Devil's Kiss (Sunset Cove #2) (7 page)

Checking the clock on the wall, he saw there were only five minutes until class was done and clapped his hands together before rubbing them with glee. “Okay, guys, that’s it for the week. Remember, you have a quiz Monday. Don’t be late or I’m locking the door, and for those with plans,” he said, and looked directly at Derek, who, he was surprised to find, was watching him with matching focus, “play safe.” He broke the potent eye contact and smiled widely. “Have a good weekend, everyone.”

As the students vacated the room one after another, he gathered the papers littering his lectern and the small table beside it. He bundled them and was tapping them on the table to straighten the pile when he heard someone approach behind him. With the papers in order, he turned around to see Derek standing beside the podium with his icy blue eyes narrowed, and his mouth drawn in its usual grim expression.

Jordan let his eyes do a quick sweep of the room, and when he realized they were the only two in there, he made sure to keep his attention focused on the face of the student in front of him.

“Can I help you, Derek?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Derek said, and then paused before he asked, “Did I do something to piss you off?”

Taken off guard by Derek’s language, Jordan squared his shoulders for the verbal sparring match to come. Not that he was worried. He had no delusions that should he want to take this guy, he could, and would, win every time.
 

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he finally replied.

Derek scoffed and took a presumptuous step forward, and Jordan ordered himself to stay put. There was no way he was about to back down just because Derek was several inches taller than himself, and exuded a pent-up energy that was practically making the room vibrate.
 

It was time the guy had a little discipline in his life. It was obvious now that he rebelled due to whatever was going on with his family, but one thing Jordan would not stand for in his classroom and everyday life was disrespect. No matter who you were or why you thought it was acceptable.
 

This close, Derek was
—Oh hell, there’s no use trying to deny it. The guy is muy caliente.
Dressed in green cargo shorts and his standard black T-shirt that stretched across his broad chest like a second skin, the words printed at the center of it made Jordan want to smile:
Normal people scare me.
 

Well, then Derek should feel right at home with him, because no one had ever accused Jordan of being normal. It was time, however, that Derek was taught a lesson about what Jordan was and wasn’t willing to let slide.
 

“If you’re referring to my calling on you—”

“I am,” Derek said, and Jordan prayed for patience. “Why do you always do that?”
 

Jordan placed the papers on the podium behind him and then turned back to aim a pointed look up at Derek. “I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

He thought about that for a second and made sure that Derek wasn’t right, and when he was satisfied he wasn’t actually singling him out, Jordan shook his head and pointed a finger up at him. “No, I don’t. In fact, I haven’t called on you until today, and that was only because you were being rude and talking through my class. If you don’t wish to be singled out, Derek, then show some respect.”

As his words lingered between them, Jordan’s entire demeanor dared Derek to defy him. He couldn’t believe how close they were standing. His finger was practically poking that huge chest in front of him, and Jordan could see it rising and falling with every annoyed breath Derek took.

“I already told you,” Derek said, his voice so soft and controlled that Jordan was lucky he was so close or he wouldn’t have heard him. “I respect you.”
 

Jordan could hear ringing in his ears as his heart thumped out an insistent tattoo.
 

One, two, three.
Move
. One, two, three.
Move
. Move. Back. Now.
 

Yeah… But he didn’t.

Instead, his eyes ran up the square line of Derek’s jaw, and Jordan moistened his bottom lip with his tongue. He wanted to bite and suck his way up to Derek’s ear and tell him—
Focus, Devaney. Focus.

“Then show it. When I speak, listen to me. It’s really not that hard.”

Derek’s eyes dropped to his lips, and Jordan knew he was perilously close to crossing a line. One that was highly inappropriate.
 

“You’re wrong,” Derek told him. Then he shrugged his bag up his arm. “It’s extremely hard every time you speak. And just so we’re clear, I’m
not
referring to my attention span.”

Oh no he didn’t,
Jordan thought, shocked right down to his leather shoes. He knew exactly what Derek was referring to, and, never one to act coy, he ran his eyes down Derek’s body and finally back up to his face. If he’d been anybody else—
But he’s not.
 

“Listen to me very closely, Derek. While you are in my class, this is not going to
ever
happen.”

When Derek’s eyes darkened, and the side of his surly mouth tugged into a smirk, Jordan realized exactly what he’d said, and went to correct himself. But it was too late.

“I can live with that. At the rate I’m going, you’ll kick me out anyways.”

Jordan couldn’t help himself then. He chuckled at Derek’s insolence and shook his head. “And that’s now a goal of yours?”

“To fuck you or to get kicked out? The way I see it, they kinda go hand in hand now, don’t they.”

While Jordan was aware Derek was going for the shock factor, there was no way he could let that go without some kind of recourse.
 

“Seeing as you are here on a scholarship, Mr. Pearson, I hardly think it’s wise to aim to be thrown out of class for whatever inane reasoning you think you have.” Jordan paused after his scholastically inclined speech, but just as it always did, his lack of filter, subtlety, and patience prodded him to add, “And just so we’re clear,
no one
fucks me.”

As that little tidbit of information escaped Jordan’s lips, Derek’s eyes blazed with an emotion that went far beyond challenge and headed straight into a territory that was rife with minefields—curiosity.

He then gave a clipped nod of his head, spun on the heels of his flip-flops, and marched toward the door.

Shit. Why does he always make me act this way?
Jordan thought, but he didn’t take his eyes off the intense man as he silently departed the room.
 

CHAPTER FIVE

THAT AFTERNOON, DEREK booked it home with one thing on his mind—finding out everything he could about Professor Jordan Devaney. He hadn’t thought of looking the guy up online before today. But ever since Finn had mentioned it, the idea had taken root and just wouldn’t leave him alone.
 

When he got home, it was a little after five and he was relieved to find the house empty. He dumped his bag on the floor and went to his room to switch on his old, clunky PC. As the computer booted up, Derek paced back and forth in the small confines of his room, going over his earlier encounter with his professor.

The guy was…damn, he was something else, Derek thought as a grin curled his lips. Smart, sexy, and so out of his league that Derek had no clue what the hell he’d been thinking earlier, saying what he had.
 

But damn if he’d been able to help himself.
 

There was something about Devaney that made him want to grab a hold of him and, well, fuck his brains out. Maybe it was his superior attitude. Or the fact that even though he was several inches shorter than himself, he had no problem telling him to pull his head in.
 

For most of his life Derek’s father hadn’t given two shits about him, and due to his rapid growth spurt in high school, most of his teachers had avoided any conflict with him, so he was rarely disciplined—at all.
 

That hadn’t stopped the professor, though. This was the second time he’d called Derek’s ass out, and he was starting to think Devaney enjoyed dishing it out as much as he was enjoying…well, receiving.

Which brought him back to the other thing that had been bugging him. That final comment to him before he’d left today. The one Devaney had made about no one fucking him. It had been playing on repeat since he’d left. It was also hot as hell.

Fuck,
he thought as he rubbed his palm over the hard-on now straining against the zipper of his cargos.

While Derek had always been the one to top in his past encounters, the thought of being fucked by that Energizer Bunny had him wanting to get on his hands and knees for Devaney while he kept going and going and going…

He groaned at the image in his head as he walked back to take a seat in front of his computer, and Jesus, he was hard. He unbuttoned his shorts and breathed a sigh of relief as he lowered the zipper.
 

Maybe he should just take care of himself. Get rid of some of the tension that had him wound up like a damn tightrope. The problem was, the only thing he could seem to focus on was Devaney and the idea that he’d be a total hellcat in bed, judging by his uppity personality and quick-to-fire temper.

Christ, yep, that’s what’s doing it,
he thought as he slipped his hand inside his pants.
Before he thought about all the reasons he shouldn’t do what he was about to, Derek opened up his browser and typed the professor’s name into Google. He took a deep breath as he hit search and waited to see what, besides his cock, would pop up.

When the results appeared, Derek scanned down the first three stories. The first one read:
Millionaire’s son hailed a prodigy.
The second:
Youngest man to graduate with a PhD.
And the third:
Self-made millionaire’s son goes wild.

You don’t say…
Derek’s lips pulled into a slow smile as he clicked on the third headline and waited for the page to load. When the story appeared, he noted the date. It was from two years earlier, and it opened talking about Jordan Devaney the twenty-three-year-old son to Nathan Devaney, the man who’d made millions in oil excavation back in the late eighties. It then went on to explain that his only son, and heir to his fortune, was spotted leaving an upscale gay bar in Wyoming with an unknown “friend” in the early hours of Saturday morning. When approached by the paparazzi for comment on why he was seen leaving such an establishment, young Devaney was reported to have said, “If you’re asking about my orientation, don’t bother. Because you’re not going to get a straight answer.”
 

Fuck yes.
That was the exact attitude Derek admired and had him circling the root of his shaft. He bucked his hips up so his naked flesh was free of its confines, and as he gave it a firm pull and slowly drew his palm up the length, he shut his eyes, imagining it was Devaney.

He drew his lower lip between his teeth as his cock throbbed in his hand, and then he opened his eyes and scrolled past the rest of the words in the article to the image that had been inserted at the bottom of the piece.

It was a night shot, so it was dark except for the streetlights and the neon sign that read
FUBAR
, but there was no mistaking Devaney from the other man in the image with him.
 

Devaney was the shorter of the two and was wearing ripped jeans that sat low on his waist, and he had a white shirt on that was pretty tame for him. It was unbuttoned, and the photographer must have taken the shot just as a breeze had caught him, because the shirt was being blown away from his body and—
damn
, that had Derek’s hand moving faster.

Tanned and toned, Devaney had a compact body that looked entirely fuckable. Around his neck he wore some kind of beaded necklace, and his hair was styled in messy spikes that were sexy as hell.
 

All in all, he was exactly the kind of guy Derek could imagine under him, over him, and all fucking around him. Then add in the raised middle finger Devaney had given the photographer, and the attitude sealed the deal.

Derek shut his eyes and imagined himself in place of whoever the hell had his arm around Devaney in that photo. He imagined himself going home with him as he pumped his hips faster, and when his toes curled and the pre-cum leaked from the tip of his cock to coat his hand, Derek growled. And when he thought about the disapproving tone his professor had used that afternoon when he’d told him,
No one fucks me
, he came harder than he’d ever come in his life.

Breathing rapidly, Derek languidly stroked himself as he came down from his orgasm. He had no idea how he was going to survive the next few months in Devaney’s class. He couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the man when he was talking, and after this, today… He wasn’t sure he could look at him and not think about how it would feel to get naked with his professor.

He reached for several tissues to clean himself up, then closed out of the browser so he could go and take a shower. Maybe he would talk to Finn about it tonight when they went to Bianca’s.

It always helped when he got shit off his chest. Finn would laugh, tell him he was a douchebag, then that would be the end of that. Because liking his professor—that would be the mother of all stupid ideas. Life and school were hard enough without adding a literal meaning to the word
hard
.

That’s what I’ll do,
Derek thought, and turned on the water. He just needed to get to Bianca’s and talk this out with Finn, the levelheaded one of them both. Then everything would be back to normal.

At least, he hoped so.

* * *

“I THINK I like my law professor.”

The gulp of soda Derek had just taken sprayed out of his mouth as Finn’s words hit his ears. He coughed around the fizzy shit that had gone halfway up his nose as he stared at Finn with watering eyes.
There’s no fucking way he just said—

“You know, Professor Hayes?”

You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,
Derek thought, as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. Finn had a lopsided grin on his face that told Derek his friend was close to shit-faced from the girly Jell-O shots he’d been swallowing all night.