A brand new pair of black Nike running shoes appear in front of me.
The lecture hall is dead silent now.
“Ready to go, honey?”
There goes the whispering again.
“Uh, Mr. Xavier,” ventures my professor. “We’re in the middle of a lecture…”
Teddy ignores the man, holding his hand out to me. When I say that my body gravitates toward him like the ocean to the shore, it’s no exaggeration. Especially when I finally look up through my curtains of hair and his intensity sinks into me, hot and deep, and my pulse becomes cannon fire in my ears. My savior. It’s what my heart and body and mind, maybe even my soul, insisted on calling him last night. I’m right back there now, getting lost in the burn of his light brown eyes, the blatant hunger etched into every line of his handsome face.
“Iris,” he says.
I’m standing before I realize what I’m doing, my small hand locked inside his much larger one. He picks up my books in the opposite hand and guides me out of the classroom to a renewed chorus of hoots and whistles. My face burns at the attention and I have the impulse to bury my face in his shoulder. As if Teddy can read my mind, he hauls me into his side, using his body to shield me from attention. But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? I’ve just walked out of class twenty minutes early with the campus hero. Farewell anonymity.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, once we’re in the empty hallway. “Is s-something wrong?”
“Yes,” he says without missing a beat, that square jaw grinding. “You left my bed, honey. That’s a huge problem.”
My back is flattened against the wall, his hard body pressing me there. Tight.
The books he’s holding are dropped to the ground and he moans, dipping his hips and rocking them into mine, a long, shaky male exhale releasing into my neck.
“Woke up so motherfucking hard for you, Iris,” he groans. “God.”
More heat blasts my cheeks. “I know. I know…you probably…I didn’t mean to disappoint you like that. I—”
His gaze pins me sharply. “Disappoint me?”
“Well I went home with you and that’s kind of an, um…unspoken understanding that we’re going t-to have…to have…”
He’s nodding. “That we’re going to fuck.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “And then I passed out like an idiot after…after giving you the impression we would do…more. I bet that’s never happened to you before.”
“We’re never going to talk about what I did before you. That shit doesn’t matter.” Suddenly, he looks nervous, his throat muscles shifting in a pattern. “Does it? You don’t think less of me because I…” Regret is visibly eating him alive. “I didn’t know you were out there, in the world. But now I do. Now the thought of anyone but you makes me sick.”
I don’t have a chance to answer him—or marvel over the fact that he doesn’t seem the least bit disappointed, at least not in anyone but himself—because he’s picking me up and carrying me across the hall to another room. A lecture hall. This one is empty.
Teddy kicks the door shut behind us, carries me to the front of the room and settles me on the professor’s desk. Then he plants his hands on either side of me, bracing himself, breathing hard. Erratically. “Teddy—”
“Punch me in the face.”
“What?”
“Punch me. Hard. Make me suffer for what I did before you.”
“No! No.” I launch myself off the desk, wrapping my arms around his neck. Holding tight. He makes a hoarse animal sound and crushes me to his body, breathing hard into my neck. “I don’t want to hit you. I’m not upset. You don’t have any obligation to me—”
“Yes, I fucking do,” he growls. “What aren’t you understanding? I brought you home last night to live with me. You are my girlfriend now. You…” He sort of deflates, stumbling forward with me, my butt hitting the surface of the desk again, and then he’s gathering me close, so close, his hips making a home between my splayed thighs. “The second I saw you sitting in there, so sweet in the front row, the anger went away. You take it all away. I will die to be obligated to you. Do you get what I’m saying?”
How can I not?
He’s holding nothing back.
This is…happening. It’s real. But of course I’m having a hard time understanding why. Why this modern-day god wants me. Needs me. I’m meek where he’s demanding. I’m small while he’s huge. I’m private while he’s public. It shouldn’t make sense and yet, it’s there. I feel the inescapable nature of this relationship, too. This inevitability between us. The gravity. My body is clamoring, pulse pounding, heart in my throat. His mouth on my neck is tightening my womanhood and I’m gasping, yanking him toward me, too, desperate to feel as much of him as possible. What is this? Obsession?