Becoming His Muse, Part Two (4 page)

Dr. T nods to us both and then folds himself into his stylish Aston Martin. As the engine roars to life, we start walking away, keeping a ‘professional’ distance between us.

“Look, I’m really, really sorry about earlier,” I start to say.

“I had to look like a fool to cover that up,” says Logan. “Locking
myself
out on a balcony.” He’s shaking his head in disbelief.

“It’s all I could think of to get rid of Ruby. I’m sorry. Are you really mad?”

“Yes.”

In the dark I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Again, I’m super sorry.”

“I just want to know how you’re going to make it up to me.”

“Do you want to lock
me
out on a balcony?”

“Hmmm…” He seems to be considering this. “Maybe naked?”

In this weather? “I didn’t think you were the vengeful type.”

“Not really, but I won’t pass up a good opportunity that comes my way. Your sincere repentance seems like a good one.”

“Repentance?”

“A little time on your knees might do the trick.”

I gulp. I also feel an unexpected tingle in my groin.

“Knees?”

Logan slowly closes the gap between us as we walk. No one else is around, thankfully. I lead us along the wisteria walkway, a long curving trellis that flanks the wide pedestrian path between the Arts and Sciences sections of the college campus.

“After you left,” says Logan, “and after I completed my thorough examination of that door, I did, in fact, have a cigarette. At the same time, I tapped rhythmically on the glass on the off chance I’d be heard.”

“I would have come back for you. I
did
come back for you.”

Ignoring me, he continues. “Unfortunately, I left my cell phone in my jacket in the lounge, or I could have called the cavalry. But I didn’t. So while I inhaled and exhaled—literally and figuratively
fumed
on that balcony— I thought of a variety of things I’d like to do to you in retribution.”

My breath catches. “You want to punish me?”

We’re walking quite close together now, under the wiry, bare branches of wisteria, its long dark pods hanging pendulously above us. I steal a glance at Logan. He’s eyeing me with a half smile. “I think you might enjoy it.”

He stops then. I turn to see him reaching into his pocket to fish out his smokes.

“Don’t,” I say, quietly. He pauses, watches me, considers, and then leaves his cigarettes in his jacket. I step up close to him. My hands are still in my pockets.

“I want you to do something else with your mouth right now.”

He arches an eyebrow, exhaling slowly. His breath is a warm wave against my forehead.

“And what might that be?”

“I want you to kiss me again.”

He smirks. “You consider that punishment?”

I shake my head.

“Leaving you on that balcony was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Walking away, lying to my friend, worrying about you being cold, running back to find you— all of that felt terrible. Imagining your anger, your disappointment, thinking that you had given up on me.
That
felt like punishment. So now you can do what you want with me.”

He smiles, his eyes glittering just a bit. “I like the sound of that.”

“When you talked, before, about the inevitability of dying, I realized that there are worse things than death.”

“Such as?”

“A half-lived life, a life of unanswered questions, or a life of prewritten answers.” The life my parents want for me.

One of his hands reaches for my neck. His long fingers slide around to the back, under my hair. Without thinking I lean into his firm grip. He steps closer to me. His other arm slides around my ribs and he pulls me to him. I feel his warmth, his firmness. He tilts my head to one side, making my neck arch to one side. He bends his head, his mouth alighting on my exposed skin. I sigh deeply, giving over to his vampire kiss. From the hollow of my neck he whispers.

“You’ll be my muse?”

I close my eyes and nod, feeling the weight of my head in his hand.

I will be whatever he wants me to be.

We kiss under the dying wisteria until I lose all sense of time. When it’s clear to both of us that kissing is no longer enough, Logan starts to pull me along the trellis path toward the Faculty Apartments.

“So you do know where you’re going,” I murmur. My coat is open and my sweater is pushed up from my waist. I tug things back into place as we walk.

“Of course, I do. I wanted Rich to set us up like that, make it seem perfectly normal that we would walk off in the darkness together.”

“He can’t find out!” I blurt.

Logan turns to me. “I don’t plan on telling him.”

“He’s a stickler for the rules,” I say, worry dampening the earlier furor of my desire. “Just tonight he was giving Jenny a hard time about flirting.”

“That girl needs a different kind of hard time to keep her busy.”

“Believe me, she gets it.”

“Oh?” says Logan, amused.

We’ve almost reached the apartments. I hang back under the trellis.

“Have you changed your mind?” says Logan, turning.

This part of the campus is deserted. I don’t know what I’m afraid of. I bite my bottom lip.

“No one can find out,” I say. “Especially not Doctor Tennenbaum.” It’s not just that he sticks to the rules. He certainly wouldn’t want me to risk expulsion in my senior year, but it’s more than that. I have a feeling I’d be a great disappointment to him if he discovered the truth. But he won’t. Not if we’re careful and smart.

“There’s a parking garage entrance around the left side,” says Logan. “Would you feel better if I went in alone and met you at that door? The stairs there would lead right up to my floor.”

“Yes,” I nod fervently. “Let’s do that.”

He chuckles and reaches into his jacket pocket. “This will give me a chance to have a few puffs.”

I wrinkle up my nose as he lights his cigarette. He saunters across the pedestrian thoroughfare, which, during weekdays allows a river of science students to flow back and forth between the buildings housing engineering, chemistry, physics and biology. Realizing that we are quite a ways away from the arts buildings, where most of my friends take classes, relaxes me somewhat. Even in daylight, it’s doubtful I’d run into anyone I know on this side of campus.

After Logan’s gone inside, I count to sixty and then walk down the ramp along the side of the building. The fear and excitement I’m feeling amplify all my senses. I hear a single leaf scrape along the pavement, the buzz of an electrical transformer, and in the distance, a train rumbling. The sound of someone laughing makes me freeze. It seems to be coming from one of the apartment windows, none of which look down on this ramp, thankfully. Now, I worry I’m being paranoid. I take a deep breath and remind myself that I might be breaking a rule but it’s not the same as breaking a law.

The side door to the parking garage swings open.

“Muses appear in the strangest of places,” Logan says with a grin. He pulls me inside and, once the door shuts behind us, he pushes me up against the cold wall and kisses me. His kiss sends a river of heat down my spine that ignites the soft flesh between my legs. He presses his hips into this flared space and I nearly melt when I feel his hard length through the layers of his pants and my skirt. He pulls away suddenly.

“Come on. Two flights up.” He takes the stairs two at a time. It’s necessary for me to take them singly given the sudden wobbly jelly-ness of my legs.

The door to his apartment is at the end of the hall nearest to the stairs we’ve just ascended, which is convenient. His door is unlocked and we slip in.

Unlike his office, Logan’s apartment is spare and generic, except for a tall stack of books at the bedside and table serving as a desk. My eyes don’t linger on these things for long, instead they focus on the bed, which is Queen sized, neatly made with light grey sheets and a charcoal grey duvet. As Logan heads to the kitchen to get us a drink, I notice that the pillows are fluffier than I’d expect of faculty accommodation, and the pillowcases don’t match the sheets. I wonder if he’s brought those pillows from home, or bought new ones. I touch one. Good quality.

“You like nice pillows,” I say when he returns with two beers from his fridge.

“Who doesn’t?” He hands me a cold bottle and then sits on the end of his bed. Still standing, I take a sip of my beer. He watches me with a half smile and a twinkle in his eye.

I thought we would be all arms and legs flailing as we ripped each other’s clothes off, crashing into walls as we made our way to the bed, breathless and flushed, but this is… just so civilized, so unexpectedly calm. I suppose now that we’ve arrived “safely” we can take all the time we want.

“Do you like living here?” I say.

“I don’t care where I live when I’m writing.” He slips his shoes off while he drinks and stares at me standing in front of him.

“But you said you weren’t getting any writing done in Soho. To me, it sounds like where you live does matter.”

He frowns. Then looks away for a moment, past me, at the wall across the room. His face hardens, as if I’ve brought up something unpleasant.

“The problem with “where” is that it’s permeable to who, what, when and why. If I only had
where
to contend with, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

I’m not sure what he means, and I wonder what issues he’s thinking of, but I can see a coldness wrapping itself around him, and I’m personally longing for the heat we’d felt outside. I think he is, too, because he seems to shrug off his thoughts with a smile. He pats the bed beside him.

“Relax, Ava. Make yourself comfortable.” He winks at me, and his smile curves seductively at the edges. I feel a flicker of heat coil up my spine and my skin starts to tingle, very subtly at first. That’s what his look does to me. Soon that flicker will be a flame, and then, in time, a conflagration of lust; I felt it burning at the edges when we kissed. It was more than mere kissing. It was tasting, biting, a gnawing at our souls. Kisses quench, slake a thirst, but the hunger I felt kissing Logan was like cracking into a fissure of gas, the hiss of its release a promise of fueling flames, not dousing them.

I sit down on the bed next to him, but not too close. I leave some elbowroom so that I can pull my boots off. I set my beer on the floor and wrap my hands around my left foot. I have an urge to move quickly but I restrain myself, go slowly, telling myself there will only be one first time with him and I want to savor it, not rush. I don’t want to run into the fire too soon and burn up without feeling the exquisite pleasure of intense heat first.

I haven’t slipped the first boot off my heel before he’s on the floor, on his knees, in front of me.

“Let me,” he whispers.

He sets his beer beside mine. The two bottles sit side by side, sweating, as he wraps his hands around my foot. Like before, in the studio, he seems less intimidating below me looking up, and I feel stronger, more powerful, as he stares at me with desire. He moves slowly, too, easing my boot off with careful tender movements. He slips off my thin sock and then slides his thumb against the bare skin of my arch. I place my hands on the bed behind me, to help hold me up, to allow me to lean back slightly. His simple touch, exerted with a deliberate pressure, has traveled all the way up my body to my back, which wants to arch to match the curve of my foot.

He reaches for my other boot, frees my foot, presses his thumb into my bare skin again. I sigh as his fingers run up along my Achilles tendon, and then his hand slides to my shin bone, and then upwards, to my knee. As he moves upward his pressure steers outward, and with a hand on each of my knees he pushes me open, stretching my skirt, which he’s pushed above my knees as he’s followed the ridge of my shin bone.

He moves closer, edging himself between my knees, sliding his hands along my thighs until he reaches my buttocks. He locks on, and pulls my pelvis closer to him. My knees yield, fall open further, and my arms, stretched a little too far, bend until I’m on my elbows. I look down across my chest, the curve of my belly, the stretched lap of my skirt to his chest, face, and tousled hair, wedged between my thighs. I want to squeeze, hold him there forever. My sighs have turned to shallow pants.

“Thirsty?” he asks.

I nod. He reaches toward the floor, passes me a beer bottle. To take it, I have to adjust my weight on my elbows. In shifting, I rock him between my thighs. I hear him sigh and release a light moan. I sip the beer, let the cold liquid run down my throat. Nothing can ease the rising temperature inside me. My clothes feel constrictive. As if he knows this, he eases my skirt higher, pushing the clinging fabric up to my hips. He stares at me with heavy-lidded eyes, his mouth partially open.

I pass him back the cold beer bottle. He takes it, sips from it, his eyes fixated on mine. I watch his lips as they suck from the bottle. I watch his throat as he swallows. And then I feel his thumb slide from my outer hip toward my inner thigh. He follows the satin line of my panties. His thumbnail snakes across the seam, crossing the stitched boundary, making me gasp.

He smiles at the sound, pulls the bottle from his lips, and narrows his gaze at me. I am still dressed, except for my bare legs, exposed as they are from the high rise of my skirt, but I might as well be naked. I am made raw and revealed simply by his look.

“You’re hot,” he says.

It’s true. I am flushed, damp with sweat, and I want to rip my clothes off.

“You’re beautiful
and
hot, Ava Nichols.”

I lick my lips, watch him. “Undress me,” I whisper. I draw my thighs together just a bit. He smiles at that, takes another sip of beer.

“Soon.”

His thumb still rests lightly at the edge of my panties, which are wet with wanting.

“Now,” I say. “Please.”

His brow furrows the tiniest bit, as if he’s not happy about my impatience. I’m about three seconds away from ripping his clothes off, too. I draw my thighs together to squeeze him into agreement.

He shakes his head lightly. “You’re
too
hot I think.”