I knew what he meant.
“I have no idea what you mean,” I snipped. Pshh. Playing games with an eighteen-year-old. I promised myself that after today, I was going to take a long, hard look at my life. Preferably while enjoying a generous glass of wine. Well, not a glass, maybe more like a bowl.
Jaime leaned forward on his elbows, his huge arms spanning his whole desk. The devious twinkle in his eyes assured me, once again, that his age was merely a number. Hell, he’d probably slept with more people than I’d kissed in my entire life.
“Yes, you do. You know,” he said with a smile that was arrogant, yet forgiving. Who was the grown-up here? Who was corrupting who? I swallowed.
My eyes dropped to my keyboard, and I struggled for a steady breath. I was shit-scared and turned on. Apparently, this was the perfect combination to make me produce small moans resembling a cat in heat.
“Why me?” I asked.
Jaime remained motionless, but his stare nipped at the sensitive flesh of my neck, tickling my lower abdomen. “Because,” he said slowly, his soft lips parting as he drank me in, “I want to fuck a teacher before I go off to college.”
And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, my quivering thighs and glassy eyes suffered a bad case of ice-cold bucket of rage.
Standing up and folding my arms, I pinched my lips together to make sure a curse didn’t escape them. “I’m sorry, James. I don’t seem to register half of the things you’ve said today, because it sounds like you’re begging to fail my class and get kicked out of school.”
Now it was his turn to stand, and I shrank back toward the whiteboard when I remembered he had a good nine inches on me (also in his pants, if that prevailing rumor was right.)
“Sweetheart,” he said, following that with a tsk-tsk of his tongue, his confidence unnerving. “Give me your worst. Fail me. Throw me in detention for the rest of the year. We both know it won’t affect my graduation or my future. You’d only be shooting yourself in that lovely, sexy-as-fuck foot of yours.”
His eyes moved to my legs, and he took a step forward. My throat constricted with an unfamiliar need to bite something. Preferably this HotHole’s butt.
“The damage to the Range Rover is around eighty-five hundred dollars, thanks for asking,” he continued, straight-faced.
Another step. Thump, thump, thump, went my heart. I was a flower and he was a rare sunray, and we were drawn to each other, reluctantly, unwittingly, disastrously. Every cell in my body sizzled, begging for his touch.
Jaime wanted to fuck a teacher, so what? I wanted to fuck a baller. We were two sensible grown-ups making a conscious decision…only he wasn’t really a grown-up, was he? And I was anything but sensible to get into this mess.
But he had leverage on me.
And those piercing blue eyes.
Besides…I wanted him. He was the first thing that had made me feel giddy in a while. Since Julliard, to be exact.
How sad was that?
“Jaime,” I croaked. “I’m sure there are other teachers you could…work your charm on. How about Ms. Perklin?”
She was about three centuries old and smelled like used dental floss, but I wanted to gauge his reaction, postponing what was beginning to feel inevitable. Jaime stopped when our toes touched, his dimpled smile broadening, the black eye barely visible. I might have an easier time rejecting him if he weren’t a female lubricant, I thought while admiring his masculine jaw and high forehead.
“Correction…” His lips brushed mine as he leaned down, and I shivered and stepped back, aware people might see us through the door’s glass window. “I don’t only want to fuck a teacher. I want to fuck my Lit teacher. She’s got sass, great ass, long legs, and even though she thinks I haven’t figured her out, I know that behind the prissy disguise is a woman who curses like a sailor and can outdrink anyone on my football team.”
Damn right, I could. They were only teenagers. I had impressive binge-drinking mileage. Eras of destructiveness caused by dark times of depression. But I digress.
“Do you want us both to get kicked out of All Saints?” I inhaled, patting my sweaty palms on my navy polka-dot dress. Someone had to talk sense into this boy. Too bad it was me we depended on. My willpower was nonexistent in those days. I had very little to lose at this point, if at all.
He grabbed me by the waist and spun us around so his back shielded my whole body from the windowed door. He pulled me into him, and my body melted against his like hot butter.
“I won’t tell,” he whispered into my neck, making me shiver with pleasure. “Neither will you. A nice short fling, Ms. G. I’ll move to Texas to play college football. You’ll move on to an ugly-ass accountant with a good heart or some shit. Someone to make babies with. That’s all. Now what do you say, Melody?”