by Lola Darling
Does anything rattle him?
Well fine. If he wants to pretend there’s nothing here, two can play at that. I take a step closer to him, and inwardly thrill when I hear his sharp intake of breath. “Fabulous. I learned all about the distinguished ghosts who reside in our fine library. King . . . Edward, was it?”
“Probably Henry. He’s the only one they can be sure the Americans remember.”
Am I imagining it, or is that a smile flirting with the corners of his lips? “I remember plenty of royalty!” I protest. “There was Elizabeth the First, and Mary Queen of Scots, and that other Mary, the bloody one . . . and current Elizabeth . . . ”
Yes. Definitely a smile. It widens now. “I’m surprised. You only remember our female monarchs? Most girls have eyes only for the princes.”
“I’m not interested in chasing royal guys. It’s more interesting to imagine the kind of strength that women born into power wielded.”
“I imagine you have some experience there,” he says, his voice so low I can’t be sure I heard him right.
I stare up at him, and even in the dark, with only the distant street lamps to illuminate us, I can swear I feel his eyes staring straight back into mine, burning holes through me. It’s something about his eyebrows, I decide. The way they line up too perfectly, just above his sharp cheeks. It makes his whole face so . . . severe. In an intimidating way. But sexy intimidating. I laugh weakly, too late for it to seem natural. “What about you, no royal role models?”
“Oh, definitely Henry VIII.”
I raise one eyebrow, actually backing away a step. “Seriously? He was a total womanizing creep.”
He bursts into laughter. The same laughter I heard in the confessional, a sharp, short burst that sounds like he doesn’t use it nearly often enough. “I was joking.” His eyes catch the streetlight and glitter at me like twin dark stars. “Though you have to admit, the man certainly knew how to take what he wanted.”
Maybe it’s the night air. Maybe it’s the scent on his breath, like mint and smoke mingled. Maybe it’s just that I am out of my ever-loving mind. But I take a step closer to him, reach for his arm and wrap my slender hand around his thick bicep. Wow. Professor does not slack on the gym visits, from the feel of it. “I imagine you have some experience there,” I reply, and I feel him tense under my touch with an undeniable sense of satisfaction.
Turnabout is fair play, I tell myself. He started it.
I do feel bad, though, when he steps away from me, and my hand falls back to my side. Did I go too far? I was only kidding. I didn’t mean . . .
Damn it, Harper, not again.
“Have a good night, Ms. Reed,” he says, and then he’s gone, disappearing into the mist across campus so fast that within moments I’m wondering if the ghost tour wasn’t right after all. Maybe this library really is haunted.
By the ghost of my desires.
#
Safely ensconced in the library, my heart rate calms enough for me to reopen the Heaney files and confirm that I definitely still have no ideas.
Also, I feel a little guilty for how I just acted. I promised him I would stay away. Behave normally. If I want this research aid position, I’m going to have to work one-on-one with him. Now I just made him feel totally uncomfortable, before I even had a chance to be considered? Great work!
But he did start it. Didn’t he? Or was I imagining the flirtiness in his gaze, the firm grip of his hand on my shoulder, the way his eyes bored into mine when he said the man certainly knew how to take what he wanted.
I shiver. Focus. I log onto my laptop and refresh my inbox.
1 new message from J. Kingston.
My heart leaps into my throat, threatens to choke off my air supply. A Request, says the subject line. Cryptic, much?
Is this about our meeting just now? Is he going to ask me to stay away from him? To drop the class? Maybe I should. Maybe it would be easier on both of us.
Or is it the opposite kind of request?
Visions of the so-not-appropriate variety dance through my head. I envision everything this email could say. Harper, meet me in my office in ten minutes. Wear a shorter skirt this time.
Harper, I can’t stop thinking about how good you taste.
Harper, I made you come harder than you ever have before, and in public, no less. Care to get on your knees and return the favor?
Unfortunately, the moment I click open the message, I realize it’s not that kind of email. For one thing, he’s CCed our entire poetry class.
I trust you are all hard at work on your Heaney essays, he starts, with no preamble. Straight to the point. I’d like it, if it wasn’t so presumptuous. He only gave us the assignment this morning, and it’s ten o’clock at night now. We’re not allowed to have other classwork? Or sleep?
I reign in my annoyance and keep reading.
When you submit them, do so in print and leave off any identifying information. You may turn them in at my office mail slot. The due date hasn’t changed—5PM on Wednesday.
See you all next Monday.
He didn’t sign the email, either. It reads like he wrote it hastily, though I can’t imagine why. Paper submissions? Maybe he’s just old school. I still have a couple professors back home who ask for all our assignments printed out, though they’re usually a lot older than Jack—Professor Kingston—seems to be. He’s got to be thirty, max. Maybe even younger. It’s hard to see past the chiseled jaw and two-day stubble enough to tell.
But why the anonymous thing? That seems weird. Doesn’t he need to know who wrote which essays in order to grade us?
Unless . . .
I bite down hard on my lip, suppress a sudden smile.
Unless he doesn’t trust himself to pick the best essay. Unless he’s worried he’d be tempted to select—or not select—a certain student for reasons other than her academic ability.
But which one is it? Based on the way he ran from me just now, I’m leaning toward the latter. He wants to not choose me, to keep me as far away from him as possible so he can forget that last night ever happened.
But maybe not. There’s a chance, however small, that he’s tempted, too. That he remembers our lips molding together, a perfect match, our bodies hot against one another’s, with the same burn of lust that I do.
If I can make him feel like that with my body, then surely I can win over his mind, too.
Just like that, finally, the perfect essay topic pops into my mind. I close my inbox, open a new document, and start to write.
Jack
Monday comes simultaneously too fast and not fast enough. I holed up for the weekend, after my last graduate seminar ended Friday morning, and tried my damnedest not to think about Harper Reed. Not to think about the irresistible way her mouth forms this little moue when she’s distressed. Not to think about how that mouth, which felt so hot against mine in the confessional, would feel if I buried myself in it. I try not to think about her firm arse, either, or the sweet, sharp taste of her pussy as I tongued her senseless. She clenched so hard when she came, I can only imagine what it would feel like to be inside her for that moment.
Okay, so not thinking about her doesn’t work so well. At least in between taking more than my fair share of showers and getting my hand exercise in, I have plenty of work to distract me. I busy myself speed-reading the Heaney essays.
Some of the forty-seven submissions were easy to weed out. Honestly, how did some of these people make it to third year of uni at Oxford of all places, most of them majoring in bloody poetry, without being able to formulate a simple sentence?
It’s not entirely their fault. The school system tries to trick them into throwing in huge vocabulary words and long, rambling, purple prose, because from primary school on, they’re rewarded for every extraneous word with a gold star. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs, only it creates terrible writers instead of salivating canines.
I narrowed it down to twelve decent essays first. Good enough that I would grant them al
l top marks on a normal grading scale. But one writer among them stood out, I decided by Sunday morning. They made a compelling argument as to Heaney’s authorial intentions. They showed a keen understanding of his work, the nuances and the straightforward statements alike.
More than that, they threw in some additional references, casually, not in a bragging sort of way. Just enough to show that they had done their homework, researched the hell out of Heaney above and beyond the required reading.
That’s the sort of assistant I need. Someone who will go above and beyond for Eliot, someone who won’t stop digging until they uncover all the answers.
Now, I just have to pray that whoever the student is, they’re as deeply interested in Eliot as they were in Heaney.
That, and of course, I have to pray that of all the gin joints in all the towns, she won’t step into mine. Or, to word it less stereotypically, I have to hope I didn’t just choose, out of almost fifty possible candidates, the one student I ethically should not select.
Except, would it be ethical to not select her, just because I can’t stop picturing her naked and spread-eagled in my bed?
I wanted to do that, honestly. Just write her off. I would have, actually, if I hadn’t run into her semi-drunk after the dinner with Kat and blatantly started flirting all over again, then stormed home after abandoning her on the steps of the Bodleian to send an email out to the whole class, asking them all to submit their essays anonymously. At least this way I couldn’t be tempted to do exactly what I wanted to do.
Push this girl as far away from me as possible.
It’s fine, I tell myself. There are forty-seven people here, none of whom look as terrified about poetry as she did on day one (never mind that now, of course, I realize exactly why she looked so terrified). It won’t be her.
Still, my stomach ties itself in knots as I watch the class file in. My eyes keep flicking to the doors, waiting, watching, hoping. Maybe she dropped the class after all. We can avoid disaster before it even starts.
No such luck.
Thirty seconds before the bell, and a lot later than she showed up on her first day, Harper shuffles into the back of the room. Her outfit looks as torn as she does about being here. The tight jeans and low-cut loose sweater reveal a lot more than her clothes at the party, from what I remember. Not to mention, when paired with the sleek bun she’s pulled her auburn hair into, and the turquoise heels she’s balancing on, sharp enough to pierce a heart, she’s clearly dressed for the occasion.
But the moment our eyes lock, which happens the second she enters the room because I’ve been staring at the doors like an idiot, waiting for her, she flees to the farthest corner, hiding behind a particularly bulky guy I vaguely recall from Intro to Modern Poetry.
Well, at least if she keeps hiding for the rest of the semester, I won’t have to face my mistakes quite so openly.
Better for both of us this way, I tell myself. The bell rings, and I wait another moment for the stragglers to filter in before I clear my throat.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to labor over a paper you didn’t get to take credit for,” I say, once we’re all here. A few people laugh, one corner of girls in particular. I’m used to inciting the occasional giggle from my female students—a risk of the position—but it frays my nerves today. Is it just the usual crush syndrome, or did anyone see me at the party? I hid my face when I left the booth, and the whole living room seemed distracted by watching Harper go, anyway (not that I can blame them). But what if someone saw?
I clear my throat. “Well, I had a good reason, I promise. You’ll all get full credit for your essays once we announce this.” From there, I launch into a quick explanation of the research seminar. I don’t mention Eliot—not yet. I’m not ready to let that particular rumor run rampant.
Assuming, of course, that Harper hasn’t already spread the news herself. But somehow, I can’t imagine her doing that.
You don’t know her at all, I remind myself. But I do know that she wants the position herself, badly. Why tell the other students if it would only motivate them to work all the harder in competition?
Suddenly, fear grips me. The Heaney essay, the one I chose. The author went above and beyond, totally all out. More than you’d expect any student to do on a paper this early in the term, unless they were a complete overachiever.
Or, unless they already knew how much that paper would matter.
Just like that, I’m sure.
I finish my explanation about the extra course credits my research aid will receive, and how great an honor it will be (not to mention that it will be graduate level work, which any serious poetry students will love to hear). A good couple dozen students are salivating over the prospect by the time I finish, even without me explaining what we think the papers we’ve found might be.
“I selected the aid based on the papers you all submitted anonymously. It seemed the fairest way to me, to ensure that everyone had an equal chance.” I force myself to look at my usual suspects, Henry and Jenny, instead of letting my gaze drift to the distant corner where it longs to dart.
“The paper I chose delved into not just the surface meaning of Heaney’s poems, but the deeper themes he wanted to illuminate. Henry, could you please read the highlighted section?” I tap a button to ignite the projector, and my laptop’s home screen fills the page, a scanned PDF copy of the paper I chose blazing across the screen. The highlighted lines represented the final page, the thesis of the whole essay. The author would recognize it at once, I was sure.
My gaze drifted across the students. Lots of people slumped in their seats, having realized they weren’t the authors of the paragraph.
In the back corner, bulky Modern Poetry guy leans forward to squint at the screen, blocking my view of Harper. No one seems too excited, though, as Henry finishes reading aloud the highlighted lines, and silence descends over the room.
I clear my throat into that pause. “Would the author please stand?” I say, finally, unable to stand the suspense.
My gut sinks through the floor as Harper’s now-familiar red-gold head rises above the bulky guy’s shoulder.
Well, shit.
Harper
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“For what, exactly?”
We’re standing in the now-empty classroom. At least when I stand a few levels of seating above him, we’re at eye level. And too far apart for me to do something stupid like grab his arm again, like I did outside the library. Idiot, I remind myself, yet again.
Mary Kate lingered by the door long enough to mouth, Catch you later, and now it’s just me and him. Me, him, and the looming tension in the room, which I cannot be imagining.
“For not just dismissing me outright as an option.”
His hands clench on the desktop, and his jaw works so strongly I can see the muscles stand out in his neck, the pinch of his cheek where his teeth grind at it. “It wouldn’t have been fair to disqualify you just because of . . . ”
I swallow hard. “Well. Thanks.”
Outside the door, the halls bustle with life between classes. I should be on my way to my next class, a seminar on medieval English history (I needed an elective, so hey, when in Rome—or Oxford, as the case may be). But he asked me to stop by his desk for a moment to discuss the research aid position, and I sure as hell am not missing this, elective course be damned.
“So—” I start at the same time he says, “We’ll have to—”
We both pause, glance at each other. I’m tempted to laugh, except he doesn’t look amused. He looks downright furious.
At me?
My teeth edge around my lower lip, an old, bad habit that I really need to work on breaking. His eyes follow the motion, linger on my lips for a split second, before he stares pointedly at the door behind me.
“You will report to my office tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. sharp. I assume your schedule is free then?” He still doesn’t look at me, but he must be able to see me in
his peripheral vision, because when I nod, he continues. “Bring a laptop, a notebook, and coffee.”
The last word makes me sputter, anger sparking in my chest. “Ja— Professor, if you just want someone to fetch you drinks—”
“The coffee will be for you. I’m a morning person; most of the students I’ve worked with in the past tend to not be. And I’ll need you sharp tomorrow, if we’re going to do this. Be prepared.”
Presuming he knows me. Acting like he’s stuck with me. Maybe he won’t have anything to worry about after all, I tell myself. This side of Jack Kingston is not a side I enjoy. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I prefer mornings, too.”
His eyes flicker to mine for a split second, finally meeting my gaze as if I’m an actual human being. There’s something more than just anger in his voice, something almost like regret.
I don’t stick around to find out. I whip around on my heel and march out of the office, hands clenched at my sides. By the time I make it to my history class, I’m still fuming. To make matters worse, I’m ten minutes late, and Professor Butler, the petite blonde woman who runs this classroom the way some dictators run small countries, shoots a glare so fierce in my direction that I can practically feel the points she’s docking from my grade spiraling down the drain.
It’s only an elective, yes, but it can still totally crash my GPA if I’m not careful.
I sigh under my breath, flip open my textbook, and try to pay attention to the intricacies of thirteenth-century British politics.
Jack
At least she wasn’t lying about being a morning girl. I’m starting to wonder if I spoke too soon, bragging about how much better I work in the a.m., when here’s Harper, looking the very picture of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (complete with messy auburn ponytail that looks just the right size to grab in my fist . . . ), already pointing out discrepancies I missed.
She leans closer to me—I pulled my chair around thinking it would be less awkward for us to work side-by-side, both of us on the same side of the desk, reading the same copy of the poem. But the end of her ponytail brushes my shoulder, and I can already tell this was a bad decision. I should’ve left the desk between us, some sort of barrier.
