“What are you talking about?”
He leans forward again, and I’m hit by the desire to push this desk away. It feels like miles and miles of ocean rather than a few inches of polished wood. His proximity has upped the sounds of the world. The talking, the laughing, the footsteps. The earth is shifting, rolling side to side, and he seems like the only anchor. How crazy is that?
“You want me to spell it out, huh.” His voice has dropped an octave. Low and gravelly. Words slurring together. “I know your secret, Layla.”
A blip in my heartbeat. Firecrackers burst over my skin at the way he said my name. As far as I’m concerned, my name is average, but his voice, the movements of his tongue against his lips, make it special. A squeaky sound escapes me because I’ve forgotten how to speak.
“You think I don’t know? It’s in your eyes.” He flicks his gaze left to right, studying said eyes. His blue and my violet. The colors with just a pinch of a difference, belonging to the same part of the spectrum of a rainbow.
“What about them?” I breathe at last, gathering my scattered thoughts.
His lips twitch and my cold, dry fingertips want to touch it, feel the tiny dance of muscles. “They do a shit job of hiding your emotions.” His lopsided smile morphs into a chuckle. Dark and rich, like chocolate. We want to taste it. For once, I agree with my stupid heart.
“What emotions?” I’m just saying things now, robotically. A doll made of plastic.
“You have a thing for me.”
It takes a second for me to register what he just said. “Wh-What?”
He draws back and shrugs. “It’s obvious.”
“What?” I screech again. My plastic brain is coming to life. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t…I don’t have a thing for you.” He shrugs again, so cocky and arrogant, as if the whole world revolves around him. My palms ball into fists. “I don’t. I don’t have a crush on you—or on anyone, for that matter.”
Thomas nods. “Sure.”
“I don’t.” I huff out a frustrated breath.
“Okay.”
His careless dismissal, his disbelief, his beautiful, condescending eyes—they make me want to hit him. They make me want to spill my secrets. I’m taken aback. I never want that. I never want anyone to see the dark, needy hole inside me. Even I don’t want to see it.
This is sick, Layla. How can you think that about your brother?
My mom’s voice in my ears angers me further. She pops up every now and then to be my tormentor, to tell me how much I need Kara to straighten me out.
I take a deep breath and tighten my features. I hate Thomas Abrams in this moment, and I want him to know it. My pelvic bone digs into the edge of the desk as I let my anger loose. “I hate to break it to you, Professor Abrams, but old guys don’t do it for me. They’ve got a sickly smell that I don’t like, and correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that thing down there increasingly shrink with age?”
I’m angry enough to not care about what I just said, but not angry enough to ignore the flame flickering in my stomach or to not look at the…thing I just mentioned, the slight bump hidden by the zipper of his jeans. Heat spans the entire length of my body as I imagine what it looks like…bare and hard.
“I wouldn’t know, Miss Robinson.” His soft, smooth voice brings me out of my trance. “I think I have some good inches left in me, but thanks for the tip. Might come in handy in a few years when I start measuring my dick.”
Dick. He said dick. In front of me. His student. Everything about this is inappropriate. My skin is throbbing, pulsating with too much energy. I’m saturated with sweat and tingles.
What is happening?
He shrugs on his coat and buttons it up with deft movements. His eyes are on me as he says, or rather commands, “Don’t be here next time.”
Then he walks out.
________________
The night is sleepless and snowy. I watch the snow through the door of my balcony, pressing my naked body to the chilled glass.
I am hot, too hot. I look down and find myself covered with a constellation of scarlet splashes, almost hiding the web of blue veins under my pale skin. My thighs slip against each other due to the wetness leaking out of me. I break my cardinal rule and touch my swollen pussy. My hips jerk at the sensation. It’s foreign and so fucking good. The folds are creamy and sensitive, begging for something.
You have a thing for me.
That’s all I can hear, all I could hear throughout the day. I shiver, imagining his wispy whispers over my skin.
Yeah, I do.
Somehow, someway, I have developed this crush on him. I know he’s married. I know he’s an asshole, rude and mean and some kind of a genius poet—but maybe that’s the appeal. I don’t want him to love me back. I don’t want the hope of reciprocation. Hope kills. It tortures. I just want this.
This viral need that is eating through my heart, my brain, all my organs, starting up a pulse deep below. It swells and slickens, like every time I watch porn. I never bring myself relief because it feels dirty, illicit to be jerking off to something like that. Besides, after what I did to Caleb, I don’t think I deserve any kind of pleasure. Hence, my cardinal rule: no touching my own body.
But this pulse is hard to ignore. It’s too strong. Too forceful. Too alive, as if my pussy is breathing and has a mind of its own. It’s making me do things. He’s making me do things to myself. He’s making me touch my clit, my slippery cunt. Slow, at first. Slow, measured, lazy circles. Then fast, rushed, frantic flicks that cause my body to writhe. My small tits jiggle and shudder, pink nipples beading in excitement as I twist them with my other hand.
He’s making me play with myself. He might as well be cradling my hand, dusky digits curled over my small, smooth ones. I’m his puppet and he is my invisible master, holding my strings from miles away.
“Thomas,” I whisper and shatter at the same time. I come, wrapped in Thomas’ heat and his poems. The orgasm vibrates through my body, making me moan, exhausting me so much that I have to press my forehead against the chilled glass.
Even through the arousal, I’m aware that it’s wrong and sick and inappropriate. But, it’s also freeing. A cleansing ritual. I’m shedding my old obsession. I’m moving on. Being normal.
Before this, I was Layla Robinson, crazy in love with her stepbrother. Now, I’m Layla Robinson, crushing on her poetry professor.
I slide open the balcony door. The curtains whip and billow in the frosty wind. Snowflakes catch on my fevered skin, cooling me down, freezing me, turning me blue.
And I throw my arms open and laugh.
“I’ve got a crush.” I grin at Kara.
“You’ve got what?”
“A crush. You know, when you fantasize about someone?”
“Yes. I know about that.” She smiles. “So who’s the guy?”
“That’s the best part.” I chuckle. “He’s like, the most unavailable guy out there.”
He is my professor, an asshole, and he is married. This crush is triple doomed.