To Professor, with Love (Forbidden Men #2)(49)

With a sweet moan of acceptance, she buried her fingers into my hair. My mouth found her collarbone and my tongue delved into the little indention between the two. I tugged gently at the sleeve of her blouse with my teeth to expose more skin on her chest. And as my lips foraged a path south, my hand smoothed up her arm to her shoulder, only to encounter the gauze patch, covering her stitches at the very top of her bicep.

It was the slap back to reality I needed. “Shit,” I breathed against her throat and closed my eyes as I eased my mouth off her.

“What’s wrong?” Her palm cupped my cheek.

I remained hovered over her a second longer before I cracked my lashes open and met her concerned, yet cloudy, gaze. “Nothing.” I smiled. “Rest now, okay?”

When I went to crawl off her, she grabbed a handful of my shirt and clung on. “Stay.”

Nodding, I tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll watch over you.”

Her hand relaxed and her body settled. “Thank you,” she murmured one last time before she was completely out of it.

The smartest thing would’ve been for me to leave. But there was nowhere else I wanted to be. And I’d promised to stay. So I settled down beside her, ignored the pissed-off straining erection in my jeans, and I slept next to Aspen Kavanagh for the second time. And it was just as amazing as the first night I’d held her until dawn.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN




“I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.” - Mae West



ASPEN



“Science is about hypotheses, theories and laws made from facts that have been proven over time. Mathematics is made up of absolutes, where there is only one correct answer to each equation. But with music, art, literature, the possibilities are endless. There is no specific law or equation that makes a piece of literature so-called good. There are literally millions. And here’s the real kicker. It’s all completely subjective. One song may please the ear of one person, while it completely irritates the ear of another. So, does that make it good or bad or merely average? What do you think? What makes truly good literature good? What makes it stand the test of time until here we are, years, decades and centuries later, discussing it in a classroom?”

From the back, a male voice guessed, “It’s got to be boring enough?”

Folding my hands together at my waist, I waited patiently for the laughter to die down. Then I nodded to the student, allowing him his answer. “It may be boring to you, Mr. Tenning. But obviously it wasn’t boring to someone, or it wouldn’t have been published, and republished, and then republished again so many times, so...try again.”

He didn’t have another witty answer ready, so he shrugged and slumped lower in his chair. I shrugged too, which pulled at the stiches in my arm. With a wince, I reached up to cup it briefly, my gaze straying not far from Mr. Tenning to where Noel sat.

It’d been a week since I’d fallen asleep in his arms, drugged just enough to say things I knew I shouldn’t have but sober enough to remember everything I’d said. I knew he had stayed until morning too because I’d gotten a drink at three due to a dry throat and he’d still been there, next to me, keeping me warm, protecting me. But he’d been gone when my alarm clock had woken me at five thirty.

And now, here we both were, eight days later, on either side of the room, a line of propriety separating us from being together.

He sat sprawled in his chair with his long legs kicked out in front of him and crossed at the ankles while he tapped his pen again the notepad on his desk. His eyes were on me, though. And they narrowed as they darted to my hand cupping my injury.

I dropped my fingers and turned my attention to a girl in the front lifting her arm. “Yes?”

“It reaches our emotions,” Sydney Chin answered.

With an approving nod, I gave her a brilliant smile. “Very good, Miss Chin.” Turning back to the others, I began to walk toward the other side of the room. “People turn to the arts to find the height of an emotion. We go to a scary movie to be frightened, or a comedy to laugh. Books are the same, except without all the special effects on a screen. Instead, you have to use your imagination.”

I tapped the side of my head. “And the best part of using our imagination is that each and every person in this room can read the same line on a page, and you will all picture something totally different in your heads. You’ll all feel something different about it, because you’ve all come from different parts of the world, been raised by different standards, influenced by different people, taught from different backgrounds. No two people are the same, so no two opinions can always be the same, which is exactly why I grade on essay papers only. I fully believe there is no wrong answer to your opinion about a story...as long as you have sufficient reason to back that opinion up.” I glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Which reminds me, I’m halfway through reading all the papers you handed in last week, so I should have them back to you by next Tuesday at the latest.”

Spreading my arms wide, I gave the room a large grin. “And with that, I’ll see you guys on Thursday.”

A collective sigh spread over the class. By the way they scrambled to collect their things and leave, a girl might think they were thrilled to escape her room. Humph. I shook my head. Tough crowd. Oh, well. Sidney Chin had seemed interested in what I’d had to say. One fan was better than none. My shoulders slumped, making the ache in my wounded arm throb even more.