Wicked Muse Read online

  “Fuck off,” I quip. “None of your business.”

  He smirks. Then he advances. “I’d love nothing more than to tell Liza that my lack of interest in her is compounded by a supreme, intense interest in you. An interest I hope, is reciprocated.”

  What the fuck did he just say?

  “What?”

  “It takes a lot of confidence to pair a short skirt with beat-up cowboy boots,” he says, his eyes falling once more to my exposed thighs. “I’d like to think your confidence is on display… for me.”

  He’s had too much to drink. I feel myself blush fifty shades. “You’d be wrong if you thought that,” I say, feeling the wine coursing through my veins more profoundly than before.

  “Am I?” he asks, closing the three feet of distance between us. His hand rests on the cushion half an inch from my knee. Another is poised by my shoulder. I can smell his aftershave. It’s dusky, mixed with the scent of wine and something else… him. The scent fills my nostrils, lingering, turning around and then dipping down into the pit of my belly. I feel the heat of his body near me.

  “Chloe, we’re just dancing around the edges here,” he whispers, his breath on my face, his blue eyes peering into mine. “Kiss me. Let me kiss you. We can chalk it up to the wine and laugh about it later.”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer. He moves closer, pressing his lips to mine, parting them, slipping his tongue in, breathing me in.

  The contact is electric. His scent hanging heavy against me, his body—muscular and tight—hovering. His kisses are hungry and bold, like he’s taking something owed to him. He pushes me backwards, down onto the couch underneath him. His hips press into my own.

  Oh god… This feels so good.

  I could slip under the drowning tide of his kisses. I can’t help but sip him into me. But something – some vague something about not getting side-tracked inches between his heat and my heat. I press a hand to his chest, then more firmly. I stop, breaking the kiss, turning away.

  I want to. I don’t want to. I don’t know what I want. My body thrums with excitement.

  “No, we can’t …” I murmur the words, the sound coming out in a faint whisper.

  Hayes pulls back, breath heavy, eyes hooded with intent. I feel the firmness between his legs, clad behind tight jeans, pressing into the barely protected flesh of my sex under my skirt.

  It wouldn’t take much to close that distance, all boundaries cast aside.

  “Chloe,” he breathes, “I’ve been thinking about being this close to you… for al png time…”

  Jesus Christ. He’s my teacher!

  “No!” I repeat emphatically.

  He draws back, the tight muscles in his arms beside me flexing, a queried, confused expression in his eyes.

  “Let’s just stop—while we still can,” I say. I hope my face doesn’t betray my disappointment—something tells me that might encourage Hayes even more.

  He pulls back all the way, a confounded mask on his face.

  “We can’t do this,” I say, speaking from some practiced speech inside me that I didn’t know was there before. “You’re my professor. You decide whether I go forward or wash out. You’re doing the same thing to me that Liza Jackson is doing to you, only worse.”

  Worse, because I’ve never been here before. This is new territory for me. I had boyfriends in high school, but they weren’t real. We never got past second base. I never wanted to. This… whatever this is with Hayes… I want to. I so want to… but every fiber in my being says ‘stop.’

  “It’s not the same,” he says, sitting back on his haunches, a foot tucked under his thigh.

  He’s so beautiful to look at, and like this—confounded and a little pink with a buzz—so easy to fall for.

  “It’s the same,” I repeat, anxiously separating myself from him against my own will.

  Hayes looks down at the floor.

  “I’m a twenty-one-year-old student of yours who’s in a jam. You did a nice thing today by giving me a place to stay. Please don’t tell me there are strings attached. If that’s the way it is, I’ll find something else. I can’t do what you want.”

  Hayes expression descends into the darkest place I’ve seen thus far. After a protracted moment, “No strings,” he says. “I’m sorry. The good Australian wine got the best of me.” He lets out a little breath. “I told you sometimes my judgement, my read of social cues, is way off.”

  He gathers himself and stands up, straightening his shirt like none of it happened. “I’ll be on my way,” he adds. “And I won’t misread your cues again.”

  He didn’t misread the cues. I kissed him back. The thing is, I don’t know what to do with that. I could kiss him again and again until the end of time and it would never be enough.

  But I can’t get distracted. I have a plan and that plan doesn’t include sleeping with my professor.

  Chapter 8

  Hayes

  I have no idea what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. The alcohol was thinking for me; that and my dick, which I should be able to control, but apparently not. It doesn’t matter how smart she is, or how funny she is, or how damn beautiful she is, she’s my student. I don’t put the moves on my students. Even gorgeous students in short skirts and sexy cowboy boots.

  Why did she have to wear those damn cowboy boots?

  She’s right about me. I am worse than Liza. Ten times worse. Liza may have a little power over me, but the power I have over Chloe’s future is so much more profound. And I’m an adult who’s been around the block a few times. Chloe is… a virgin? It seems incomprehensible that she’s come this far without having sex. I thought she was kidding. The look on her face last night as she was pushing me away confirmed that was no joke.

  I need to apologize to her.

  She could be in the Dean’s office filing a complaint against me right now. I couldn’t blame her.

  I tried to find her last night, but she wasn’t at her place and she wasn’t in her studio. She wouldn’t answer her phone. Today she skipped her art history class and I haven’t seen her around. I understand trying to avoid me, but ditching class is not cool.

  After I get this date with Liza over with tonight, I’m going to head over that Mexican restaurant where Chloe tends bar and see if she’s there. I can’t let this thing go another day. It’s eating me alive. It must be scaring her to death. I’d rather ditch Liza altogether and find Chloe instead but Liza is escalating, and I need to shut her down.

  I pull on my jacket and straighten my tie. I have no idea where Liza has made plans to eat, but I have every idea it’s likely to be a coat and tie sort of vibe. Like I said, I’ve been down this path before and some of the scenery gets awfully repetitive.

  I arrive at Liza’s office at the stroke of six, finding her on the phone. She checks me out, head to toe, then motions for me to come in and sit as she chats on about a visiting artist scheduled to come to the school. She rolls her eyes and makes faces as if she’s trying to wrap up the conversation, all while I wait patiently.

  She’s changed clothes since earlier today. She’s wearing a sleeveless, scoop-necked little black dress that shows off her yoga-class toned arms and shoulders, and her surgically enhanced cleavage. There’s no doubt that Liza Johnson puts a great deal of effort into keeping herself fit. She’s attractive. If she’d lighten up on the layers of concealer foundation, powder, dark eye-liner, and overdone lashes, she might even be appealing. As it is however, she’s cultivated a hard body and a hard face that’s hard to appreciate.

  Finally ending the call, she leans back in her Herman Miller chair, folding her expertly manicured hands neatly in her lap. She regards me with a circumspect smile. The tiniest curl of self-satisfaction turns her Botox plumped lip.

  “Are you driving? Or me?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow.

  I raise my keys, already in hand. “I’ll drive,” I say. “I need to learn my way around the city.”

  Settling into the leather bucket seats of my
car, she slips her clutch purse onto the floor and engages the seat belt.

  “Nice car. Comfortable.”

  We make small talk for the first few minutes while I drive north, then Liza turns the conversation in an unanticipated direction.

  “Your mother is Kendall Chandler, the fashion designer. That explains your looks, your talent, and your money. Not many first-year college professors can afford a car like this.”

  That’s probably the crassest statement I’ve heard uttered from the mouth of any educated adult, but instead of ruffling, I go with it.

  “My mother is Kendall Chandler,” I say, unashamed of my pedigree. “She and my father built Haus Chandler into an impressive brand. She’s the brand manager. I don’t think she spends much time in the fitting rooms anymore.” I offer Liza a wry smile. “As for looks; I look more like my dad. They’re both exceedingly talented. But yeah, I’ve benefitted from their success in more ways than just monetarily. I’m very fortunate.”

  “You are,” she agrees. “That must have been an interesting world to grow up in. I’m envious. There aren’t many people who have a better fashion sense than I do, or better natural taste. If I’d ever learned to sew, I think I would have a successful fashion designer.”

  I let that one pass without comment. It’s too early to get into the weeds with her.

  The restaurant she’s chosen is in the far north part of town, in one of those concrete and plate glass strip mall developments that’s the definition of bland, cheap, suburban sprawl. Despite the early hour, it’s already busy, its patrons consisting almost entirely of couples in their late forties and up. There’s more khaki on deck than ought to be legal.

  We’re early and our table isn’t ready, so the hostess—a chirpy little thing with a blond ponytail and a wide smile—shows us to the bar.

  “What are you drinking?” I ask Liza, raising my hand for service.

  “Manhattan,” she replies.

  Of course, she is. What else?

  When the bartender appears, I order Liza’s and a Scotch for myself.

  “How are you getting settled in?” Liza asks me, sipping her drink. “How are your classes? Your students?”

  “Everything’s good,” I tell her. “Busier than I thought it would be, but I imagine that’s just a matter of the inefficiency of inexperience. I’m looking forward to getting past these first couple weeks and into some of the more technical aspects of things. I can’t wait to get to engraving and letterpress.”

  She shakes her head at me. “You and your toys. You know where most of these kids are going to wind up, they’ll never have call to use any of that.”

  “They may not,” I say. “But they’ll always have knowledge of it.”

  “Any students standing out yet?”

  I nod. “Several. There’s a lot of potential here.” There’s no time like now to go ahead and state the obvious. “Chloe Harvey is something else. She’s on a completely different plane than her peers, both in conceptual approach and technical skill.”

  Liza levels me with a chilly gaze. “She’s also full of herself,” she states, a warning in her tone. “Don’t let her last name and her long, pretty legs fool you. It’s not so much talent as it is the incredible advantages she’s had, that her peers haven’t had benefit of.”

  Advantages? Like a coke-head mother, a broken home, and a dead father? Okay.

  “By advantages, I guess you mean the time she’s spent in the city working at her father’s firm?”

  Liza nods. “Mostly that,” she says. “And the scholarship. The people she knows. The people who know her because of who she is. It opens doors for her. She’s playing with a stacked deck. I can’t admire her.”

  Fascinating.

  Yet here she sits with me, the fortunate son who had an army of private tutors, who was raised going to work with his parents, surrounded by the brightest, most accomplished designers, photographers, and creative minds in the world. A kid who was gifted with every possible advantage money and access could buy.

  Does she feel the same about me?

  “You rented your carriage house apartment to her,” Liza observes. “Is that because you admire her talent and skill? Or is there more to it?”

  She’s pressing it now, taunting me. She’s about to get an earful.

  “Quite a bit more to it,” I say, finishing my drink, coolly pressing my glass forward to the bartender for a refill. “She and her housemates got turned out of their place because it was condemned by the city. She’s broke because her mother blew through her college fund—put it up her nose most likely. She was crashing on couches and sleeping in the studios. She needed a safe place to stay.”

  I see Liza’s brow fold slightly, as if she can’t imagine what I’m saying is true.

  “That, and I’ve known her since she was thirteen years old. Her father was my dearest friends since I was a kid, and there was no way I was going to let her crash and burn, homeless.”

  Liza processes this information. I see her wheels spin slightly as she considers the idea that some of her assumptions about Chloe may have been wrong. Then I see her jaw set. She dismisses the idea, discarding it as quickly as it appeared.

  She’s saved from further delving into the subject of Chloe Harvey and my interest in her, by the appearance of the chirpy hostess bearing a pair of menus.

  The two-top she directs us toward is at the back of the restaurant in a quiet corner; intimate. Something tells me that Liza had to go the extra measure to score this spot. I plan to make the most of it. When the waiter appears, I order Liza another Manhattan and a bottle of good Bordeaux to accompany our meal. She’s already got a bit of pinking in her cheeks showing through all the layers of make-up. A couple more and she’s going to be easy to wind up.

  I’ve had a Scotch and a half, but I know what I’m doing. I learned to drink when I was still mostly underage in Europe and in Japan. The Japanese drink hard, near nightly, and yet they manage to stay mostly sober. The Europeans know how to do this too, and they taught me well.

  I’m hopeful that Liza is a careful, ‘clean’ eater who avoids fat in her diet. I’m guessing that she’s going to play right into my plan.

  I order a protein that’s rich and fatty—seared duck breast. I get it with fried noodles. Liza does not disappoint me. She orders a vegetarian pasta dish with bok choi and turnips. This is going to be fun.

  “Drink up,” I say, nodding to her Manhattan, sipping my own drink. “The wine is for dinner.”

  She smiles at me and takes another, hearty sip. When she sets her glass down, she cocks her head at me and says, “You’re a bad influence. Two drinks before dinner. I’m going to be in my cups before the check comes.”

  I lean toward her, grinning, resting leisurely on my elbows. “Good thing I got the check, and the car keys,” I say. “Enjoy yourself. I’ll make sure you get home safely.”

  “Such a gentleman,” Liza observes. The alcohol is already starting to hit.

  Midway through dinner she’s telling me about her two ex-husbands. The first one was a ‘starter marriage mistake’ she was too young to see coming like the ‘catastrophe it was always going to be.’ The second was her attempt at security that went bad when he started screwing his secretary.

  “Did you have kids?” I ask her. It’s a reasonable question.

  She scowls, spinning her fork in the air. Then she takes another big sip of the very nice wine I’m sure she’s ceased to appreciate. “Good heavens, no,” she says. “Kids… I thought about that for about fifteen seconds, once. Then thought better of it.”

  I top off her wine glass.

  “What about you?” she asks me. “You have a girlfriend waiting for you back in New York? Or London?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Why not? You’re so… lovely. And smart. I bet the women throw themselves at you.”

  I assure her, they don’t, at least not the ones I’m interested in.

  “That’s hard to bel
ieve,” Liza observes. “With looks like yours, and…” She reaches forward, and without warning she wraps her thumb and middle finger around my bicep, pinching. “…and that,” she says, leering. “God, you’ve got such a beautiful build. Like Michelangelo's David, incarnate.”

  I look down at her hand, still fingering my arm, then back up. “You like that?” I ask her.

  The hungry glow behind her eyes speaks for her. She nods. “I really do,” she says. Then she blushes. I hadn’t counted on the blush, but it’s a nice touch.

  I look up for our waiter. Catching his eye, I lift my hand and mouth, ‘check, please.’ Then I turn all my attention to Liza. “Finish your wine,” I say with a mildly suggestive smirk. “David is best viewed in the round, but he’s got an early day tomorrow.”

  Liza is completely toasted on the drive back to her house on Church Hill, east of downtown. It’s a beautiful historic residence, but I don’t have the opportunity to fully appreciate its best features because I’m too busy trying to get its owner in her front door without her tripping over precariously high heels.

  Once inside she kicks off her shoes, drops her purse, and pulls me forward into the living room with both hands. She falls back onto a plush couch, inviting me to join her. I drop to a knee, facing her, seeing the bright glow of alcohol in her face, seeing the watery blur clouding her vision and her judgement.

  Hook. Line. Sinker.

  She reaches forward with both hands, seizing the lapels of my jacket, pulling me down onto her, her lips seizing mine. I return her kiss, giving the effort of my best attempt. She’s not a bad kisser, but her lips don’t inspire me. Mine, apparently, inspire her. She pulls me closer, slipping her hand around my nape, another dropping to my belly, slipping down to my belt.

  “Easy,” I whisper, breaking the kiss, nuzzling her neck, then pulling back. “Take a second.”

  Her hand keeps working at my belt. I drop mine to hers and stop her. She frowns.

  “Liza, you’ve had a lot to drink,” I say. “You’re not thinking straight.”

  “I’m fine.” The thickness in her diction says otherwise.