the wet heat of her pussy.
About the way she moaned and trembled around my dick.
The tension around us had me itching to touch her. To hear her whisper “fuck me” again in my ear.
I don’t fuck students…
She looked up at me as I dropped the F-bomb, a slight catch in her breathing, and her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip. Then, as if remembering herself, who she was and who I was, she dropped her gaze. For a split second, I missed the hot look in her deep brown eyes.
I needed to chill the fuck out.
“So what do you think he’ll do? Your supervisor… you won’t get in trouble, will you?”
“He’ll probably remove me from the class. Teach it himself, maybe? You’re the student. You are the victim.”
“Victim?” her eyes flashed in wry amusement. “I’m hardly a victim.”
“That’s how the institution will see it… how the courts would see it.”
“Courts?”
“This sort of thing doesn’t fly well if the public finds out, and, yes, you would most certainly be seen as a victim.”
“So maybe I transfer. Maybe to Montana State.”
“That wouldn’t exactly be easy.”
“I’m not afraid to take on something hard.”
Hard… I was growing harder every second, and when she said that, I couldn’t quite contain the groan.
“Shit, that’s not exactly how I meant for that to come out,” she mumbled.
I bolstered myself with a deep breath, and cleared my throat before I spoke. “They started over a week ago. By the time you got the paperwork done, I doubt they’d admit you for this fall. Chances are, you’d lose out on this semester regardless.”
She frowned, pursing her full lips in a way that made me want to brush my thumb across them. Or my dick. Her mouth was—
Fuck. Focus.
I don’t fuck students…
“And,” I continued as though I wasn’t fantasizing about her ravenously going down on me, “if you’re on track to graduate in the spring, you probably have over half of the required credits from Tech, in which case you’d have to take even more for MSU to award it. Board of Regents policy says you need at least fifty percent of your credits from the awarding institution.”
“Okay, so I could switch degrees…” she thoughtfully trailed off. “Go into environmental, like my bachelors.”
“Your bachelors is in environmental engineering? Why did you go to petroleum?”
“It was kind of a dig at my parents. Long story.”
Sounded intriguing, but not really helpful to the problem before us.
“The coursework is very different,” I said with a frown. “You’d kinda be starting from scratch for the advanced field of study. Very few, if any, of your credits for petroleum would go towards environmental. It would put you back even further.”
“Yeah, but what choice do I have? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
She fiddled with the zipper on her pack. As I watched her fingertips toy with it, I couldn’t help but remember how they felt on my skin. Her hand wrapping around my junk right before her mouth—
Fuuuuuuck.
“I’ll talk to Glenn,” I finally said, clearing my throat.
“Glenn?”
“Glenn McCall. He’s the department head. My supervisor.”
She looked troubled. “You said he’d probably remove you from the class.”
“He might, I don’t know.”
“That’s not right. It’s not like this is all your fault. I was there, too.”
Yeah, I remembered. How badly I remembered. I remembered so much that I had a fucker of a stiffy because of it.
She slid her pack to the floor and stood, turning her back to stare at the blank walls like I had done before she came. Her hands on her hips in a way that highlighted the delicious curves of her ass clad in worn denim. Perfectly round, just right for a nice swat as I—
Jesus, I was starting to feel some serious p
ain.
Suddenly she turned with a bright expression lighting her face. I jerked up my head, trying to avoid her catching me giving her the once over. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to.
“I think we can do it,” she began, and my mind went straight in the gutter with that.
Do it? Fuck yeah.
Wait. No. No, we couldn’t do it. That was exactly the problem here.
She continued on, seemingly unaware of where my fourteen-year-old-boy mentality was going with her choice of words.
“We’re adults. What happened has happened. It doesn’t mean it will happen again.”
That actually made my dick feel sad. No shit. I swear it felt a little bereft. Like it was going to die alone.
But she was right. It didn’t have to happen again. It couldn’t happen again.
I nodded. “Right, it was just…” Probably the hottest sex I’d ever had and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I thought.
But that would really be best left unsaid.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “We didn’t know. Now we do. We just keep it professional.”
“Exactly,” she said, contemplating the situation. “I mean, really, it was just the once. It’s not like an innocent slip up should keep me from studying under you.”
Fuck, I needed this like I needed a hole in the head. I wanted her under me, but it had nothing to do with studying.
“Right,” I agreed, although my voice choked just a little.
“I promise,” she said fervently, leaning over my desk and looking directly into my eyes with a determination that sent reverberations through my body, “I will be the hardest working student you’ve ever had. I will never ask for special treatment. I will do everything I have to do to get through. I will ace your course, and I won’t hit on you. I won’t bat my eyelashes at you.” She sat back and gave me a sharp nod. “I will be a dream.”
Little did she know, she already fucking was.
“As you know, the petroleum at that level has the viscosity of peanut butter,” I lectured, trying to ignore Rain who sat front and center, absently sipping at the thin straws of her latte while she took notes.
Hot Dirty Love (Copperline #5) Page 3
