Teacher - Voyeur

“Well,” Alex said, slapping her hands together. “That means now you can take me to dinner.”

Erik gripped her hips. “Only if I can have you for dessert.”

“Ew.” My face screwed up. “That is my cue to leave.”

“I’m right behind you,” Ian said. “Carina and Audrey are waiting at home.”

“Let me know when you’re available,” Erik said to my retreating back.

I quickly made my way back down to my office and started packing up for the day. My class didn’t start for another couple hours, but I could squeeze in some extra chapters before. Maybe it would help ease the pressure from earlier. Usually, the two activities eased any tension that crept up, but sometimes books and sweating it out weren’t enough. Hopefully, the extra hour of reading would do the trick.

I’d just slung my bag over my shoulder when my phone vibrated with a message.

Carina: Daniel said he’d give you a pass, but you need to sign an NDA first.

Carina: You in?

Daniel.

Just reading his name had my fingers tingling. It was the oddest thing to me because he was the newest person to my circle of friends, and yet, I didn’t have the usual anxiety around him. When I compared the feeling I had to hearing Sean watched me to how I felt just seeing Daniel’s name, it wasn’t even close.

Sean brought nerves and the unknown.

Daniel made my chest warm, and my heart speed up and slow down at the same time.

I’d only been around him a few times at get-togethers over the past year, but his smile was easy and almost calming. A complete contradiction to his ice-blue eyes, but even those had me heating up from the inside out when they focused on me.

Being honest with myself, I had to admit, I liked him, and it kind of made me giddy.

It made me want to be around him more so I could figure out what it was that made him different than other men. Maybe if I knew, I could recreate it with someone more available than the almost forty-year-old man who owned a sex club.

Or not a sex club, as Carina would reprimand. A club that had sex happen within its walls.

The same club that Carina was asking if I wanted to go to.

She knew my issues with intimacy. She knew my stunted knowledge of liking someone. She’d been on the receiving end of one of my biggest mistakes, and yet she still became my friend. She still wanted to help me.

So, she’d come up with this crazy plan and apparently had talked to Daniel to make it happen.

Fear pressed in hard on my chest, and my fingers tingled with numbness. Every ounce of me wanted to pull back and hide.

Do it. Stop being a baby and do it, Sofia’s voice reprimanded.

This is the last thing I needed to conquer. Everything else could be locked tight in a box, but Voyeur could help me get over this one fear.

Before I could back out for me, I answered, living for the both of us when she couldn’t.

Me: I’m in.

2

Daniel

“A little dressed up to meet Carina,” Kent commented from where he lounged back on my couch in my office, his feet propped on the table. His comment came off innocuous and innocent, but the smirk I’d known since college let me know he had an ulterior motive for asking.

“I’m not dressed up,” I denied from the chair beside him.

“Says the man wearing his favorite shirt with two buttons undone. And is that gel in your hair?”

Kent leaned forward to touch my hair, but I slapped his hand before he could. “Fuck off.”

“Hmmm.” His lips pursed, and his eyes narrowed, studying me. I tried not to squirm under his scrutiny. “Or is it because Carina is bringing Hanna with her?”

“I’m not dressed up,” I growled.

It had nothing to do with Hanna. A man could look nice for a meeting with a new client. That was all this was. Who cared if I picked the blue shirt she’d commented made my eyes brighter the last time we were together.

Kent nodded and winked, holding up his hand in an okay sign. “Of course not.”

Glaring at him out of the corner of my eye, I tried to force myself to focus on the spreadsheet in front of me. Kent had been my best friend for almost twenty years, and my business partner for only a few less than that. He knew me better than I knew myself, which made him calling me out hard to deny.

“Besides, she’s too young for me.”

“Age is just a number. Look at me,” he said, gesturing to himself.

“I try not to.” I never wanted to look too closely at my almost forty-year-old best friend dating my twenty-three-year-old niece.

“Come on, man. I’m your best friend. I know when you see something you like. Mind you, I’ve never seen you stumble all over yourself—”