Chapter 15: Fourteen

Confession #13: I usually messed shit up worse when I tried to fix my mistakes.

I didn’t look back as I walked away, and it felt really shitty and lonely. She was such an unusual girl, a breath of fresh air; I wanted to turn around and go back to sit in her company longer.

But I remembered I needed to see a teacher about a girl.

I wandered the halls for about fifteen minutes before finally winding my way down a back corridor and glancing inside an open doorway before I found her.

Dr. Janison sat at a desk in an office that was roughly the size of a cardboard box and didn’t even have windows. Watching her studiously read the screen of the computer in front of her, I shook my head. How could a woman from Willowbrook Terrace be a teacher at a ~community~ college? Granted, Waterford was well funded and probably one of the nicest schools in the area, but still… The two didn’t add up.

She ~had~ said she’d married her husband for the money. Then again, in that case, there was no reason for her to work at all. Unless she just ~liked~ her job. I scratched my head. Community college English professor didn’t exactly scream dream job to me. But what did I know? To each their own. I didn’t care about her whys; I just wanted her out of my life and out of Reese’s firing range.

“I told you I wasn’t available next Thursday,” I said, making her jump and snap her attention up.

She blinked at me a moment before running her gaze down my jeans and shirt and smiling in pleasure.

“Mason,” she finally said, her voice full of ownership.

I narrowed my eyes.

Letting out an amused chuckle, she waved me forward. “Come in. Shut the door.” She sounded like a freaking professor who actually wanted to talk to a student about their homework.

I glanced down the hall both ways, unease creeping up the back of my neck. Maybe I shouldn’t have confronted her here. But I hadn’t wanted to wait too long or she might contact Patricia. And I’d already wasted precious minutes talking outside with Reese.

It was time I did some damage control.

Feeling like every other clueless idiot out there who’d made a deal with the devil, I stepped into her den and sat stiffly in the chair on the other side of the desk. Then I forced myself to slump back so I wouldn’t look as uneasy as I felt.

With a low laugh, she watched me, shifting her gaze around my face before letting it travel south and land on my jean-clad knee that was slowly swaying back and forth. “You look like every other student who comes in here to be advised.”

“I ~am~ a student,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t see why. You’re already quite prolific at the trade you’re in. Why change?”

Like I was going to open up to this woman?

When hell froze over.

“Look.” I sat forward, resting my elbows on my knees and meeting her gaze. “I told you I couldn’t do next Thursday, and yet you asked me again outside just now like you thought you suddenly had something on me that would force me to change my mind. But you don’t, okay? So… We don’t have any kind of deal.”

I started to stand, ready to leave it at that. But I should’ve known better. There was no way she was going to let her opportunity to get what she wanted slip by.

And she didn’t.

Typical.

“Then why did you tell me yes?” she challenged.

I glared. “You know why.”

It irritated the hell out of me how smugly she smiled. “Because you didn’t want your little Reese to realize we were talking about sex?”

My molars ground together so hard I’m surprised they didn’t fuse.

She met my glower with a smile. “Sit back down, Mason.”

I sat.

Why the fuck did I sit? I could’ve just called her bluff and walked. But dammit, I was too afraid of what she might do to Reese. Reese didn’t deserve any repercussions because of my stupidity.

It felt as if I suddenly had Gidget’s dog collar back around my neck, tightening snugly.

Clasping her hands together on the top of her desk in an eerily professional way, Monica sat forward, watching me. “She’s not what I expected. I pictured you going for something more…polished. You know, sophisticated and worldly. Not so immature.”

She was probably trying to describe herself. In which case, that was the very opposite of what I wanted.

I said nothing, refusing to give anything away.

I could tell it bugged her. Her smile faded. “I mean, she’s cute enough, I guess, if you prefer the girl-next-door type. But she’s just so…gauche. I remember her in class. Her laugh is freakishly loud and ostentatious.”

Oh no, she didn’t. She dared to attack ~the laugh~? The very laugh I loved? Those were fighting words right there.

The urge to defend Reese rose, but I managed to remain stonily silent.

“Patricia would chew her up and spit her out without breaking a sweat.”

“~Patricia~ doesn’t need to know anything about it,” I ground out.

Dammit. I broke.

I had given my feelings away. Defeat spiked through me as victory shimmered in Monica’s eyes.

“She’s ~no one~,” I said desperately, forcing out a confused laugh and lifting my hands as if I had no idea why we were even having this conversation. “I don’t know why you think this is newsworthy or something to gossip to your ~friend~ about, but it’s not. I barely even know that girl.”

But the woman already had my number. “Then why did you even come here, intent to protect her? Why did you say her name when you were inside ~me~? Why did she have her ~hand~ on you like you meant something to ~her~? And why did you just sit there and ~let~ her touch you?”

“Are you shitting me?” I blurted out incredulously. “I let a lot of people touch me.” My fingers shook with worry even as I attempted to remain as calm and cool as possible. “She’s just a girl I’ve talked to a few times. She’s no one. I don’t know why I used her last night with you. You told me to picture someone else, and I didn’t ~have~ anyone, so hers was the first face to pop into my head because she’d been the last girl I talked to before visiting you. That’s ~all~. She’s not anything to me, she’s a complete innocent, a ~stranger~, and not even worth mentioning to Patricia.”

“My, my.” Monica sat back in her chair and smiled. “I think the boy dost protest too much.”

“Fuck yes,” I told her. “Because I know Patricia. And you obviously do too. She likes to fuck with people just for the fun of it. And I pissed her off, so she’d go after me in a heartbeat if she ever learned of something she thought she could use to actually hurt me. If she believed I ~liked~ some girl, it’d be a bloodbath. For the girl. But I ~don’t~. So some completely innocent person getting targeted would be even worse. I don’t want shit like that on my conscience. So why don’t you just keep your mouth shut, and we both forget I ever said one stupid name at the worst moment ever. Okay?”

Monica just watched me. Finally, she tsked and shook her head slowly. “Poor boy,” she murmured. “Don’t you know you’re in the wrong business to have something as useless as a conscience?”

She was telling me.

With a sigh, she sat forward. “I’m not stupid, Mason. You would say exactly what you’re saying now if you ~did~ really like this girl.”

I thought it through and shrugged. “Yeah,” I admitted, “I probably would. But I don’t.”

She lifted her hands. “Then you know what you have to do to ensure my silence?”

Fed up with this bullshit, I growled, “You want Thursday? Fine. You can have fucking Thursday.”

But she cringed at that suggestion. “Except, no, I think I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to wait all the way until Thursday anymore.”

Strangling her would be the easiest solution. It’d solve my problem, protect Reese, and I wouldn’t have to play her little blackmail game or fuck her ever again.

It was really too bad I was completely against murder or even violence.

“Then when?” I asked, sighing out my impatience and rubbing at the center of my forehead irritably.

She just smiled at me and glanced around the small, closed-in office.

I lifted my eyebrows, my stomach churning with unease. No, I wanted to deny, even though I knew where this was going. Not here. Not right now.

But I went ahead and guessed, “Right here? Right now?”

The witch didn’t even nod. She just smiled at me with this gloating kind of triumph that made me want to rebel and tell her to fuck off so badly my gut burned with acid.

Except Reese needed to stay untouched by the likes of Patricia Garrison.

So, I sighed again, in the most lackluster way I could manage. “Whatever,” I mumbled.

Monica snickered. “You know what you have to say.”

~Fuck you~, was what I wanted to growl. But after rolling my jaw and swallowing my pride, I glanced away and unsteadily rasped, “What’s your fantasy today, professor?”

“Ooh.” She shivered in delight. “I like the way you call me professor.” Opening the top drawer of her desk, she reached inside and pulled out a wad of cloth before flinging it across the desk.

I caught it in one hand, then held it up, letting it fall open until a pair of silver thong underwear hung from my index finger.

“I took them off about five minutes before you showed up in my doorway,” Monica announced, pushing back her chair and crossing her legs to draw attention to the hem of her skirt. “I had a feeling you’d find your way to me.”

Because I was a moron, I decided.

I’d played this all wrong—right into her hands—and given myself away. Now I was fucked. What the hell had I been ~thinking~?

When she stood and set her hands on the desktop, posing at a side angle to best show off her curves, I think she assumed I’d be tantalized by the whole panty-less, older woman, student-teacher thing, but meh. That just wasn’t me.

I had a bad feeling some of the disinterest in me somehow always managed to show through though, because it only made my clients more determined to try to make me want it.

She bent over, sliding her palms flat across the surface of her desk and flashing me her deep cleavage even as she poked her ass out behind her.

“I don’t want compassion this time,” she said, anticipation and excitement glimmering in her gaze. “Let’s get a little rowdier and play naughty professor instead.” She winked at me, already in position for how she wanted me to take her. “How about I be Dr. Janison, the lonely middle-aged English professor in need of a little physical contact?”

Dammit, I groaned internally, even as I met her gaze and slowly stood from my chair. Time to get my head in the game. “Then I’ll be some random college student, just desperate to not fail your class.” Rounding the table, I reached for her hip even as I swallowed down the revulsion rising in my throat. “Whatever could I do to earn a little extra credit, professor?”