by Sienna Blake
He was just my professor. Nothing more.
Tell my body that. The instant Danny strode in all the hairs over my arm stood to attention. My stupid heart skipped.
His eyes bore into me, making me itch under my skin. I shuffled in my seat, trying to rub away the tension between my thighs, but it didn’t help.
I must have looked terrified because Ethan shot me a sympathetic look. “Don’t let him scare ye, Ailis. His bark’s worse than his bite.”
His bite was pretty fucking bad.
“Nice to see you showed up this week, Ms Kavanagh,” Danny called from the front of the lecture hall.
Fuck.
Eyes turned to stare at me. The stare that burned the most was Danny’s.
Why did he always have to pick on me? Why did he have to notice me at all?
“I was…sick.” I shot Danny a smug look as if to say, now do you feel bad?
Danny snorted in disbelief. “Really?”
“Really.”
“So that wasn’t you I saw racing to hide in the library last week instead of coming to class?”
Oh. Shit.
The heat on my cheeks bloomed. Giggles tittered across the class and I sank further in my seat.
“I see you’ve brought an instrument this week,” he said, not letting up on me yet.
My focus shifted to the guitar case at my side. I placed a hand on it instinctively. I wondered if he’d recognise it if I took it out.
“Yes. I thought I’d play it if called upon in class. Thought it might make me more comfortable onstage.” Instead of singing—trying to sing and failing.
“So you’re hiding behind it?”
I bristled. “I’m not hiding behind anything.”
“Then you can get your ass down here and sing. Without the guitar.”
I gripped the top of my guitar case. “I would prefer—”
“I don’t give a shit what you prefer.”
Mumbles filled the lecture hall. Everyone was wondering what was going on between him and me. Didn’t he realise that picking on me like this would bring too much attention?
All the old hurt resurfaced. This was like high school all over again. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, tap my heels together three times and be whisked away. Away from the rumours and all the wrong kind of attention.
“Ms Kavanagh,” Danny’s voice boomed out through the lecture hall. “Here. Now.”
Unfortunately this wasn’t Oz and I didn’t have a pair of ruby slippers on my feet. I was still stuck in this stuffy lecture hall in Danny O’Donaghue’s firing line.
Except now I was an adult. Not a fifteen-year-old kid anymore. I didn’t have to take this shit.
“No,” I said in a loud voice.
It was the wrong thing to say.
Danny tilted his head, his eyes filling with menace. “What did you say?”
I cleared my voice. “I said no. I will not let you make a fool out of me, Danny.”
The lecture hall erupted into whispers. I realised my mistake. I called him by his first name. Not sir or professor, or even Mr O’Donaghue. By his first name. It was intimate. As if I knew him.
“I’d say you’re doing a good enough job of doing that on your own, Ms Kavanagh.”
Something in me snapped. The rest of the lecture hall fell away and it was just me and Danny on the playground again.
“I survived cancer, asshole. Don’t think for a second you register on the list of fucks that I give.”
A chorus of gasps brought me back to reality.
Holy shit. What had I done?
Stupid stupid. I’d just cussed out my teacher. In front of everyone. He just made me so fecking mad, I lost my mind.
He couldn’t let that stand. He’d have to punish me.
Punish me.
A shudder wracked my body, underneath it was the strangest thrill.
24
____________
Danny
“I survived cancer, asshole. Don’t think for a second you register on the list of fucks that I give.”
For a brief moment in that lecture hall, I flashed back to sixteen-year-old me, holding on to a sobbing, terrified girl in a hospital bed who thought she was going to die, clinging onto her as if the sheer force of my strength could keep her tethered to this earth.
Outwardly, I scoffed, as if her terminal illness, the one that almost ripped her from me, meant nothing.
“Trying to play the sympathy card, are we? Well, this is life. It sucks. People get cancer. Some people die,” my voice warbled slightly on that word. “You were lucky enough to live. Stop using it as an excuse.”
A stunned echo went through the lecture hall.
“You can stay after class, Ms Kavanagh.” I turned aside, unable to stand looking at Ailis anymore.
“I have another class to go to,” she said slowly, as if I were dumb.
“Do I look like I give a shit?” I yelled, spinning back to glare at her. “You can stay back after class or you can fail.”
I could sense every single student staring at me with wide eyes and questions in the back of their throats.
Fuck me.
My reaction to Ailis was irrational. Insane. I was acting like a crazy person.
She was making me act like a crazy person.
This thought made me even angrier, my blood boiling.
And horny as fuck. I shifted behind my desk so I could hide the growing bulge in my jeans.
What happened to my rules?
No women.
No distractions.
No Ailis fucking Kavanagh.
This was why I needed to stay away from her. Not demand that she stay after class.
25
____________
Ailis
“You can stay back after class or you can fail.”
My breath caught in my throat, sticking to the insides of my lungs as slick as the space between my legs.
With one final look, a look that garnered no argument, Danny tore his eyes away, and he ignored me for the rest of the class.
I didn’t even get a chance to pull out my guitar and perform. To redeem myself. To prove why they let me into this school. Disappointment surged through me.
God, Ailis. You don’t want to be called upon. Now you do want to be called upon. Make up your damn mind.
The end of class drew near too fast and not fast enough at the same time. Soon, it was time to face Danny all by myself.
Ethan squeezed my shoulder in a show of support. “I can wait outside for you if you want?”
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was a witness to me being raked over the coals. “Thanks, but don’t bother. I don’t know how long he’s going to keep me…”
“I don’t even know why Danny’s bothering with Ailis,” I heard Veronica say in a voice loud enough that I knew she meant for me to hear. “She can’t even sing.”
I ignored her. Because she was very the least of my worries right now.
Danny sat in his chair at the front of the room. I could feel his eyes on me as I made my way down to the front of the class, feeling like I was a dead man walking, my feet growing heavier with every step as if they had chains around them.
I stopped right before his desk. The door shut behind the last student. And he and I were alone, my breath clouding up the short distance between us.
Danny didn’t say a word. He just watched me intensely with those electric-blue eyes. I felt like I was staring right into the violent centre of an approaching storm.
I cleared my throat. “You wanted me?”
His lip quirked up in amusement.
Shit.
I realised what I had said and exactly how he had taken it.
“I-I mean, you wanted to see me.”
Danny leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers across his flat stomach, the movement catching my eye, drawing my attention down to his waist and the bulge in his dark jeans.
Oh God. I quickly tore my eyes away, lifting the
m to his face, praying he hadn’t caught me. His face remained serious. If he’d caught me, he wasn’t showing it.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “For my outburst. It won’t happen again.”
“I don’t give a shit about that.”
Really? Then why was I here?
“What happened the other day?” he asked. For once he didn’t sound derisive, but curious.
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I was stalling.
“There.” He nodded back to centre stage behind me. “What happened there?”
The shame of my lackluster performance two weeks ago burned in the back of my throat and under my cheeks.
“I just froze up, okay?”
“Why?”
Because you were standing too close to me.
I shrugged and squeezed my eyes shut, unable to meet his stare.
How could I tell him that my stage fright was because of him? Because he made me feel so much that it choked me. Still. How could I admit he still held power over me? Even after all these years.
I was so lost in myself I didn’t hear him get up. Didn’t feel him move towards me until his hands slipped under my chin and tilted up my face.
“Answer the question, Ailis.”
I snapped my eyes open. His blue-flame eyes consumed my vision. His touch scorched me. Set me on fire. Incinerated me and all my logical thoughts.
“Ailis…”
“I don’t know why.”
Liar.
He raised an eyebrow. “Yet somehow you managed to fly through the audition. I read over your file, over the notes that the judges made concerning your audition. It was nearly perfect.”
“You…read my file?”
He nodded. “You sang my song,” he said quietly.
My throat squeezed. I picked “Give Up All the Stars” because I loved the song. Because when I heard it, I felt the lyrics, understood the loneliness that oozed out of every note.
Because I felt it too.
His eyes softened. “Rickie said he’d never heard a more unique rendition of it. I’d like to hear it sometime. If you’d sing it for me.”
He wanted me to…what?
He was winding me up. I searched his face for signs of his usual cruelty. But found…none.
I swallowed. “Why are you being so nice to me? You…you hate me.”
He flinched, as if my words were barbed, stinging him.
“I don’t hate you,” his voice was a mere whisper now. “I’ve never—”
“Then why does it feel that way?” I cried, letting my anguish show.
His eyes crinkled with pain. “I just…”
The door swung open, cutting him off, breaking us apart.
Danny dropped his hands from my body and I felt the loss of him all over again. He stepped aside and nodded to the person standing at the door, sliding his hands into his pockets casually as if our worlds hadn’t just been colliding. As if we hadn’t been having our first real conversation in years.
“Sorry, I’m late,” a male voice called from the door.
“Your timing is impeccable,” Danny said. “I think we’re done here, Ms Kavanagh.”
And we were back to formalities. As if the last few minutes hadn’t happened. As if he wasn’t about to peel back a piece of the armour around his heart. As if a lifetime ago, we hadn’t meant everything to each other.
I was so stupid.
For thinking that we were connecting. For hoping that somehow the old Danny would find his way back to me.
I turned and fled from the class, my head down to hide my flaming cheeks so I barely noticed the man I rushed past.
26
____________
Danny
“Who was that?” Rickie asked as he walked towards me, glancing back to the doorway where Ailis had disappeared. “She looks familiar.”
I’d forgotten that he was meeting me here after class.
I shrugged, trying to brush Ailis off. But I could still feel her under my hands where I’d touched her, the ghost of her presence lingering around me, the subtle scent of lilies and vanilla clinging to the air.
“No one,” I lied.
Rickie snorted. “Fuck off. Like I can’t smell you lying to me a mile off.” He leaned in, a grin on his face. “Are you fucking her?”
I punched his shoulder out of instinct.
He let out a cry and clasped his arm. “Jesus fuck. What was that for?”
“For even asking that ridiculous question.”
Rickie’s eyes narrowed at me as he rubbed the spot where my fist had collided with him. He shook his head. “You know I wouldn’t care if you were.”
I grabbed my jacket, my anger making it snap at the air. “Yeah, well, I’m not.”
“But you want to, right?”
“No,” I said, just a little too quickly. My blood heating up just a little too much in my veins at the thought.
“Liar,” Rickie shot me a grin. Then his face went serious. “Just don’t let Mrs Prim catch you.” Rickie leaned in. “Rumour has it, her ex-husband cheated on her with one of the teachers here. She’d make your life—and hers—hell if you were caught.”
My blood turned cold. I’d heard of Mrs Prim’s political reach. It might harm me but it’d kill Ailis’s career before it started.
Don’t be a fucking eejit, Danny. You’re not going to touch Ailis with a ten-foot pole.
I shrugged, as if it didn’t feel like I was trying to breathe around a piece of shrapnel in my lungs. “There’s nothing going on.”
Rickie lifted his hands in the air in surrender at the murderous glare I shot him. “Alright. Alright. I’ll let this go.” He shot a glance back to the doorway, a sly look on his face. “For now.”
I shoved every thought of Ailis Kavanagh down into the very pit of me.
She was just a distraction I didn’t need.
I would leave Ailis the hell alone. No more watching her in class. No more calling her out. And definitely no more asking her to stay after class.
From now on, I was staying the hell away from her.
27
____________
Danny
Then – Limerick, Ireland
Valentine’s Day and I was in fucking detention.
My blood burned when I remembered the reason for it. Anyone who was unlucky enough to have detention today was going to be the target for my anger.
I eyed the door at the front of the room as it opened. Then stiffened when Ailis walked in. Speak of the devil…
“Sorry I’m late, I—” She began to speak to Mr Ryan, the teacher in charge of detention today, and froze when her eyes fell on me.
I leaned back in my chair, my eyes on her.
Of course, it had to be her. The very fucking reason for my being here. Not that she’d know that. Not that I’d let anyone know it.
“Take a seat, Ailis,” Mr Ryan said. “Right next to Mr O’Donaghue so I can keep an eye on both of ye.”
“But—”
“Take the seat.”
Ailis walked stiffly to the seat next to me, looking as if she was going to bolt at any second. She slid into her chair, her body leaning away from mine.
I leaned closer, an electricity running under my veins.
Mr Ryan gave us instructions on how to spend our next few dull hours and settled in with what looked like marking papers.
“What are you here for?” I whispered across to Ailis, unworried about Mr Ryan hearing me because everyone knew he was mostly deaf out of his left ear. That’s why I sat on this side of the room.
Ailis ignored me.
I threw a pellet of paper at her and it bounced off her slim shoulder. She flinched but she didn’t turn towards me.
I leaned right in, my breath ruffling the ends of her strawberry-blonde hair. “You can’t ignore me, Dearg.”
Anger flashed across her profile. She stuck up her hand. Mr Ryan ignored her.
I chuckled. “W
hat are you going to do? Get me into more trouble? We’re already in detention.”
She waved her arm, her jaw tensing from how hard she was clenching it, her neck already turning that glorious red blush colour. The colour I knew meant that she was angry or turned on. I shifted in my chair to accommodate the swell in my cock. I couldn’t decide whether I liked her angry or turned on more.
“You can’t get away from me, Dearg…” I taunted in a low voice that Mr Ryan couldn’t hear.
“Mr Ryan,” Ailis called, her voice tinged with desperation.
Mr Ryan looked up just as I sank back into my chair, a cool, casual look to my face and body. Nothing to see here.
At that moment the door burst open, another teacher poking her head in. “Mr Ryan,” she said, “can I talk to you for a moment?”
Mr Ryan looked between Ailis and the other teacher, then nodded. Ailis’s arm slowly slid down.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Mr Ryan said as he left the room. “Please, behave.”
Ailis snorted. “Tell him that,” she muttered, referring to me.
As soon as the door closed, I grinned. We were all alone. She was all mine.
I gripped the back of her chair and slammed my arm across her sheet of paper, closing her in, trapping her. Fear rolled off her, not the scared kind, the excited kind. That hot red blush lit up her neck like a spreading robin’s red breast. I wanted to lick it. Just to see what she would taste like. I wanted to see how much of her I could make blush.
“What’re you in for?” I growled in her ear.
“N-None of your business.” She almost managed to say it without her voice totally shaking. Good girl. She was learning to fight back.
I liked this improved version of my Dearg.
“Did you forget to hand in a paper on time?” I mocked. “Spoke too quietly for the teacher?”
Finally she looked at me—glared at me. That was more like it. The hatred in her eyes made my veins burn red-hot. Made me feel alive. Made me want to do something crazy like jump off a stage and crowd surf or run naked into the sea.
“Back off me, Danny.” She placed a hand on my chest—damn, her tiny hand felt good right there—and pushed me back.
