15

A TORTURE I’M WILLING TO ENDURE

JACK

I wonder if she’ll try and bolt once the guys leave, but I could use one last drink and I’m guessing she could too. She seems to be just as drained from social gatherings as I tend to be.

I quickly put Kronk in his crate for the night. He gives me a sad puppy look that tells me he expects the bed treatment indefinitely and I feel a pang of guilt. Tomorrow I’ll hook him up with a fillable chew toy stuffed with dog-safe peanut butter as penance. “Not tonight, buddy.”

When I’m back in the kitchen, I hear her footsteps descending the creaky stairs, and I call out her name to let her know where to find me. When she enters the room, I already have two glasses of wine poured and sitting next to Sienna’s treat bucket on the island. Our relationship may push the boundaries of propriety, but all I care about right now is keeping her here with me.

She eyes me curiously, her gaze flitting between me and the glasses of ruby liquid on the counter space between us.

“Someone has to eat the candy.” I shrug and slide the bucket toward her. “Kronk is all settled.”

She releases a small breath of laughter before uncrossing her arms and walking over to take it. “Okay, but all the candy corns are mine.”

My face pulls into a grimace as I follow behind her, carrying our drinks into the living area. “Fine by me.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a candy corn hater.” She plops down on the couch and unceremoniously dumps the candy out on the cushion next to her.

“It’s literally corn syrup-flavored wax.” I take the seat on the other side of the pile of treats, simultaneously hating and thankful for the space between us.

I’ve already been more up close and personal with her than usual, but I couldn’t help myself. I knew exactly how Stu would treat her if I didn’t mark my territory.

Fuck.

Mark her.

Blood rushes to my ears at the thought.

And to other places.

I shift uncomfortably, readjusting myself as I recite the pledge of allegiance in my mind.

When I look at her again, I remind myself of the boundaries that must remain between us—I’m her boss and her professor, and that’s all I can be for now. I can’t cross that line, no matter how tempting it is. But if she were to make the first move? That would be a different story. Tonight, I pushed the boundaries a little more than I planned, getting more comfortable with her than I intended, partly because I felt a surge of possessiveness while my friends were around.

Despite my intentionally respectful thoughts, I can’t control the spark of electricity that jolts up my arm when she takes the glass of wine from my hand and our fingers brush.

The way she smiles, the way her hair falls across her face.

It’s a torture I’m willing to endure.

I’m not even going to try and rationalize any of this.

She’s still here. That’s all that matters.

She takes a long drink before setting her glass on the sofa table and ripping open a small bag of candy corn. “More for me, you big weirdo.” She dumps the contents in her mouth and I force myself to pull my eyes away.

I grab the remote and flick the TV on, scrolling until I find some random horror movie I know nothing about because I don’t watch them, but it seems fitting since it’s Halloween. I turn the volume down low, only meaning for it to be background noise to our conversation.

Her nose scrunches adorably but she doesn’t say anything.

“Not a fan?” I hand her the remote.

“Meh.” She tosses it to the side instead of switching to something else, then turns her body to face me more directly, pointedly ignoring the screen.

I make a mental note for future reference and shift the topic of conversation. “Finished your paper?”

She snorts. “Yeah, I submitted it last night.”

I don’t tell her that I know she did, or that I’ve already read it in its entirety. “Is it really that bad?”

“Can’t say I’ve had worse.” She tears open a mini Snickers and pops it in her mouth before reaching for her glass again.

I genuinely don’t understand why she feels so negatively about my class, especially not after reading her work. She’s brilliant. “The offer still stands if you need to talk anything out.”

“Offering your nanny preferential treatment?”

I give her an uneven smile. “I would offer help to any of my students who expressed the need.” I probably wouldn’t.

She downs the rest of her wine. “And how many of them express the need?”

I don’t answer right away, allowing the silence to stretch between us while I finish my own drink and dig through the pile of candy for some Twizzlers.

“Really?” She raises her eyebrows. “And candy corn is bad?”

I bite down and rip off a small piece from the end using my front teeth, then offer the rest to her. She surprises me by biting a piece off too, and I feel like an adolescent because all I can think of is the fact that our mouths just touched the same place.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Quinn says. I was hoping she’d forget.

“Sometimes,” I admit, though that might be stretching the truth and the thought crosses my mind that maybe what she said before is true; that my students don’t approach me simply because they think I’m an ass.

I know that I am brusk with them, but it’s not because I am the jerk they think I am or because I mean to be dismissive. I just have my hands full with Sienna outside of office hours, but physically cannot leave an email unanswered or an assignment ungraded. Life work balance is definitely something I need to work on. It’s a problem for me.

She picks at the end of her hair, avoiding eye contact. “So what you’re saying is it’s just me.”

“That is not what I said.” I huff a laugh. “But I have found that most of the time the issues students have with my class typically come from outside stressors.” I give her an opening to talk to me if she needs to. I know she has her own friends and family she could open up to, but I desperately want to be that person for her. Any person she needs me to be. She seems fine for the most part, but with all she’s dealt with this semester alone…

“I’m not stressed,” she says, standing to pad back to the kitchen.

She returns with the rest of the bottle of wine and fills both our glasses again. If this is what she needs to relax for a few hours, that’s more than fine with me. I can’t drive her home if I drink the rest of the bottle with her… but I’m going to drink it regardless, so I guess she’ll just have to spend the night.

Something tells me she wouldn’t expect me to wake Sienna for the drive anyway.

A glass and a half of wine later, I discover that Quinn is more of a lightweight than I expected. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s staring at the TV, but I can tell she isn’t registering what’s happening on the screen. Her mind is somewhere else.

We’ve eaten a good portion of the candy; enough that I am reminded why Halloween happens only once a year. When her eyes fall shut, I sweep my arm across the couch, nudging both the leftover candy and empty wrappers back into the treat bucket.

“I wasn’t finished with that.” She releases a sleepy giggle, her eyes still closed.

I place the bucket on the floor and stand, staring down at her and debating what our sleeping arrangement should be for the night.

I grab a blanket and Sienna’s baby monitor from my room, stopping to peek in on her one last time for the night before bed. When I return Quinn is curled up in the fetal position sleeping more soundly than a person should be, being that she was just awake less than one minute prior.

The couch has a chaise lounge on either end, and I decide the most appropriate thing to do is place her on one and me on the other. I could just leave her here and sleep in my bed. That would likely be the normal thing to do, but the way I feel about her is not normal and I don’t want to be that far from her while she’s sleeping under my roof for the first time. If I can’t have her in my bed, this will have to do.

I toss the blanket aside and scoop her up, shifting her to the spot I’ve assigned her in my mind.

What I don’t expect to happen is for her to latch onto my arm and pull me down next to her. “Snuggle,” she murmurs.

I am a lost cause, and I can’t even blame the alcohol.

I am keenly aware that if she were not a little drunk, she would most definitely not be asking me to snuggle up with her to sleep.

Regardless of how much I would love to do just that, it’s wrong for a multitude of reasons.

The number one reason being that I am not sure I can handle so much skin to skin contact without losing my fucking mind. The desire to mark her as mine is almost unbearable even when we aren’t touching. I don’t even want to think about how she might react to the thoughts I have about her. Yeah, I want you; and oh hey, by the way can I just like… stab you a little bit? With maybe a small knife? Nothing serious.

The desire I have to break skin is not something I share with many people, and for the most part I am able to keep it at bay. But every inch of her unmarked body screams at me incessantly and oh my god I have got to stop thinking about this right now or I’m going to do something I really fucking regret.

I uncurl her hand from my bicep. “I’ll be right here.” I pat the section of the couch adjacent to where she is lying and cover her with the blanket.

She murmurs something incoherently and twists her body away from me, burrowing deeper into the cushions. I can’t resist brushing her hair from her face, but that has to be the most intimate contact I allow myself with her tonight.

I settle in and stare at the ceiling for longer than I care to admit. I am thoroughly distracted by every breath she takes mere feet away from me, and when I finally doze off I expect to be awoken by any number of things except for what it is that wakes me.