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“I know,” she said, though I barely heard her over the music. The feistiness of moments ago went MIA. She was timid, holding back when she should have been coming at me for putting her in a submission hold. She shouldn’t have let me get away with the abuse.
“I can’t be seen with a student at a club, Miss Sanchez.” I prepared to go upstairs and leave this incident behind. I needed to regroup. Thinking and acting were very different. But I was all irrational when it came to her. I felt like a wild beast.
She reached out her hand and pulled my bare forearm. I paused and pinned my gaze on her petite fingers curled around my flesh. And I got hard, thinking of her hand wrapped around something else.
Holy fucking hell.
“Where can you be with a student?”
The question reverberated in my brain, skipping around like a pinball. What was she asking, really? And it was the way she asked it. Innocent. Audacious. Seductive.
“My office hours.” My jaw clenched. I wanted to give a different answer. But she was my student. Not a regular student, though. Not in the least. We had a history of sorts, a connection that could never compare to any other student-teacher relationship. This was complicated beyond measure.
She knew it too. Hence her boldness and her demand of my attention when I didn’t want to give it. I owed her. But she owed me too. This was a tit for tat that inadvertently began years ago.
“You don’t keep your hours, Mr. Miller.” She stepped closer to me. “And I want to talk about the grade you gave me.”
“Did you not get my email? I explicitly said no.” I lifted my brow, taking in the frustration coloring her face, creasing her forehead.
“I saw your no, but I don’t accept it.” Anya stepped closer again, and now the tip of her sexy-as-hell heels touched the tip of my Gucci loafers. “So, tell me what you need to turn that no into a yes.”
Anger fluctuated through me, waving and concentrating in my stomach, on my face. I was irritated because she knew what she was doing. She was playing, but she didn’t get to play with me. I would be the one to play, and when I did, she would not see it coming.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hard into me. “Are you bribing me again, Anya?” I growled.
She yelped, her eyes growing wide. She was scared. Good. Fucking good. She had no idea who I could be. And she didn’t want to fuck around and find out.
But she was, wasn’t she?
Just like her goddamn father.
Anya shook her head, but she didn’t struggle against me. She leaned into my hold as if she wanted me to scare her. Just like when I pulled her ponytail, she let me hold her in submission. This was a game. This was her game.
I let her go, and she nearly fell back from the abrupt release.
“The C minus stands.” I turned away from her, every nerve ending firing at full throttle.
For two hours, I was upstairs at my usual table, watching the crowd let loose, acting like fools. Disgusting. Liquor didn’t affect me as it had most people. I was immune to the effects. Three scotch on the rocks deep since I arrived at the club and I felt nothing.
Lie. I did feel something, but not from the alcohol. Her. Anya turned me on in a way that rocked me. Conflicted me to my core.
I stood from the maroon velvet settee and walked to the railing to overlook the first-floor sloppy dancing drunks. Anya was down there, fighting off advances, no doubt. To think of some below-par boy harassing Anya annoyed me. And though I didn’t understand why, I wanted to protect her from such men—boys. The urge, the compulsion rose up in my chest.
With my sickness motivating me, I descended the stairs again to the first floor and walked the loop. She was gone. And I was relieved. A little. The disturbed part of me wanted her to be there, waiting for me.
Better she wasn’t.
I glanced down at my watch. It was after midnight. The rage I’d felt earlier, the reason I went to the club in the first place, was tamed back in the box deep inside where I kept all my grievances.
I walked toward the side exit, where my car was parked. The long narrow hall was dark and empty. Not much traffic there, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I just wanted to be in my bed. Alone.
But just as I took another step, a forceful shove took me off balance, and my back turned to slam into the wall. Shocked at first, I was liable to swing at whoever pushed me.
What the fuck?
“I know who you are, and I know what you want,” Anya hissed, her tiny hands balled into my shirt.
I was stunned, silent for the flash of a moment. I had to open my eyes wider to prove this was really happening. Anya had assaulted me in the hall, where no one was. It was just her and I, and the heavy breathing, and my erection that, for fuck’s sake, was almost cutting through my jeans.
