She stands there, motionless.

Why won't she just leave?

Her hesitation is going to destroy me. It's going to destroy both of us, because if she pauses there another moment longer, I'm not going to be able to keep my hands glued to the desk the way they are right now. I'm going to reach out and touch her – and if I do that, it's over. I'll bend this girl over my desk and take her virginity right here in my office.

I can't do that.

I can't do this. Not with her.

She has no idea what she's asking of me when she asks me to fuck her. She has no idea that I would ruin her.

No matter how much I want to take her virginity, I'm not going to break her heart – and if I fuck her, that's exactly what I'll do. I don't do relationships, and I don't do love.

I definitely don't do naïve virgins who are barely old enough to vote, let alone screw.

"What if I don't leave?" she asks. Her fingers play with the hem of that dress and she tugs at the sides of the garment like she's about to pull the entire thing up and over her head.

I'm scared as hell that she's about to tear that dress off right now.

"Get out of my office now, Purity." The words come out harsher than I intend them to, and when she flinches, it gets me right in the gut. I tell myself that I can't feel guilty about snapping at her. I won't feel guilty; hurting her feelings is for her own good. "Student-faculty relationships are forbidden. I won't lose my job for a quick fuck."

Her brow furrows and her mouth opens, but she doesn't say a word. She just gives me a look like she's trying to understand how I can go from Jekyll to Hyde in an instant.

I'm trying to understand the same damned thing myself, but my only excuse is that I'm torn between my desire for her and my impulse to do the right thing.

Part of me wants to tell her that I take back the words I just spoke. I want to tell her that there's no way she'd be a quick fuck, that the second I put my lips on her, the instant I felt her on my cock, I'd never let her leave my bed.

There's not a doubt in my mind she would be the opposite of a quick fuck. I'd never let her go.

I don't tell her any of that because she doesn't need to know the insanity going through my head right now.

She gives me an icy look, dropping her skirt. I watch as it flutters around her thighs. Picking up her messenger bag from the floor beside the chair, she pulls the strap over her shoulder. "Fine," she whispers.

Then she turns around and walks out of my office, closing the door hard behind her.

I let out the longest, most relieved, frustrated-as-fuck sigh in existence. Then I stand there for what seems like an eternity bent over the desk with my palms on top of the wood, my knuckles white. I stand there for longer than makes any kind of sense before I can move again.

After that, I go back to my house and write five chapters.

There's something really fucked up about how creative I am with her around, even when I'm being a total asshole to her.

* * *

"Morning, sunshine." Bert looks up from his chess game as Benson hops down from the park bench and yips ferociously at me a few times, his tail wagging so hard that it sends his entire tiny body into convulsions. "You're early."

I hand Bert a cup of coffee before plopping down on the bench on the other side of the chessboard. "Insomnia," I answer, sipping from my own coffee cup before surveying the board. "I've been up since four. Even went running with Hemy."

Bert snorts. "I didn't know that bulldog could run."

"He waddled."

"You act as if four in the morning is early or something. 'Course, they probably let you boys sleep in, when you were active duty – not like in my day, not unless you wanted Gunny Sargeant tearing you a new asshole."

I laugh as I move my bishop. "I doubt very much that anything changed between your time in the Corps and my time. I got plenty of ass-chewings in my day, you know."

Bert grunts a response as he leans over the board. "So you say," he mumbles. "Get any writing done?"

"Some," I say vaguely. A hell of a lot is more accurate.

Bert's eyebrows go up. "Some is better than it has been," he notes, as he counters my move.

"True," I reply, taking a sip of coffee. "It's actually been more than some."

"A lot?"

"A lot."

"So what's happened?"

"Something had to have happened?" I ask, feeling defensive.

"You're the one with writer's block," Bert points out casually. "You tell me."

I pretend to study the board instead. I don't know how the hell to explain my recent bursts of creativity. I don't know what the hell is going on – not when it comes to my writing and certainly not when it comes to Purity. So I just shrug. "I got inspired, I guess. Writing goes through phases of inspiration or not."

"Uh-huh." Bert doesn't sound convinced. "I ran into one of your students, you know."

"Oh?" I ask absently, half-distracted by thoughts of Purity and half-distracted by trying to make some semblance of an attempt at deciphering Bert's moves before he makes them. The man pretends to be casual about chess, but he's more serious about the game than almost anything else. He's also really, really good; I haven't beaten him once. He's always ten steps ahead of me.

I squint at the board and take another sip of coffee.

"Dorothy."

"Who?"

"The girl from your class," he explains. "Dorothy."

I frown. I know all of my students' names and there's no Dorothy in my class. "Sorry, I don't have anyone named Dorothy in my class. It must be a different class you're thinking of."

Bert sighs. "Dorothy isn't her name. I can't remember her real name; I only called her Dorothy on account of the fact that she was wandering around the sidewalk lost and disoriented like she'd just arrived here from another planet."

My heart skips a couple of beats. There's only one girl in my class who fits that description. She's definitely out of her element at school here.

I'm also out of my element when it comes to her.

"Huh," I muse, working hard to keep my voice casual. "I can't think of any of my students who sound like they fit that description."

"She's the kind of girl you'd notice," Bert says.

No shit.

I change the subject. "So how's Gloria?"

Gloria is Bert's wife of fifty-plus years and one of the reasons he spends his mornings on the bench playing chess. When he retired from his second career in federal service after twenty-something years in the Marine Corps, Gloria told him she couldn't take him puttering around the house trying to fix things. The way Bert tells the story, after she ordered him to get a hobby so she didn't kill him, he tried hanging out and drinking beer at the VFW with the other veterans before he decided he was over reliving his glory days. He taught himself to play chess "to keep his mind sharp", as he says, although there's no danger of Bert's mental faculties going dull. When no one at the VFW wanted to play with him, he started bringing his chessboard to the park bench near campus. Now he's practically a campus institution himself.

Bert gives me a dismissive wave of his hand. "She's still nagging me to give up my cigars," he huffs. "The woman insists they're going to kill me. I tell her I'm close enough to death that a cigar and a generous helping of whiskey isn't going to do shit to me."

I roll my eyes. "Close to death," I scoff. "You're not exactly knocking on death's door."

"I'm an old man. The second I give up my whiskey and cigars, I'll have one foot in the grave. Then I'll be talking to St. Peter before you know it."

As long as I've been (badly) playing chess with Bert in the mornings, Gloria has been nagging him to give up his whiskey and cigars. He'll never give them up and she'll never stop nagging him about it. It's one of those immutable facts of life, one of those things that's comforting to know is constant.

Rain or shine, we talk about my writing and Gloria and Bert's grandkids.

I make another move. "You sure it's Saint Peter you're going to be talking to and not the man in red?"

"I see you've brought jokes with you this morning."

"The early mornings bring out my sunny disposition." I glance at my watch. "I've got to get home and shower before class. How many moves do I have before you crush me, anyway?"

"Well, now, do you want me to be kind or do you want me to tell you the truth?"

I let out an exaggerated sigh. "Have I ever asked you to spare my feelings? Give me the cold, hard truth."

"Four," he says.

"Shit. Four moves? Are you sure?? Damn it, I thought I was getting better."

"You've improved," he assures me, and I watch as he demonstrates exactly what moves he had planned to end the game. "But do you know who's really good? Your girl."

"My what? Who?" At first, I genuinely don't have a clue who he's talking about.

"Dorothy," he explains. "She's a smart girl, that one."

I didn't know she played chess. Of course, it's no surprise that I don't know she plays chess, since I don't know the first thing about her. The only thing I know is that I want to tear her clothes off.

Not knowing anything about her should be added to the list of approximately a million fucking reasons that I don't need to rip the girl's clothing off.

I give Bert a hurried goodbye and turn to leave.

Purity must be a damned chess genius for Bert to call her a smart girl. She can't be that smart, though, otherwise she wouldn't be entertaining the thought of getting involved with me.