EXCERPT 1
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “Pretend you don’t want it.”

His kiss is urgent, unyielding. He forces my mouth open, allowing me to feign resistance. Or at the very least, nonchalance. I let him tilt my head back and run his lips down my neck. It’s a terrible game I’m playing, letting him take the fall for our mutual destruction.

I should at least tell him, confess my own desire, even if he already knows.

It would be the honorable thing to do.

“Will—”

“Ah ah,” he says with a slow shake of his head, with a devastating expression of knowing in his dark eyes. “In this office, you will address me as Professor Stratford.”

My secret muscles clench, and he gives me an almost boyish smile.

“This gets you hot, doesn’t it, Ms. Hill?”

How is this possible? I had a heavy course load of classes my freshman year, with professors of every shape and size. They were smart and interesting, and for the most part, at least somewhat arrogant. Professor Stratford is all those things…and more. He’s simply more. More handsome, more mysterious. More playful as he nips at my lower lip.

“I asked you a direct question, Ms. Hill. Don’t make me punish you.”

My eyes widen. It’s not an entirely fake break in my voice. “What kind of punishment?”

“Let’s see,” he says, tugging my T-shirt off, leaving me in my bra. The starkness is enough to make my cheeks burn. He’s fully clothed while I’m shirtless. “For the first offense, I wouldn’t be too harsh. Then again, we can’t have disruptive students, can we?”

I thought his fist in my hair had been perverse.

That holding me up against the window had been a wild form of desire.

This is far worse.

And far better.

At least my body thinks so, becoming hot and clenched, swollen around nothing, hungry to have him inside me again, thrusting and thrusting the ache away.

“I tried to behave,” I tell him, surrendering to the game. Surrendering to him. “I tried to be a good student. It’s just that you were so…distracting.”

That earns me a dark chuckle. Large, strong hands undress me with calm expediency, as if stacking books or finding the right page. With both care and anticipation.

At this moment I’m the worn pages of an old copy of Romeo and Juliet.

He thumbs through my pages.

“You’d blame your professor for your own lack of focus?”

I gasp at his touch, low and intimate. It’s too much, and I scoot back to get away from him. That only lands me on the edge of his desk, smooth wood cool beneath my bare ass. “Maybe I can make it up to you?”

“Extra credit,” he says, musing. “Perhaps an oral report would suffice.”

EXCERPT 2
“What’s going on out here?” Professor Stratford asks.

Panic pricks every inch of my body. “Nothing.”

He peruses me with deep interest, his dark gaze taking in my tense stance, my messenger bag clutched to my chest like a shield, the anxiety I’m barely holding back. He turns to Brandon, who shifts his weight, trying to look innocent but with defiance coming through.

“Brandon?” he asks, his voice low.

I hadn’t realized he would know him. After all, Professor Stratford is new to campus. And he teaches an advanced class in the Humanities Department, something Brandon doesn’t need to take as part of his MBA track program.

“Talking to my girlfriend,” Brandon says, his voice tight. “Or do you have a problem with that? Maybe you’d like to get a transcript of our conversation.”

My eyes widen. That’s a super intense way to speak to a professor, especially one who did nothing more than step outside his own office. And it sounds weirdly… personal. “We’re not…um… We’re not dating anymore.”

Brandon glares at me, even more pissed off with an audience. “Maybe we would be if you hadn’t gone and slept with—”

An involuntary squeak escapes me.

The man I slept with is standing right beside us, watching us with too-perceptive eyes. “Do you need assistance, Ms. Hill?”

“No, thank you. I’m done talking with him.” I turn to Brandon. “Please leave.”

My ex-boyfriend gets a sulky expression. “I didn’t mean to get so mad, Annie. It just took me by surprise, that’s all. Let’s meet up after class.”

“She asked you to go,” comes Professor Stratford’s voice, silky with threat.

Brandon doesn’t seem to recognize the danger. “I’m an adult now, Dad. You can’t tell me what to do anymore. You can’t send me to my room or ground me.”

For a second, a sweet second, I think it’s a joke. The way Daisy rolled her eyes and said, okay, Mom, when I asked her to put her seat belt on in the cab ride over to the hotel.

For that second, I can believe that these two men, my past and present, my ex-boyfriend and my one-night stand, aren’t related to each other.