Taunt Me (Rough Love 2)

A flush burned over my cheeks. Did he know? I studied his face, but there was no hint of lurid insinuation in his gaze.

“Shall I guess?” he said when I didn’t answer. His eyes flicked to my tiny silver spoon. “Food service, perhaps?”

He still wore that underdeveloped, insincere smile. A lot of the students here found him attractive, but to me, he was Professor Predator through and through. “I was in the customer service industry,” I finally said.

“Ah, service.”

He said “service” like it was something sexy. Ugh. Eww. Dom, I thought. He had to be a Dom. Maybe he’d noticed me in one of my numerous forays to Manhattan’s BDSM clubs. Maybe he’d stared at me from some hidden corner. I remembered, with a sudden, intense prickling on the back of my neck, all those times that I’d felt watched, not that I ever did anything besides skulk in the corner.

“Why is it so small?” he asked. He picked up my spoon, squinting at the half-finished etching. “The design’s nicely wrought, if a little pedestrian.” He turned to my case, looking over some of my recent work. He studied the rings and earrings and chains, the simple pins and streamlined hair clips.

“You make such delicate things,” he said, touching a pair of very tiny, very spare hoop earrings. “Why do you make everything so small and simple?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know. You should know why you design the things you design. Until you know, I’m not sure we can find you the internship you need.”

His gaze raked over me, and I had the weirdest feeling he wanted to punish me. I felt like I’d just been verbally spanked. But this wasn’t a BDSM club, it was a design lab, and he was my professor.

“Well, think about it,” he said, moving away.

I took a deep breath and shook off the icky feeling of his closeness as he turned to inspect another student’s work. Dark hair curled at his nape, shot through with a few strands of gray. Early forties? Cantor was W’s age, probably.

Stop it, Chere. Stop thinking about him.

I’d had too much W on the brain lately. I blamed it on Andrew and his obsession with our history. I’d only told him the basics of what transpired between us, but then I made the mistake of showing him W’s poetry. Now he insisted I had to find him, if only to demand what all that poetry meant. To that end, he’d bullied me into inviting Henry to lunch, since he was the one who’d set up my dates when I was escorting. I’d already pumped Henry for info many times, but that didn’t discourage my friend.

Andrew was waiting for me at the Big Apple Diner with a huge smile. His hair looked especially curly and cute.

“Hi, beautiful,” he said, giving me a hug and kiss in welcome. “Is Henry here yet?”

I scanned the half-empty, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. “Not yet. You’ll know him when you see him. He shines.”

“How was your lab?” he asked as we slid into a booth against a mirrored wall. “You had metals today, yes?”

“It’s all metals for me this semester, and class was okay. Cantor was exuding his usual creepy presence.”

“For God’s sake, tell me all the details.”

“His voice, his manner, his eyes, his lecture. All of it was creepy today.” I suppressed a shudder, recalling the way he’d said service to me.

“Ah, good old Professor Predator. He wants you, I swear. The day I saw him, he looked like he wanted to take out his cock and rub it all over your face.”

“You’re making that up to gross me out.”

“Maybe. But he was definitely, definitely staring at your breasts.”

“He didn’t stare at my breasts today. He stared at my eyes like he was trying to Dom me.”

“Ooh, how exciting.”

We gave our drink order to the waitress and Andrew filled me in on his day, his time in the studio and his preparations for his senior exhibit.

“I don’t get it,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We still have a semester to go, and I feel like they’re trying to push us out into the world early. The whole class is all about What are your goals? Where are you going? What are you doing next? They want us to network, to intern, to find galleries where we can do shows. How the fuck are we supposed to do shows with the senior exhibit coming up?” He dropped his voice. “A couple students left.”

“Left the class?”

“No, left Norton. Left to start their careers. Or give up. No one knows. They just stopped showing up.”

“Maybe they’re sick.”

“No, their carrels are empty. They left. Not in the class anymore.”

Andrew’s fingers tapped restlessly on the laminate tabletop. The painting group wasn’t very big to begin with. It was one of those super risky careers.