Tenley gave me one of her nippy kisses when I dropped her off at school. Between bites I promised to pick her up in the same place around five. She took the stairs slowly, cautious today, thanks to the fresh ink.
Once she was out of sight I parked in the nearest lot. I backed into a space, angling my car in such a way that no one could use the space beside me. There was no way I would risk some twit dinging the door or damaging the paint job. The attendant came over, bent out of shape and nervous, so I paid for both spots without putting up a fight and assured him I’d only be there for an hour at most.
I headed for the building Tenley had entered when she’d had her meeting with her advisor. I looked over the directory and found Calder’s name. A horde of students waited impatiently for the elevator, so I took the stairs instead.
Calder’s office was at the very end of the hall. The nameplate affixed to the closed door touted his educational accomplishments in a series of acronyms. I debated whether I should knock. I wanted to see this guy to assess the threat he posed to Tenley’s fragile state. It turned out I didn’t have to come up with a lame-ass excuse to enter, because the door swung open. A girl in her early twenties nearly collided with my chest. She looked up at me, startled, her face turning a telling shade of red. I’d seen her before when I’d picked up Tenley from school the first time. She was the one with the jeweled talons for fingernails who couldn’t read social cues. She was perfectly made up, apart from her lack of lipstick. Her mouth was swollen, her skirt off-kilter.
The balding, middle-aged man sat at his desk, looking relaxed. His satiated expression and the smell in his office confirmed what I suspected. He adjusted his tweed jacket, checking the button that strained against his paunch.
The girl didn’t look back as she slipped around me. I watched as she rushed down the hall, her unease obvious in the set of her shoulders. She straightened her skirt as she hurried away. I had to wonder how many of his students earned their way through his graduate program like this. What I wanted to do and what I did next were two different things.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his cold stare focused on me.
“Nah.” I pinned him with a hard glare. “I must be in the wrong building.”
“Evidently,” he said, dismissing me as he started rifling through the papers on his desk.
I turned and pushed the release bar, forcing my body away from his door and into the stairwell. I didn’t want Tenley to know I’d been scoping out her advisor. Beating his ass with one of the books on his shelves would be a dead giveaway. I needed her to talk. If he was pushing her for favors, I wasn’t above giving him a demonstration of what real deviant behavior looked like.
22
HAYDEN
On Sunday afternoon I came out of Tenley’s bathroom to find her sitting on the couch. Her laptop was perched on the arm, a document on the screen. She had a pink highlighter behind her ear, a pen between her lips and book in her lap. She often spent time working on her thesis while I channel surfed in the evenings.
She didn’t have to work and neither did I, which meant we had a whole day ahead of us with no concrete plans. Not good, considering how fucking horny I was. I should have been able to manage a week with no sex. I’d done months of no action prior to Tenley, but something about forced restrictions made the impulse harder to control.
The coffee table was covered with articles on deviant behavior, the likes of which made me seem like a Boy Scout. I knew, because I’d read them all. There were highlights and Post-it notes stuck to everything, a blanket balled up on the floor and two glasses, both of which were empty beside it. While the clutter drove me nuts, Tenley’s state of dress was far more distracting. She was decked out in her apron and shorts, the swell of her breast peeking out the side. It had been three days since the tattoo session. I was losing my mind. There was no way I could sit next to her all day and pretend to watch TV without eventually caving.
“I need to get out of here,” I barked.
“What’s wrong?” She glanced at the coffee table. “Is it the mess? I can clean it up.” She started shuffling papers into more organized piles and I immediately felt bad. She tried to keep her apartment tidy. For most people it wouldn’t have been a problem. I wasn’t most people.
I put my hand up to stop her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I want to take you out.”
She stared blankly at me. “Out? But you just brought over groceries yesterday. My fridge is full, and TK has lots of food.”
In the past two weeks I’d spent almost every night in her bed, and the only time we’d been out in a public place, beyond Serendipity or Inked Armor, was to get groceries. I was an ass. “I want to take you somewhere, but only if your back is feeling okay and you don’t need to work on other stuff.” I motioned to the mountain of paper. I really hoped she could take the day off from that.