My hand slides up and back, fingers pressing to my skin. I pretend it’s his hand, and he’s hovering over me, watching every expression as it passes over my face. “Earlier today in class,” I start, my breath catching when I hear him exhale forcefully. I search my memory for some rudimentary law terms from my poli sci class two years ago. “When you were talking about judicial politics?”

“Yes?” he whispers, and now I know he must be alone in his office. His voice has gone hoarse, goading, deep enough that if he were here I can just imagine the way the sunshine would melt from his eyes and he would pretend to be hard and calculating.

“I don’t think I’d ever been more wrapped up in a lecture before.” I hold my phone between my ear and hunched shoulder, sliding my other hand up and over my breast. My br**sts . . . Ansel loves them in a way no one ever has before. I always loved being able to move around them easily. But under his touch, I realize just how sensitive they are, how responsive. “I’ve never enjoyed a class as much as yours.”

“No?”

“And I couldn’t stop thinking . . .” I say, pausing for effect but also because I can hear him breathing and I want to dive into the slow, deep cadence. I feel something inside me ignite with want. “I was thinking what it would be like if you would meet with me outside of school.”

It’s several tight, pounding heartbeats before he answers. “You know I can’t do that, Miss Holland.”

“Can’t because of the rules? Or because you don’t want to?” My fingers are moving faster now, sliding easily over skin that has grown slick with the sound of his voice, the sound of his breath through the line. I can imagine him sitting behind a desk, his hand clutching himself through his zipper. Even the thought makes me gasp.

“Because of the rules.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. “Also, I can’t want to. You’re my student.”

Without meaning to, I moan quietly, because he does want it. He wants me, even when he’s drowning at work and miles away.

How would it feel to really be his student, or to be one of the girls on the métro, watching him, wanting him? What if he really were my teacher, and every day I had to sit, and listen to his quiet, deep voice, unable to move forward, catch his eye, run my hands up his chest and into his thick hair?

“Mia, you’re not doing anything . . . inappropriate right now, are you?” he asks, stern voice back in place. It’s the first time I can’t see his face when we’re playing like this, but already I know him well enough to know he’s pretending. His voice is never stern with me, even when he’s upset. He’s always even, always steady.

My back arches off the mattress, sensation pooling and warming in my thighs, low in my belly. “You want to hear me?” I ask. “Do you like to imagine me doing this here in your bed?”

“You’re in my bed?” he hisses, sounding irate. “Mia! Are you touching yourself?”

The thrill of the game spins through me, making me dizzy and nearly high. I remember the way he looked over me this morning, conflicted, wanting to take me before he left for work. I remember how his mouth felt on my neck when he climbed into bed last night, how he pulls me against his chest, spooning me every night. And then, when I barely whisper, “Oh, oh, God,” I hear his rumbling groan on the other end and completely fall to pieces under my own hand, pretending it’s his, knowing how much better it will feel when it really is his, later.

And he can imagine me now, because he’s seen me do this.

My legs are shaking and I’m crying out into the phone, riding through the wave of heat, of slick pleasure sliding across my skin. I say his name, some other things I’m not sure are even coherent but just knowing he’s listening, and it’s all he can do—he can’t touch or see or feel—prolongs my release until I’m spent and gasping, my hand sliding to my hip and then down to the mattress beside me.

I smile into the phone, drowsy and satisfied . . . for now.

“Mia.”

Blinking, I swallow and whisper, “Oh, God. I can’t believe I did that. I’m so sor—”

“Don’t go anywhere,” he growls. “I’ll be there soon to take care of this . . . this indiscretion.”

I’VE DRIFTED OFF waiting for him when the door slams open, the knob hitting the plaster of the wall just on the other side of the bedroom. Startled, I sit up, pushing my little skirt down my legs, rubbing my eyes as Ansel storms into the bedroom.

“What the f**k do you think you’re doing?” he roars.

I scoot back to the headboard, disoriented and heart pounding as my brain slowly catches up to the adrenaline racing through my bloodstream. “I . . . you told me not to go anywhere.”

He stalks toward me, stopping at the side of the bed and tugging his tie loose with an impatient jerk. “You broke into my house—”

“The door was open—”

“—and got onto my bed.”

“I . . .” I look up at him, eyes widening. He looks genuinely upset, but then reaches forward, reminding me it’s all a game by gently sweeping his thumb across my bottom lip.

“Mia, you broke about a hundred university rules and several laws tonight. I could have you arrested.”

I push up onto my knees, sliding my hands up his chest. “I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”

He closes his eyes, moving his fingers to my jaw, down my neck to my bare shoulders. I’m wearing nothing but a short skirt and underwear beneath, and his palms slide over my br**sts before he pulls his hands back, forming tight fists.

“You don’t think I notice you in class?” he growls. “Up front, your eyes on me the entire hour, lips so full and red all I can think about is how they would feel on my tongue, my neck, my cock?”

I lick my lips, bite the lower one. “I can show you.”

He hesitates, eyes narrowing. “I’d be fired.”

“I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

His conflict feels so genuine: he closes his eyes, jaw tight. When they open again, he leans in and says, “If you think of this as rewarding you for breaking into my house . . .”

“I don’t . . .” But he sees the lie in my face. I’m getting everything I want and my dark smile makes him growl, cup my br**sts again with rougher hands.

My skin rises to meet his touch, and inside, my muscles and vital organs twist as if being wrung out, pushing heat down my chest, into my belly where it pools low, down between my legs. I want him so much I feel restless and urgent, this elemental need clawing in my throat. I dig my hands into his hair, holding him to me and barely letting him move a breath away from my skin.

But it’s all a ruse. He pulls free of my grip easily, leaning back to look at me with convincing fire in his eyes.

“I had a lot of work on my desk when you called with your little show earlier.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Being near him makes me liquid, my insides slithering and molten.

His eyes flutter closed, nostrils flaring. “What do you think it did to my concentration, knowing you’re here thinking of me, touching skin that could be mine to touch?”

With his eyes anchoring mine, and to make his point, he slides a rough hand into my underwear, two fingers searching, dipping inside and finding me soaked. “Who made you this wet?”

I don’t answer. I close my eyes, pushing into his hand before reaching to grip his wrist and f**k his fingers if he won’t move. I’m on fire, everywhere and especially here, drowning with a clawing need to come, for him to make me come.

With a jerk of his arm he pulls his fingers from me and reaches to push them into my mouth, pressing my taste onto my tongue. His hand grips my jaw, fingers curled into the hollow of my cheeks to hold my mouth open.

“Who. Made you. Wet.”

“You,” I manage around his intrusive fingers and he pulls back, plucking at my bottom lip with an index finger, a thumb. “I thought about you all day. Not just when I called.” I stare into his eyes, so full of anger and lust it takes my breath away. They soften as I continue to hold his gaze, and I can feel both of us stutter in our roles. I want to melt into him, feel his warm weight over me. “I think about you all day long.”

He can see the truth in my expression and his eyes drop to my lips, his hands spread gently across my sides. “You do?”

“And I don’t care about the rules,” I tell him. “Or that you have a lot of work. I want you to ignore it.”

His jaw tenses.

I say, “I want you. The semester will be over soon.”

“Mia . . .” I can see the conflict in his eyes, and does he feel it, too? This longing so enormous it shoves everything else inside my chest into a tight corner? Our time together is almost over, too. How can I possibly be away from him in only a couple of weeks?

What are we going to do?

My heart turns, pounding so hard it’s no longer a safe rhythm. It’s cymbals crashing and the deep heavy pulse of the bass drum. It is thrashing beneath my ribs. I know what this feeling is. He needs to know.

But is it too soon? I’ve been here barely a month. “Ansel . . . I—”

His lips crash over mine, tongue pushing my mouth open, tasting, rolling up against my teeth. I press up, hungry for the flavor of him, of man and ocean and heat.

“Don’t say it,” he says into my mouth, somehow knowing I was going to put something sincere and intense out there. Pulling back, he searches my eyes frantically, pleading. “I can’t play rough if you say that tonight. D’accord?”

I nod urgently and his pupils dilate, a drop of ink into the green and I can actually see his pulse pick up.

He’s mine. He is.

But for how long? The intruding question makes me desperate, reaching for him and needing him deep in every part of me, knowing he can’t really take my breath away but offering it up anyway in tiny, constant bursts.

He steps closer, and although his grip on my hair doesn’t lessen, I greedily reach for his shirt, tugging it free of his pants. With shaking fingers, I work each button free and once his smooth, warm torso is exposed, I hear my fevered moan and my hands slide up across his skin, frantic. How would it feel, I imagine, to want him as much as I do and not have access? And then just tonight—a single, dangerous night—he lets me touch him, taste him, f**k him?

I would be wild. I would be insatiable.

He growls when I spend too long running my hands up and over his chest, fingernails scratching across his small, flat ni**les, stroking the teasing line of hair leading down below his belly button and into his pants. Impatiently, he tugs at my hair, pushing his h*ps forward, and grunts his approval when I quickly unfasten his belt, his zipper, and shove his pants down his thighs so I can free his cock.

Oh.

It juts in front of me thick and warm; when I reach for him, he’s steel in my palm. I use both hands, gripping and sliding down his length, wanting him to let go of my hair so I can bend and suck on him with as much hunger as I feel.

He exhales a tight groan as I pump him in my fist and then curls down, capturing my mouth in a brutal, commanding kiss. His mouth sucks at mine, pushing my lips apart as his fist tightens in my hair. He slides his tongue inside, pushing deep, f**king me with an unmistakable rhythm.

I won’t be gentle, he’s telling me. I won’t even try.

Thrill ripples through me and I twist free of his grip, intending to lick him until he comes, but with a growled curse he pushes me back on the bed, bending to retrieve his tie so he can wrap it around my wrists and secure it to the headboard.

“Your body is for my pleasure,” he tells me, eyes dark. “You’re in my house, little thing. I’ll take whatever I want.”

He kicks off his pants and climbs over me, yanking my underwear down my legs and shoving my skirt up my hips. With his hands flat on my thighs, he spreads my legs, leans forward, and roughly thrusts into me.

It’s a relief so enormous it makes me scream; I’ve never before felt so full of him. I’m starving and satisfied, wanting him to stay just like this forever. But he doesn’t stay deep inside me for long. He pulls back and then slams forward, gripping the headboard for leverage and taking me so roughly each thrust makes my teeth clatter, forces air from my lungs.

It’s wild, and frantic, his body over mine, my legs clamped around his waist so tight I wonder if it hurts him. I want to hurt him, in a sick dark way I want to pull every sensation to the surface, make him feel everything all at once: the lust and pain and need and relief and, yes, even the love I’m feeling.

“I wanted to get things done tonight,” he hisses, hands clamping around my thighs. He pumps hard and fast, f**king me so roughly, sweat trickles off his temple and lands on my chest. His anger is terrifying, thrilling, perfect. “Instead I need to come home and deal with a naughty student.” His h*ps are pounding and pounding into me and he groans, eyes growing heavy. His large, rough hands reach for my br**sts, and he slides his thumb across my nipple.