Page 41 of Office Hours
“You’re damn right I do.”
We quickly get up and dress in silence, laughing at the disaster we’ve made of my office. There’s a wet spot on the rug, a pair of panties jammed in the wastebasket, and my pants are hopelessly creased. I watch her pull her skirt down, smooth it over her hips, the blush still hot on her cheeks.
As she surveys the scene, she pauses, then looks back over her shoulder.
“Are you okay, Professor?”
“Not in the least,” I say, and it comes out like a cough. “That was… I don’t have the word for it.”
She smiles, then bites her lip, suddenly shy. “Did I really… you know…?”
“Flood my entire face?” I wipe my jaw with my sleeve, grinning. “Yes, Simone, you did. Was that the first time you’ve ever squirted?”
She nods, blushing.
“I know I’ve always had a lot of cream. I’m a juicy girl, but I didn’t know it could come out in a big splatter like that. I’m embarrassed.”
I merely smile before stepping forward to kiss her again before looking deep into those innocent blue eyes.
“Don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart. There’s nothing about your body to be embarrassed about because it’s beautiful, gorgeous, and ripe. You make Daddy very happy with your responsiveness, and I loved swallowing your creamy spurts, sweetheart.”
She puts her palm over her mouth, giggling, then nods. “Good, I’m glad.” Then, she makes a show of picking her panties out of the wastebasket. She shakes them at me. “Evidence,” she whispers, folding them into her bag with a ceremonial flourish.
We’re both fully dressed again, at least on the outside. On the inside, I’m ruined, every neuron retrained to respond to her voice, her smell, the memory of her cunt pressed to my mouth. I know it’s dangerous, and I know the odds of us getting away with this affair are vanishingly slim, but in this moment, I don’t care.
Simone leans against the bookshelves, scanning my collection, running her fingers along the battered spines of the Modern Library. She stops at a volume of Emily Dickinson and pulls it out, thumbing the pages. The movement is casual, but I know she’s buying time—neither of us wants to be the first to say what comes next.
I clear my throat. “We can’t keep doing this in my office. It’s a miracle we haven’t been caught already.”
She glances at me, then at the door, then back to me. “I know. But we don’t see each other on a regular basis.”
“I know.” I run my hands through my hair, which is probably sticking up at obscene angles. “But it’s not sustainable, Simone. If the chair had come in five minutes earlier, I’d be out of a job, and you’d be…”
She shrugs, not unkindly. “Expelled, probably.”
“Exactly.” I sigh before crossing my arms over my chest. “We need to be smarter. We need to…” I trail off, not sure what the next part is.
She sets the poetry book back, carefully, and looks at me with a sincerity that is so rare in my life it almost hurts. “We need to talk,” she says, echoing my thoughts.
I nod. “But not here. Not now.” I gesture at the desk, the closed blinds, the faint aroma of sex still hanging in the air. “Come to my house tomorrow night. We’ll have dinner. No expectations. Just… let’s figure this out, okay?”
She lifts a brow, amused. “You sure you won’t call up Claire again?”
“Claire’s not even in the running,” I growl, and for the first time in my life, I mean it.
She considers, then gives a slow, serious nod. “All right. Tomorrow. I’ll bring some salad.”
I nod, and we move for the door at the same time, almost colliding. She laughs again, the sound as bright as glass in the sun.
I pull her in for a last hug, meaning just to hold her, but she tips her face up and the kiss is soft, exploratory, not like before. Her lips linger, and when we break apart, she stays close, breathing me in.
“Until tomorrow, Liam,” she whispers, the words a promise.
“Tomorrow, Simone.”
I check the hallway for witnesses, then let her slip out first, her stride confident and free. I wait a full minute before following, the adrenaline finally ebbing. My mouth still tastes like her, and my hands remember every inch of her ivory skin.
Tomorrow will be a reckoning.
