WILD THING (18+) - COMPLETED

HIM TOO

If, at the start of the year, someone had come up to Ben and told him he'd be tied up in a million complex knots over one of his students, he'd have laughed at them. But now, as he sat at a bar brooding over his drink, the only person he could laugh at was himself.

It was torture – having Cara in his classes. Every glimpse of her reminded him of that night, the way she'd felt, the way she'd tasted...

And even when he tried to keep his eyes off her, he could feel the heat of her gaze on him, like a physical branding, every step of the way. It sent the blood in his head rushing south often enough that he'd taken to standing behind the desk in the lecture hall to avoid any accidents.

He shouldn't have left his old job. If he'd known he'd be considering stealing a girl from his best friend's little brother, he'd have stuck it out a little longer, maybe taken an opportunity farther east. Guilt suffused him when he thought of Jonah – something he'd barely done while thinking of Cara. If this mess got to Matthew – his best friend, Jonah's older brother – Ben was definitely getting his ass beaten.

Familiar laughter filtered through the fog of Ben's dreary thoughts, and he turned to look at its source without thinking. Huh. He'd started hallucinating about her? Maybe he'd had enough to drink.

Hallucination Cara was dancing with a couple of other girls, the club lights bouncing off the sequins on the dress she wore; a dress that barely covered her thighs and showed off her breasts. Her hands went up, the stretch pulling the already short dress even higher up, and Ben frowned. If this was a hallucination, it was a really good one.

She laughed at something one of her friends yelled into her ear, then, as she spun around to shimmy against the other girl, her gaze lifted, and snagged on Ben's.

It took Ben a second, maybe two, to realize this was no hallucination. That was definitely Cara. The friend was the one she usually sat next to during his lectures. What kind of shit luck did he have? It wouldn't do for either of them to see him here, when they had a lecture with him the next morning. And it definitely wouldn't do for the other girl to see the way he acted with Cara, because, he could now admit to himself, he was beyond the point where he could hide his attraction to her.

He needed to leave.

He got off the barstool and made for the exit, forcing himself not to look Cara's way again.

It would've been so easy. To get away. Maybe to even walk away from the entire thing and talk himself out of the attraction. It would've been so easy if, just as he'd got to his car, he hadn't heard the clacking of heels on the ground behind him, and Cara's voice calling for him to wait.

He took a deep breath as he waited for her to get to him, then, when her footsteps stopped, he turned to face her.

If he'd thought she looked ethereal before, in the dim light of the club, out here, with the parking lights bright on all of her, she looked downright otherworldly. Like if he blinked, he'd find himself teleported to whatever heavenly realm was her actual home. So why did he feel like he was in hell itself when she closed the distance between them?

"You know," she began, dragging her finger down the front of his shirt, "For someone who made all these promises about what they'd do to me the moment they could, you do a lot of running."

Ben grabbed her wrist when her wandering finger was just shy of the button of his pants, his torso tingling in the path her finger had trailed.

"Cara," he warned, his voice deeper, more gruff than usual, strained with the effort of fighting his base instincts. The animal in him urged him to use his hold on her wrist to tug her closer, so that her sequin-clad body would be right against him, feeling his heat, the reaction she caused in him.