Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
And pausing, lifting his head, catching Fox’s eye.
Before smiling brilliantly, his eyes creasing and glittering with warmth, before turning away.
Fox huffed under his breath, scowling, looking away, pitching his pen onto the desk.
Summer really needed to stop being so obvious.
They didn’t speak again, though, until the third period let out, and Fox settled to lean his hip against the edge of his deck, propping the papers he’d just collected against his thigh and stacking them neatly into place.
Summer settled down next to him, resting almost thigh to thigh, his strong, square hands gripping the desk to either side of his hips.
“You,” he said sunnily, “have been watching me all day.”
Fox tossed him a glower. “I’m your supervisor. It’s my job to monitor your progress and your performance.”
With a playful smile, Summer rolled his head toward Fox, resting his cheek against his upthrust shoulder, the taut muscle straining against the linen of his crisply ironed off-white button-down. “So that’s the only reason?”
“Why are you so annoyingly confident around me?” Fox threw back. “I can make any other teacher in this school quiver in his boots with one look. And yet you, the most anxious, awkward person I have ever met, refuse to cower appropriately.”
“It’s simple,” Summer said, before his voice dropped, low and soft and just a touch heated, hungry, husky. “I’m the only one who knows what you taste like.”
Why, that damned—“Are you so certain of that?” Fox bit off, slitting his eyes.
Summer’s smile vanished. A touch of hurt flashed in his eyes, before he looked away, quiet, expression going still and empty and carefully blank.
“No,” he murmured. “I guess I’m not.”
Hell and damnation.
Fox, you are an asshole.
He twisted to set his papers down on the desk, then shifted to settle closer to Summer, until their shoulders and arms pressed in close-held warmth and his thigh rested against the knuckles curled against the edge of the desk, Summer’s hand hot through Fox’s slacks.
“You are,” Fox said. “You’re the first one brave enough to even try.”
Summer lifted his head, haunted eyes watching Fox with unspoken questions, before he murmured, “So anyone will do as long as they’re brave enough to keep pushing at you?”
“...no.” That...shouldn’t hurt so much, or hit so close to home, when Fox had been wondering that himself. “Anyone else wouldn’t get a second chance to keep pushing at me. You puzzle me in more ways than one, Summer...and one of those ways is that I cannot seem to tell you to, quite frankly, go fuck yourself and give up on this bizarre notion you have of wanting me.”
Summer recoiled slightly, blinking, face blanking.
Before he snickered, covering his mouth and trying to hold it in but failing.
“I’ve never heard you say anything worse than ‘damn’ before,” he said through his fingers, muffled. “And ‘hellfire.’ Always hellfire, every time you get annoyed.”
Fox rolled his eyes. “Please do not act like a child and remind me exactly why I should be against allowing someone your age to be so forward with me.”
That just made Summer laugh more, eyes delighted and bright. “It’s not my age that bothers you and you know it. It’s that you can’t scare me off.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Fox growled.
“You really only have to do one thing to make me give up, you know.”
“And what, pray tell, would that be?”
Summer shrugged, the corners of his lips curling wistfully. “Just tell me no.”
That was the crux of it, wasn’t it?
Every time, Summer had given him ample opportunity to say no.
And every time, Iseya had growled and glared and gone stiff...
...and not even hinted at that one word that would end it all.
He made a soft sound in the back of his throat, and this time he was the one to look away. “...I know that,” he bit off, and Summer only chuckled.
“Good.”
They said nothing else for several moments, just sitting in the quiet classroom, with its scents of old wood and chalk dust and old paper, worn pages.
Until Summer murmured, “Would it be okay if I used your office for an hour or two after last bell tomorrow?”
Fox lifted his brows. “For what?”
“Counseling,” Summer admitted sheepishly. “Eli’s agreed to talk to me, and I think it could help.”
“That’s not your job,” Fox pointed out. “Be careful. I know you mean well, but at times overstepping boundaries with students can create problems no matter what your intent might be.”
“Don’t worry. Everything above board. I just...” He shook his head. “They need somebody, Fox.”
He froze, then, his breaths drawing in sharp and fast, and darted a glance at Fox. “I...sorry. Professor Iseya.”
But Fox just looked into those twilight-shot eyes, and let the feeling of his name on someone else’s tongue settle over him.
Coming from Summer...
It was like the taste of warm caramel on a crisp cool apple, that tart-sweet feeling exploding over the tongue at that first burst of broken skin.