Taunt Me (Rough Love Book 2) (8 page)

“Universities don’t hire professors who prey on students. That was a really pretty girl in your office just now. Meet with her every week?”

“She’s one of my students,” he snapped.

“So is Chere.”

I grabbed the door and wrenched it open. Fuckhead. I didn’t know if my threats were getting through to him. I didn’t know how much trouble I could make without Chere becoming involved.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” he called after me as I left. “Glad we had this talk.”

I didn’t yell “Fuck you” back at him the way I wanted to. I was trying to keep it classy, which was more than I could say for him.

Andrew came running up to me in Norton’s cafeteria the last morning of fall semester, with fluttering hands and a magnificent smile. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my
Gaaawd
! Chere! Guess what?”

“You finished that painting about the happy banana?” I murmured, shoveling sugar into my coffee.

“Better.”

“What could possibly be better?”

His smile wilted a little. “Well, it’s about...you know...the E thing.”

Not E as in ecstasy. Andrew didn’t use drugs. The E thing was escorting, and it was a lingering source of tension between us.

“Even if it’s about the E thing,” I said, “I guess you better tell me, or else you got me all worked up for nothing.”

“Mr. Recaro is taking me to Vail!” The words burst out in jubilation. “Two whole weeks over the holiday break.”

“And Mr. Recaro is...?”

“The gentleman I saw last week. The opera singer with all the muscles and hair.”

“Hair?”

“I’ve never seen such a hairy taint, babes, I’m telling you.”

“So, skiing in Vail for two weeks?” I asked, to get him off the taint talk. “Mr. Recaro must really like you.”

His eyes lit up even brighter. “Do you think so?”

I put down my coffee and grabbed his face in a punishing grip. “No, I don’t think so. That was a test and you failed it. You’re not supposed to develop feelings for clients. It’s the fastest way to go nuts in the escort biz.”

“You developed feelings for one of your clients,” he lisped through his crunched cheeks. “And you know he felt something for you.”

“And where are we now?” I asked, releasing him. “I’m a lonely, neurotic mess of a woman, and he fucked off to God knows where.”

“You’re not a lonely, neurotic mess.” He rubbed his skin where I’d gripped it. “Sort of cranky sometimes, when you haven’t had enough coffee. You need to get laid.”

I turned away from him, not willing to discuss that topic. The close encounter with Cantor was still on my mind.
I’m experienced and safe
, he’d said. And he was obviously willing to fuck me. I was one hundred percent sure of that, based on the way he’d looked at me in class ever since. Hot glances, small, speculative smiles, and far too many trips past my workstation for no reason. It amazed me that no one noticed.

“I don’t need to get laid,” I said, turning back to him. “And you don’t need to be falling in love with your clients. It’s wonderful that he’s taking you to Vail. You’ll get to ski and make bank, as long as you keep Hairy Taint happy. But it’s work, not romance. Don’t forget that, or you’ll be heading into your last semester with a broken heart.”

He promised me soberly that he would not fall in love with Mr. Recaro the opera singer, and I gave him one last menacing look. I hoped it was warning enough. I never, ever wanted Andrew to suffer the heartbreak I had.

I drifted through my last classes feeling morose. I wasn’t exactly jealous of Andrew heading off on vacation for the holidays. Well, yes, maybe I was jealous. Andrew’s family lived all the way over on the West Coast, and I didn’t have any family, so I figured we’d hang out together, at least on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Instead, I’d be hanging out in my apartment alone, watching James Bond movies and eating takeout from the cheap Indian place on the corner.

No one else seemed very chipper today either. These were our last real classes at Norton, aside from senior seminar, which was basically just a time to get together and assure our teachers that our internships were going well. I wouldn’t see a lot of these kids again, wouldn’t sit in a classroom and talk about theory and marketing and technical design stuff. I wouldn’t see Cantor every day anymore, wouldn’t get to experience his predatory hovering and extra attention.

Maybe that’s why I was so slow packing up my work space after he delivered our final critiques. Just about everyone was gone by the time I headed down the center aisle.

“Chere,” he said as I passed his desk.

I turned to look at him. He gazed at me with that slow smile, the one halfway between seduction and mockery. “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?”

His smile reminded me too much of Studio Valiant, and the way he’d spanked his sub’s pussy.
No, don’t think about that now.

“Goodbye,” I said. “Thanks for everything. Although I’m pretty sure I’ll see you again.”

I meant I’d see him here, at Norton, but I blushed, wondering if he’d misunderstood my meaning.

“That is... I still have one more semester to go,” I clarified.

He nodded, and now I knew he was thinking about Studio Valiant, even if he hadn’t been before.

“Do you have any plans for the break?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“No family in the city?”

“No family anywhere,” I said with a shrug.

“A holiday with friends, then?”

I was so, so tired of being dissected by him, scrutinized, questioned, stared at. I glared down at the floor and refused to answer.

“Well,” he said, “we’re officially not professor and student anymore. I’ve got your final grade here.” He tapped the stack of printouts. “I’m sure you’re aware you have an A. Well, an A minus. I docked you for all the dirty looks.”

I gave him another dirty look. “Are you hitting on me?”

Everyone else had gone. There was only him and me, and his desk between us. He came from behind it and leaned against the edge.

“I’m not hitting on you,” he said. “I’m stating a fact. I’m not your teacher anymore.”

He was hitting on me. His eyes pinned me, dark and intense. The silence went from uncomfortable to stifling.

“Is there someone else?” he asked quietly. “If there is, he doesn’t make you very happy.”

“There’s no one else. It’s just…” I rubbed my forehead. “Why do you have this interest in me?”

“Because you’re interesting.”

“Why?”

He stood up. I took a step back, even though he hadn’t moved toward me.

“Why me?” I asked again. “I don’t understand.”

He put his hands on his hips, then back at his sides, like he didn’t know what to do with them. “You’re unusual, Chere. I initially noticed you because you were older than the other students. There was more to see in your eyes. From the beginning, you’ve had this drive, this burning ambition. That hasn’t changed, even though you’ve changed.”

“Changed how?”

“You’ve become calmer, more dignified. In the beginning you were so anxious, not that I understood why. But you’ve subsumed all that, little by little. You’ve disciplined it down to the small, manageable things you make.”

I let my bag slide off my shoulder. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Sometimes we get students who make us think, students who fascinate us in some way. Not very often, but we get them. You fascinate me, Chere. It’s your detachment. Your control.”

“My control?” I laughed bitterly. I had very bad control, otherwise I wouldn’t still be standing here talking to him.

“When I hit on you at the club...” He grimaced. “When I invited you to scene with me, it was because you always seem so rigidly controlled. I want—” He paused and looked up to meet my gaze. “I wanted to see if I could break past that control to whatever’s bubbling underneath. I wanted to get at all that pent-up emotion inside you.”

“I don’t want that,” I said, horrified. “That’s the last thing I want.”

“It might be good for you.”

“No.”

He spread his arms. “Then I suppose you’ll continue to be an enigma to me. Maybe it’s for the best.”

“I think it would be for the best,
Professor
Cantor,” I said, to remind him that he was still a teacher in my eyes. We’d barely been out of class for half an hour. I picked up my bag. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around.”

“I hope so. Have a good break. Oh, and Chere,” he said when I was almost to the door.

I turned back with a sense of dread, or maybe sadness. “What?”

“You’re a great designer. A great artist. Forget everything else I said, because it doesn’t matter. You do amazing work.”

*** *** ***

I tried to forget everything Cantor said, but it was difficult.

W was out of my life, gone, disappeared. He wasn’t coming back, and I was lonely. The winter break stretched out before me, three weeks of drifting angst and inactivity. By the end of the second week, I was losing my mind.

I had to go to a club. I had to be around people. So what if it was the dead time just after New Years? Someone would be out and about. I thought about making the trek uptown to Evolution City, to the big, loud, busy place, but I ended up at Studio Valiant instead. For the balconies, I told myself. Because I liked the balconies.

Cantor wasn’t there the first night I went, or the second night, but the third time I showed up, he was the first person I saw on the dungeon floor. He wore light colored jeans this time, jeans that revealed an alluring play of muscles. He oozed confidence as he flogged and teased another pretty blonde.

Him and his blondes. He would have loved me back in my Miss Kitty days. I didn’t go up to the balcony right away, but stayed on the dungeon floor, twenty feet or so from where he was playing. Near the end of the scene, he turned to look around the room and caught me staring at him. I didn’t try to duck and hide. I let him notice me, and that was when I realized I was ready to let myself be with him.

That
sent me running for the balcony. Had I really come here to hook up with Cantor, the married dungeon playboy? The idea of it terrified me, because it meant I was giving up on my safety, my staunch independence from entanglement and heartbreak. I hunched behind the balcony curtains, rubbing my temples, slowly losing my nerve. I finally convinced myself to leave, but not quickly enough. I ran into him halfway down the stairs, in the dark, claustrophobic stairwell, to the strains of Mozart’s Paris Symphony.

“I was just leaving,” I said.

He slid an arm around my waist. He was shirtless, a little sweaty, but he smelled good anyway. “Why are you here?” he asked.

I shook my head. I was an idiot. “Professor Cantor—”

“I’m not your professor anymore. Call me Martin.”

I clasped my hands in front of me like I was praying. It had been so long,
so long
, since anyone had held me like this.

“I don’t know what I want,” I said. “But I came here, and I think I did that to see you.”

“I’m here. How can I help you? Do you want to play? We don’t have to do anything complicated.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t... I don’t know...”

“You don’t know what you want? It’s okay not to know.” He let go of my waist and took my hand. “Do you want to get out of here? Talk outside where it’s not so noisy?”

I nodded. Yes. Getting out of here was a great idea.

We went out front, to a round concrete wall that banked the entrance. He sat down and gestured me to the space beside him. Aside from the tattooed bouncers, there were a few smokers standing around, and a Dom/sub couple engaged in a heated conversation. Groups of people flounced by on their way to other nighttime destinations.

We didn’t say anything at first, just sat there next to each other. I didn’t know what to say.

“Why do you like being lonely?” he asked after a while. “It seems like you try really hard to be lonely. I never see you with anyone. You don’t hang out with the other students in class.”

“I’m older than them.”

“You never talk to anyone at the club. You hide in that balcony.” He turned to me in the light from the street, propping an elbow on his knee. “Just so you know, anyone at Studio Valiant would play with you. Man, woman, Dom, sub, switch. You could take your pick.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true, Mistress Mysterious. I’m not the only one you’ve fascinated.”

I looked at the nearby couple, whose discussion was devolving into a fight. “I’m not trying to be fascinating. Or lonely,” I added. “I’m trying to protect myself.”

“From what? From whom?”

“Everyone. Especially you.”

He gave a small laugh and took my hand. I didn’t hold his hand back, and he let go.

“What do you want?” he asked. “I mean, self-protection aside, what are you looking for? What would make you happy?”

I didn’t even know how to answer that. I wanted something like what W had given me, but I didn’t think there was anyone else who could provide that. What he did to me wasn’t what the Doms at Valiant did to their subs. It wasn’t negotiation and “play” scenes. It was roughness, grasping, breathlessness, peril. Craziness and emotional manipulation.

“I won’t be able to find what I want,” I said, because in my heart, I knew that I wouldn’t.

“That sounds very negative,” he said with a sigh.

“If you want—”

“It’s not what
I
want,” he interrupted. “It’s clear to me that I’m not what you want. I’m trying to help you find what
you
want. I know a lot of people in the Manhattan scene.”

“Did you ever know this guy...?” I paused, thinking how stupid it was to even ask. “Did you ever know this guy who was tall, blond, and kind of into rough stuff? I mean, really intense stuff, with no negotiation?”

“No negotiation? That’s not safe.”

“No, he wasn’t safe. But did you ever know a guy like that around Manhattan, in the scene?”

He turned to me with a strange look. “Why? Do
you
know this guy? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know him.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “Rough stuff? I know people who’ll do that, but they’ll want to negotiate first.”