Page 39 of Power Play

Her eyes dropped to my mouth. “What does the mi change?”

“My fairy.”

The words settled between us with more weight than they had any business carrying.

I’d called women beautiful. Sexy. Trouble. I’d used nicknames designed to get somebody into bed and forgotten half of them before morning.

Mi hada felt different the second it left my mouth.

It felt private.

Charm swallowed. “Do you call all your students that?”

“I have one student.”

“That didn’t answer me.”

I watched her for a moment, fighting the instinct to make the joke easier than the truth.

“No. I’ve never called another woman that.”

Something softened in her face.

“You just invented it five minutes ago.”

“For you.”

Charm’s lips parted slightly.

Fuck.

I could’ve pushed.

Every sign I knew how to read was sitting right in front of me. She hadn’t rejected a single flirt. She looked at my mouth whenever I leaned close. She let our hands touch without immediately moving hers. If Charm were anybody else, I would’ve known exactly where the afternoon was heading.

She wasn’t anybody else.

She’d spent most of her life surrounded by people deciding what she should do, what she should wear, what she should want, and who she was supposed to become. I wasn’t going to add myself to that list simply because I wanted her.

I leaned back and reopened the book.

“Now tell me why Frankenstein isn’t about a monster.”

Charm blinked twice before following the abrupt change. “You flirt, emotionally destabilize me, then assign work?”

“That’s the premium service.”

Her laugh came easier this time as she leaned over the anthology. “Frankenstein is about irresponsible men creating problems and abandoning women to deal with the consequences.”

I laughed loudly enough that a woman at the next table looked over.

“That’s a terrible interpretation.”

“It’s socially relevant.”

“It’s not wrong.”

“Then why did you call it terrible?”