Chapter Seven
Noah
Iris Paige. I let the name roll around my brain as I stepped out of the classroom to watch her storm off in a huff.
It was pure luck that she had ended up in my class after bumping into her the previous day. She had been getting coffee even after knowingly skipping my class. The thought amused and irritated me at the same time.
My eyes took in her perfectly rounded ass cheeks as she stormed down the hallway. I had no idea if she worked out, but there wasn’t even a layer of fat on her from what I could see from her tight jeans and coffee-colored sweater. At least I had someone to look at who was above the barely legal age.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to dig my fingers into that ass. Maybe she’d moan and arch into me.
“Damn.”
I started in surprise to see Kale standing in the doorway of his office, watching Iris slip outside with arched eyebrows. He looked at me in faint amusement. “That’s one hell of a fiery one, huh?”
“No shit,” I replied, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t even know if the word fiery begins to cover it.”
“How old is she?” he asked, curiously. “She doesn’t look like a freshman.”
“She’s not. She’s a graduating senior. I don’t know how she ended up in my Freshman English class.” I made a mental vow to ask a few other professors later in the department if they knew why. Someone like Iris didn’t fall backward in class for no reason. Something must have happened for her to end up in my class, and she sure as hell didn’t plan on sharing the reason why.
That type of stubbornness chipped away at me. I never put my hands on a woman or verbally abused her, but I never tolerated blatant disrespect as Iris had thrown in my face. I had to get at her in a different way, and dangling a passing grade in front of her was the best option. She needed me to graduate whether or not she liked it.
“Want to grab a bite of food down at the grill here?” Kale asked. “I’m starving. I didn’t get to eat breakfast this morning. We have two hours before classes pick up again for the afternoon.”
I debated inwardly on turning Kale down on the offer, but a bite to eat sounded good. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Sure. Let me lock my office up.”
Kale waited patiently while I dropped off my bag, grabbed my wallet, and locked my office behind me. We walked together toward the dining hall with dusty snow swirling around the sidewalks from the cold breeze. We found a quiet spot in the dining hall away from students to eat in peace. I still felt the occasional curious gaze lingering on me.
“Don’t worry,” Kale told me, reading my expression perfectly. “They’ll stop staring at you once you get acclimated to the campus.”
“Why are they all staring at me?” I asked.
He looked down at his tray full of various fruits, coffee, and a large breakfast burrito. He hesitated for a moment. “There’s a pretty good reason why they are. It’s second semester, and now there’s a new professor after what happened.”
I had gotten that sense from the looks that everybody had given me – students and fellow professors alike. Some of them were curious. Many of them were distrustful, such as the other professors who hadn’t even formally introduced themselves to me.
“What did happen?” I asked, food forgotten despite my growling stomach.
“It’s a long story, but I’ll make it short,” Kale said. “I’ve been here for six years. I can’t tell how many changes the dean has done to this school in hopes to get things under control. There is so much talent untapped in some of these female students. I’ll be honest with you, man, it’s hard to look away sometimes.”
A grin tugged at my lips at that honest confession. “I think a majority of them are untapped, anyway,” he continued. “The guy teaching your class before you came here was pretty young and laid back, but he couldn’t handle certain temptations, if you know what I mean.”
I knew what he meant. It took a lot of self-control to fight away that temptation all the time. Especially with Iris Paige in my class. I shook that thought away quickly.
“He took a sip from the unholy grail?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
Kale gave a sharp nod. “Yup,” he said. “Took way too many sips from just one unholy grail last semester. Miles fired him the second he found out and expelled the student, too. No questions even asked – just assumption and rumor.”
“And, I get the feeling this happened a few times before that,” I stated, rubbing the back of my neck with a sigh.
“That’s why everyone is staring at you,” Kale said. “Your position is cursed, to be honest. It’s been filled several times because of the same reason. I keep telling Miles to not hire such damn good-looking men who can’t control themselves. No offense, dude.”
I held up a hand. “None taken. I appreciate you saying something about it. I was starting to get a bit annoyed with all this staring at me like I’m about to be dissected.”
“Well, you are being dissected by everybody around you. Just do yourself a favor and keep your head above water.” Kale paused for a moment. “I know about Jack Miller, by the way. I was trying to get at that the other day.”
I stiffened in surprise to hear that name. I looked up at Kale to see him staring at me with a small smile.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Not that hard to figure out pen names and who the real author is,” he responded, shrugging his shoulders casually. “I’m assuming you’re writing under a pen name for a specific reason, so I never said anything, and won’t, either. I thought maybe Miles had hired you for that reason, but I’m sure he’s just a fan of your rugby days.”
“Thank you,” I said, sighing in relief. “He knows, but I don’t think he’s given it much thought. I don’t want any of that coming out here, given what has happened before me coming to teach.”
“Wouldn’t be a good idea,” Kale agreed, taking a large bite of his breakfast burrito. “So, how does a rugby player become a popular erotic novelist?”
I laughed slightly because it did sound absurd out loud. Even my own father had scratched his head in confusion at it. He always knew that I loved books and to write, but he’d never encouraged me to pursue it. It was always sports that he pushed me into because reading and writing was something that my mother would encourage me to do.
I still had a suspicion that pushing me into rugby was my father’s way of stepping over my mother before she could encourage me to do something else. Their relationship was a constant power struggle, and I ended up in the middle of it all the time.
“I just love to write,” I said, shrugging. “I figured out my freshman year of college that I really loved to write, but I ended up dropping classes to do business and rugby. Everything else took off from there in that department, and I let it go until a year ago when I published my book.”
“Well, it’s good. You’re a sharp writer. Not my taste of fiction, but I was curious to see where my fellow professor’s talents were at.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’d be surprised to know how much people respond to erotic fiction.”
“And by people, you mean bored housewives wanting a thrill from their usual day-to-day routines,” Kale said, grinning. “I get it, though. Whatever gets your sales going.”
“What about you?” I asked, taking a bite of a sandwich. “Any published works?”
Kale nodded. “Just poetry,” he said. “A few volumes, but nothing to pay my bills with. It was more for personal pleasure and pride.”
“I understand that completely.”
We finished eating thirty minutes later. Kale waved goodbye to me before heading in the direction of his next class on the other side of campus. I walked back in the direction of the English Department for my next round of freshman students with his words echoing in my head.
I couldn’t shake the strange feeling coiling in my stomach. I was no different than the other professors before me. I’d fallen into temptation far too many times than I’d like to admit to myself.
My right knee ached as it always did whenever it was cold outside when I climbed the concrete steps to the building. A year out from my second ACL tear, my knee never felt right, and it wouldn’t again, according to the doctors.
That was why I had picked up writing again after reading an article on the internet about tapping into a fiction goldmine: erotic fiction. I had earned enough money to go back to school, earn my teaching and English degrees, and then move to Provo.
I needed the extra cash to keep it going forward though. I had blown my money away on women, and the last thing I would ever do was call up my father for a loan. Fuck that. I’d rather live in a cardboard box struggling to make ends meet than hear that bullshit about being responsible and settling down.
My father knew nothing about being responsible. He knew about settling down, but nothing about staying committed. To be fair, neither did my mother. She was just as bad, and their divorce a few years ago didn’t even surprise me. I felt nothing about it.
I blinked away those thoughts when I reached the classroom to find students already seated in their desks. I had other things to concentrate on now. Nobody here on campus was worth losing a good job.
Not even women like Iris Paige, despite how damn attractive and intelligent she appeared to be.