Educating Emma

C
opyright
© 2016 by Kat Austen

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

F
or the gals
who love their smut naughty and their happy endings sweet. This one’s for you.

I
’ve been obsessing
over him for months, and right when I thought I had him in my palm, out he flew.

At least that’s how it seems.

It’s Friday, and I’ve been sitting in this same seat all week, listening to him lecture about cellular biology, and he hasn’t once looked my way. Not once. How could he just touch me like he did last Saturday, make me feel the things I did, and act like nothing happened when I stepped into the lecture hall on Monday?

Had he been drunk? High? Had he experienced a bout of amnesia? A case of selective memory?

I don’t know for sure, but I’m about to find out. I’ve waited all week, and when I entered the lecture hall today, before any of the other students, I slipped into my front-row seat and waited for him to acknowledge me. But he ignored me. Kept right on tapping on his laptop like everything was normal in his world when mine felt as though it was about to implode.

He is going to give me an answer. An explanation even. A guy can’t just mess with a girl the way he did last weekend and act like nothing had happened a few days later.

Especially when that someone is my professor.

Yes, my professor. Yes again, I know what a dirty little cliché it is to have it bad for my professor, but I don’t care. I do have it bad for him. So bad I can’t even think of being with another guy. Never. It’s him or no one for me—that’s how bad my ache runs.

Professor Luke Faraday is a god among men. There is no debate. He is a god. A living, breathing god that walks among us.

Before you go judging me for clearly having daddy issues, let me mention that Dr. Faraday is one of the youngest professors on campus. He’s in his late twenties, so that doesn’t make him much older than his students. Most of the other girls want him too, but not in the same way I do. They want the god he is to worship them, to defile their bodies and send them packing. They want the one-night stand, the check next to the box beside Slept with Hot Professor.

I want him for another reason. For all of the reasons. To worship him, to offer up the sacrifice of my body, and to get on my knees before him and do his bidding. I want to give him what he deserves—not just for one night but every night.

Yes, I recognize this borders on unhealthy. Yes, I know I’m obsessed. Yes, I realize others have been slapped with restraining orders for less, but I don’t care.

If a person doesn’t obsess and crave and long for the one they want to the point where dying seems better than living if they can’t be together, then fuck that. I don’t want the mediocre alternative.

“Class dismissed.”

Dr. Faraday’s voice rings through the room, pulling me out of my thoughts. No more thinking—time to put those thoughts into action.

I linger in my seat for a minute, waiting for the lecture hall to empty. It takes a while, because it’s a big room with lots of students and half of them are female. The girls are always the last to leave. Like me, they’re hoping he’ll glance up from that damn laptop of his and single them out of the crowd of applicants lining up to fuck him into next week.

But last weekend was the only time I’ve seen that smoky, dark look settle into his expression. When my body had been tangled around his, my mouth toying with his tongue.

The image has me shifting in my seat, making it squeak. The auditorium is one of the older ones on campus, and every chair could probably go through a can of WD-40.

When Dr. Faraday looks up from his laptop, he seems surprised to see me still sitting in my seat in the empty auditorium. Like, genuinely surprised that I’d have anything to talk with him about, because yeah, I do that kind of stuff at clubs with guys all the time. Every weekend. Of course I did.

“What are you doing?” His voice fills the room, rolling over me. “Class is over. Time to move on.” Sparing not another look my way, he gets back to his laptop.

If I ever get close to it, I’m going to chuck that thing across this whole auditorium. Let it try to distract him from me again.

“I wanted to talk to you about my grade.” My voice doesn’t fill the space like his does, but it comes out stronger than I thought it would. I’ve never had this kind of conversation before. I don’t really have that much experience when it comes to guys, but still, I sound brave. Confident.

Good.

“No, you didn’t.” Dr. Faraday closes his laptop and sends an icy stare across the room at me. “You wanted to talk to me about something else.” He comes around the large table in front and leans into it, pinning me to my chair with his stare. “Though talking probably isn’t on your mind if last week is any indication of how you approach life.”

“You’re still mad about that?” I shifted in my chair.

His teeth ground together. “Seething.”

The way his words cascade over me makes me shift again. As we were going at each other like crazy in the middle of the club, I might have moaned something along the lines of
Dr. Faraday.
When he realized the stranger who’d just come up to him and forced herself on him was, in fact, a student, that kind of ruined the whole moment.

I guess he’s one of those professors who holds to a moral code of
Thou shalt not fuck thy students
or some shit like that. Morals or not, he’d wanted to. He would have if I’d kept my mouth shut instead of moaning his name when that skilled hand of his wound beneath my dress and gone straight for my sweet spot.

His wasn’t the only hand to wander south.

“You liked it.” I make myself look at him as I fire back, “I know you did. I could feel it.”

Just thinking about the way he felt cupped in my hand makes me shift again. The insides of my thighs are slippery from all of the images that have been messing with my head for the past hour.

He crosses his arms, and even though he’s glaring at me like loathing doesn’t hold a match to the way he feels about me, my body fires to life. I run my eyes down him. He might have the brain and career of a nerd, but he possesses the body of a jock and the face of a damn
GQ
model. He’s like no other man anywhere, which means every single woman he passes can’t
not
check him out. It’s a rule of the universe. Pass Luke Faraday on the sidewalk, and you turn your head to get a better view.

When my eyes linger on his crotch, my hand aching remembering the feel of him, I swear he thrusts his hips forward a little. When my eyes jump back to his, my blush creeping up my neck into my face, he gives me a look that makes every nerve in my body stand on end.

“Yes, I did like it, and thank god I didn’t let it go any further than that clothed petting. If we did what you had planned and anyone at the school found out, my ass would be on the line.” His jaw sets again, and his gaze leaves me like he’s too disgusted to look at me another second.

Guilt floods me. Shame forces its way in too. He’s right. What we did could jeopardize his career if anyone found out. What we almost did definitely would have jeopardized his career if anyone found out.

The guilt and shame get me out of my chair, but it’s the embarrassment that sends my ass toward the door.

I’d offered myself to him, and his response was disgust. I’d admitted I wanted him, and his answer was repulsion.

“I’m sorry,” I say as I rush toward the end of the row, dying to run up the stairs and escape and never come into his class again.

What an idiot I was to think he’d ever want me, even if it was just for a quick fuck to relieve a little tension.

The sounds the heels of my Mary Janes make echo through the room as I hurry across the tile, but his voice cuts through the noise. “Oh, it’s too late for sorrys. Much too late for those.”

I brake to a stop when his dark voice comes over me. Chills spill down my spine.

“You should have mentioned you were a student before you pressed your body into mine at the club and taken my tongue into your mouth. You should have told me you were in my class before you held my dick and gave him a taste of your touch.”

Chills of a different kind assault my body. His voice is different. His expression is too. It’s not resolution stringing his words together anymore—it’s something else. I don’t know what, but my instincts fire to life. The instinct that tells a person to run when something dangerous is stalking closer.

I stay where I am.

“I thought you’d know.” My voice is shaky, mirroring the tremors of my body. “That you’d remember my face.”

“I teach four classes, each one filled with over sixty students. I wouldn’t recognize your face if you sat in the front row every day and wore a monkey suit.”

He’s moved behind me so I can’t see him, but his footsteps echo through the room as he moves.

A streak of boldness hits me, and I don’t let it go to waste. “Liar,” I say, nice and slow so it sinks in deep. “You’ve known my name since the first day I walked into your class. You knew who I was when you put your hands on me last weekend, and you know why I’m here now.”

A low chuckle winds around the room. He sounds farther away. “Why are you here now?”

When I glance over my shoulder, I see him climbing the stairs of the auditorium. I’m not sure if he’s trying to leave for the day, escape an obsessed student, or inform campus security I’m harassing him, but I’m not going to stop now. I’ve kept this secret, this desire, to myself for too long. It’s time for him to know. To be burdened with the knowledge of it. What he chooses to do with it is up to him, but I can’t keep it to myself any longer.

Turning around, I straighten. My blouse stretches across my chest, the hem of my skirt lifting as I stand tall. “I’m here to have you finish what you started.”

“Some kissing and groping is not my definition of getting started, and if you think it is, you have no idea the kind of man you’re toying with.” He’s stopped on the stairs, looking down at me with a foreign expression. He looks like he’s in pain. When his eyes settle on my chest, that pained expression amplifies. “And I’m not finishing a damn thing. So if that’s what you’re after, go on the internet and look for discreet delivery. Don’t forget to pick up batteries.”

His words hit me like a slap, but I keep going. Whatever I’m saying, whatever I’m doing . . . it’s getting through to him. He felt something last Saturday. He can deny it all he wants, but he feels something for me now too.

My gaze dips down his body like his is assaulting mine. I instantly notice the bulge pressing beneath his zipper. It would be impossible to miss. The walls of my pussy clench involuntarily, almost like it’s fantasizing about him filling me.

“Your words are saying one thing”—my gaze circles his crotch again before lifting to his eyes—“but your cock’s saying something else.”

His body shudders when the vile word spills from my mouth, but his glare doesn’t dim. “Emma . . .” he warns.

My eyebrow lifts, and I step toward him. “Now who doesn’t know my name?”

I take another step closer. Even though we’re separated by at least twenty feet, the room closes in around us. His expression is dark, his eyes alive, and if he wants to keep fighting this, that’s his right, but I’m going to give him a taste of what he’s missing before I leave.

My fingers work the top button of my blouse free. They lower to the next one and pop that one free. Folding the fabric aside, I make sure he has a good view of exactly what he’s saying no to. His gaze dips to the area I’ve exposed for him. His eyes devour me, making me shift. He apparently has no qualms about fucking me with his eyes.

There he is. There’s the man who backed me against a wall last weekend and ground his body against mine. There’s the man who almost made me come with one light brush through a layer of fabric.

There’s the man I’ve spent months obsessing over, scheming ways to make him mine. With the way he’s looking at me now, I just might be able to make him mine . . . if only for a few stolen, heated moments.

It would be worth it. If that’s all I can have of him, it will be enough.

“Thanks for clarifying everything for me,” I say, making my way toward the door again, testing him. “Putting me in place.”

I don’t make it two steps before his voice fills the room. “Don’t you take another fucking step away from me.”

This time, the chills that spill down my back are different. No longer derived from pleasure, these ones come from a different place. Fear.