“Are you sure that’s all it is, Professor Marks?” Ryan took an aggressive step toward me, his hands balled into fists at his sides, crumpling the papers I gave him.
My jaw clenched tight as I ground out, “Positive, I’ll see you in class on Monday, Ryan,” then I hightailed it out the door, Ryan’s soft chuckle following me.
Shit. What was I thinking going in there?
RYAN
The deer in the headlights look suited Professor Marks. I shook my head as I thought about what I had felt stirring when he hugged me close and rubbed my back. It was just a comforting gesture, but I couldn’t lie and say that I hadn’t fantasized about him on more than one occasion. What his light brown hair would feel like as I tugged on it mid-orgasm. Every guy had that one teacher during their school days that they fantasized about. Professor Marks was mine. I could tell by the way he carried himself that he was dominant. I had never—and I mean never—been topped. It was a new change to want someone to fuck me and I had no idea why.
That itch that I got sometimes had been rearing its ugly head for a few days, but I hadn’t felt like leaving my dorm since hearing of my mom’s death. Professor Marks showing up ignited that itch, an unbearable need, beneath my skin. I debated leaving and finding a warm body or better yet, putting a sock on the door and taking care of myself. After a look in the mirror, I decided on the latter, since I looked like shit. My usually tan skin was pale and my vibrant eyes were bloodshot from crying. I had a week’s worth of scruff on my face, making me dull, scruffy, and lifeless. Decision made, a sock went on the door, and I put everything else out of my mind as I imagined a hard body underneath all those suits he wore. Dropping back down onto the bed, I yanked down my athletic shorts and laid down picturing his body over mine as he fucked me relentlessly.
I conjured up the image, allowing my hands to roam as the scene played out in my mind. He pulled my hair back, then pushed his huge cock inside of me. Teeth came down on my shoulder as his other hand clasped my own which was wrapped around my cock. He pumped it a few times showing me what he wanted, before growling into my ear. “Pump it nice and slow. Do not make yourself come until I tell you to.”
“Oh God, Philip. I don’t know how long I can last.” He pushed himself back up on his knees, my back arched as I felt the sting of his palm on my ass.
“Don’t fucking come until I tell you to.” He pulled my hair back again, tilting my face to the side, and placed a bruising kiss on my lips. I imagined the coppery taste of my own blood when he bit down on my bottom lip, hard. He pumped a few more times before I felt him expand and even through the condom, I could feel the heat of his release. He wasn’t done yet. Flipping me over he attacked my dick with his mouth, sucking me all the way down and hollowing out his cheeks as he drank me down.
I came on a roar my arms flailing out to the sides of the bed, completely spent. I couldn’t move. Never had I gotten off that hard to a fantasy before. It was in-fucking-credible, and my new goal was for that dream to become a reality.
The next morning, I felt better than I had in days. I had no idea if it was the talk I had with Professor Marks the night before or the explosive orgasm I’d given myself. Either way, I was ready to go back out into the world. The warehouse I worked at on the weekends wasn’t far from campus and they gave me the hours I wanted.
“Where’s Drake?” I asked one of the guys.
“Hey Ryan, how’re you doing? Sorry, to hear about your mom.”
“Yeah, I’ve been better. I need to talk to Drake,” I said effectively ending any of the prying conversation. Talking yesterday was enough for me; the last thing I needed was a reminder of my shitty life while I was escaping it at work.
“Sure, man, he’s in his office.” He looked a little taken aback by my curtness but I didn’t care. It was hard to care about much of anything when I still had this crushing weight on my chest. One thing the professor had given me the night before—other than a fantastic fucking imagery for my spank bank—was that I couldn’t wallow in self-pity; it wouldn’t take the pain away. I loved my mom despite her numerous faults and what her lifestyle brought down on me. She’d done her best and that’s all I could’ve asked for.
Drake’s office was a typical room, big wooden desk and a computer. He looked up at me and his face fell a fraction. The man was a good-looking guy. Straight as a board, but I’d gotten to know him better than any of the other guys that worked here. He knew the situation with my mom, and since I was one of the hardest workers and never called in before, he let my momentary weakness slide.
“Ry, how you holding up?” I could see the pity shining in his eyes.
“As good as can be expected. They still haven’t released her body so I can bury her properly.” I rubbed a hand over my face, hating even talking about her this way. “I came in to tell you that I need to hit a meeting, but I promise to be at work tomorrow.”
“Sure, like I said, take all the time you need. Losing someone is never easy.” He spoke like he knew from experience. I nodded rather than pry into his life.
“Thanks, man.” I shook his hand before walking to the door.
“Don’t worry about it, Ryan. I know you don’t really need this job anymore now, but I’d hate to lose you.”
“I have no intention of going anywhere, Drake.” I tossed out the best attempt at a sincere smile as I could manage.
Ever since I was fourteen, when services first removed me from my mom, the foster family I stayed with had taken me to Narcanon meetings. Their meetings were held in church basements or wherever they could get a space for family members of drug addicts. At first I’d thought it was lame, but after going for a while, I saw the appeal. Even though I felt my mom hadn’t wronged me, like many of the other people around those meetings did, there was a kinship with the people who poured their hearts out about the people they loved and what choices they made and how that had affected them. It was one of the things that had initially got me into studying psychology.
At the back basement of the church on Fifth and Main, I sat back and observed like I usually did. The room started to fill up, some I recognized from other meetings. This one was new, since typically I worked on Saturdays and meetings were the last thing on my mind after working all day.
It was only a few minutes before a good-looking guy in a T-shirt and jeans walked up to the podium. It took me a second to recognize him, since I’d never seen him in anything but a suit. “For those of you who are new to our group, I’m Philip. I’m a professor of psychology at the university and a trained psychologist. This meeting works like any other, if you want to share, great. If not, then that’s okay too. Everyone heals in different ways, which is what these meetings are all about.” He looked up and his eyes went wide in recognition as they clicked on mine. “Do we have any newcomers that would like to share?”
He looked at me pointedly even with my head shaking no, but I couldn’t resist the command he gave me with his eyes. It had my body heating. Without even thinking, I walked to the front of the room and stood beside the podium. It’d been a long time since I’d done this, years in fact, so I started with the basic opening.
“Hi, I’m Ryan, and my mom was a drug addict.” Everyone went into the chorus of “Hi, Ryan.”
“I say was because she never got clean. I know as well as anyone that once you’re an addict you are always an addict. It’s a constant struggle. It’s the reason I’m at school studying psychology, to try in my own way to help addicts and their families cope with the disease.” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “Anyway, I say was an addict because a little over a week ago, my mom overdosed.” Pausing at that admission, I took a deep breath, staring down at my shoes because there was no way I could look at the crowd, or worse, my professor. “Yeah, so I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. How does a woman who has been a heroin addict for twenty-seven years overdose like that? She had to have known her limits. Why would she push them like that? She knew
I was there for her.” Fuck, this was hard. Spilling my life, my guts out to strangers and a man I’d fantasized about. There was no point in stopping at that point, the easier thing was to just finish it and leave.
“I’m sure many of you have been through what I have. Taking care of my mother without ever giving her a dime, paying her rent and phone bills, putting food in her refrigerator once a week. Thing is, we talked every day, but no matter what I did, what I gave, I couldn’t get her to fucking get clean.” There were quiet murmurings, and I looked up and remembered there were kids in this room, just like I’d been once. Collecting myself, I took a deep breath, needing to be done. “I just wasn’t as important to her as her next fix. Realizing that tears my heart out. I wish I’d been enough. I wish she could have loved me more than she did her drugs. The last time I spoke to my mom sounded like a goodbye. I’ve gone over that conversation in my head a thousand times since she died—the things she told me, how I was better than I felt about myself, she loved me and to always remember that….” I couldn’t help the choked sob at the end of the sentence. There was no way I could share any more. Next thing I realized, I’d sat down back in my seat at the far end of the room. Philip’s kind eyes boring into me with sympathy. Damn if that didn’t feel good. Maybe he really did come to my room just to be a good guy and check up on a human being he knew was in pain.
The rest of the meeting was more of the same. I listened as people got angry or cried about their family. It was therapeutic knowing that I wasn’t alone in my grief. Some seemed to mourn their loved ones like they were already gone, which made sense since they kind of were. I’d never thought about it that way when my mom was alive, because she had always been an addict. I never knew any different. It wasn’t until I started school when I realized that everyone wasn’t raised the way I was.
When other kids were having playdates, I was mowing lawns and doing chores for the elderly neighbors to make money for food, making dinner, or trying to figure out how to do laundry. Yet, I didn’t mourn my childhood like some of these people did. For whatever reason, I’d just accepted it and loved my mom even with her addictions.
“That’s all the time we have for today. I’ll see you all next week.” Philip said it as though a question and raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged. After the hours I’d missed this past week from work, I couldn’t guarantee anything. There was a small hand tugging on mine. A little girl about nine years old or so was looking up at me sadly. Being so completely in my own head, I hadn’t even noticed the cute little pigtailed girl sitting next to me.
“I’m sorry about your mommy,” she said with tears brimming in her eyes.
“Hey, don’t cry. The way I see it, she’s in a better place. She isn’t hurting anymore.” I smiled softly at her.
“Abby, I think your mom is outside waiting.” Philip smiled at her, but the little girl scowled.
“She is not my mommy.”
Philip kneeled down in front of her. “Hey Abby, what’s going on? I thought you were happy with your new foster family?”
The little girl just shrugged, so Philip continued, “You know if they are doing something bad or hurting you, you can tell me right?”
Abby looked between us unsure. “No.”
“No what?” I asked. “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”
She nodded her head excitedly. “Yes, I won’t tell. Cross my heart.”
“I was in foster care too when I was young.”
“Did they touch you? We’re the other kids mean and pick on you too?” she asked with childlike innocence.
Philip stood up and stalked off out the door of the room. “Sometimes, but I told someone and they took me out of that home.” I lied to her, coming dangerously close to having some vivid flashbacks of my own tragic childhood.
“They said if I tell they will p-punish me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to upset Mr. Philip. Do you think he’s mad?”
I had no idea where he was going but I had a feeling the woman waiting for Abby was going to get an earful, and the children’s services department would get a call.
“No, I’m sure he’s not mad, especially not at you. I think he’s calling someone to make sure you won’t ever get punished. We won’t let anyone hurt you anymore.” Then I sat there and listened to Abby. Her tale was more devastating than mine.
PHILIP
I was livid as I pulled my phone from my pocket and started dialing the number for child services. “Don’t fucking move,” I growled at Sylvia. She was the third foster parent Abby had been moved to since I met the little girl six months before.
Abby had a rough life. At seven years old she’d been found in the closet days after her drug addicted mother was brutally murdered by her boyfriend. She then went to live with her grandmother after that, but she took her daughter’s death so hard, she passed not long after, leaving Abby with no family and a ward of the state. The first family she’d been with started bringing her to meetings. In lieu of therapy—which would have been my preference for a child—the counselor thought it would benefit her to understand the effects of addiction. Abby had two speeds, screaming her head off and being completely silent. That first family took her back to child services not long after because they couldn’t handle her. This was her third placement in six months; it was a testament to her strength and youth that she’d managed to find a middle ground in her swinging emotions.
“Daniel, we have a situation,” I said into the phone as Sylvia looked at me angrily.
“What’s going on, Philip?”
“Abby Parker and any other foster kids need to be removed from Sylvia Jacobs’ home immediately. She and her husband should be arrested.”
“What?” Sylvia shrieked as she started walking to her car.
“I said, don’t fucking move!” Grabbing her arm so she couldn’t escape, I boxed her in between me and the car. “We’re at the church on Fifth and Main.”
“I’ll be there, along with a squad car in five minutes. Sit tight,” Daniel said before hanging up the phone, knowing me well enough to trust my judgment.
“You have no right to detain me.” Sylvia attempted to push me away, but hell if I was going to let her run from this. “That little girl is crazy. I should have never taken her in. I knew she’d be trouble, especially after getting removed from two homes before.”
Next thing I knew, Ryan was standing next to us, gripping Abby’s hand tightly in his. The little girl’s head was down, clearly wanting to be anywhere but here.
“Your husband is a sick fuck,” he seethed. “I don’t know what’s worse; the fact that your husband abuses these kids or the fact that you threaten them into keeping quiet about it.” Ryan’s face was molten; he looked like he was about to hit her.
I grabbed his arm, pulling him back away, and as he took a step back, I leaned down and Abby climbed up into my arms. “Calm down, Ryan.”
“No. They should never be allowed to have kids.”
“Listen to me,” I said as quietly as I could, while rubbing Abby’s back as she cried into my shoulder. “And they won’t ever again. I already called child services. They and the police are on their way.”
“You don’t know what they did to her,” he ground out. Ryan then glared at the woman. “You know, my mother may have been a drug addict, but at least she did what she could to protect me from sick fucks like your husband. That makes her ten times the woman a scumbag like you will ever be.” He all but spit at her feet.
“She’s lying,” Sylvia screeched lunging for Abby.
“Don’t you fucking touch her.” Ryan stepped in front of me and Abby. “She told me what you said, that you threatened her. That if she ever told anyone what Harold did to her every night, you would punish her because no one would ever believe the daughter of a dead junkie.”
That had me growling low in my throat and pulling Abby in that much closer to my chest. She was sobbing, and while I tried to comfort her
it just seemed to make her cry harder.
Daniel pulled up a minute later with two police officers in tow. He hopped out of the car, concern written all over his face at the scene before him. “Sylvia, I thought I told you this was your last chance. You told me that Harold was fine.”
“Wait, you knew?” Ryan growled. “I thought it was your job to protect these kids.”
“Relax. Years ago, Harold battled the bottle, but he’s been sober for ten years; he’s been in AA meetings. It’s one of the conditions of fostering that he continues. Why, what is Abby saying he did?”
“He molested her, and then this,” Ryan screamed pointing at Sylvia, “psycho threatened her.” Daniel’s face turned red in anger.
“Arrest her for collusion and whatever else you can charge her with. You.” His eyes never left Sylvia’s. “You should be locked away in prison for the rest of your life, and if I have anything to say about it, you will.”
“She’s lying!” Sylvia screamed as she struggled against the police officer, who had come up behind her, clearly expecting her to escape. “I never should have taken her in after what happened at the other homes. The child is crazy. She’s the one who should be locked up. Not me.”
Ryan was losing his shit. It was completely unlike the normal calm, cool, collected student I saw three days a week in class. He was a force to be reckoned with. “She’s a little girl. She needs help. She needs someone to guide her, not hurt her. Or let her be hurt and then threatened.”
“Who are you?” Daniel raised a brow as the cop dragged the screaming woman to the squad car.
“I’m Ryan, the outcry witness.” Daniel’s gaze whipped over to mine, both of us stunned that Ryan knew the term, as well as the responsibilities of being legally obligated to report what Abby confided. “When we were inside, after Dr. Marks left to follow Sylvia, Abby told me what that bastard did to her, as well as the threat she’s received,” he said almost on a sob. Hoping my touch would be felt as comfort, I put a hand on his shoulder.
Professor Hot Pants Page 2
