Chapter Three
Zach
The morning sun did nothing to erase my impure thoughts of Poppy. The entire drive to campus that morning I couldn’t stop my mind from replaying thoughts of meeting her at the party over the weekend. The way she’d taken charge, practically telling me I was going to be her pretend boyfriend, rather than asking if I could. It had been rather cute, and now, even without hardly knowing anything about her, I was somehow already smitten by the mysterious girl with her dark hair and serious eyes.
I'd hardly recovered from my last relationship and now here I was pining over someone who I'd probably never see again. This was a university of ten-thousand students. We never got around to discussing her program of study before I catapulted myself headfirst into lust with that kiss. The odds were not in our favor. And, yeah, she was a student, so I probably shouldn’t have used her as spank-bank material all weekend, but I had.
Fucking sue me.
She was gorgeous. Petite and nervous and lovely. Men had written sonnets about women less striking.
I spent the whole weekend trying to write with a head full of her, and a serious hard on.
But today was the first day of classes, which meant my morning would be occupied by meetings with each of the new graduate students, so there would be little time for impure thoughts. Back to business, as it were.
When I got to my office, I immediately closed the door, as if someone would see it in my eyes that my mind was on anything but my morning meetings.
Fucking pull it together, Zach.
Apparently, my mom had been right. But it wasn’t my aura that was out of whack, it was an appendage much farther south. Too bad there was no time to beat it into shape. No pun intended. I’d never had a single kiss fuck with my head so badly before.
And I wasn’t sure what I expected from Poppy when she approached, but from the first moment she opened her mouth and spoke, I knew she was different.
Her voice wasn't high-pitched or girly, even though her frame was petite and delicate. Instead, her tone was deeper than I expected, almost raspy and seductive. I liked it immediately. I could have listened to her talk for hours — listened to her recite Tolstoy, or the fucking alphabet, for that matter. I just wanted to be near her.
I hadn't wanted to go out that night at all—especially not to some ridiculous keg-party where I was babysitting my friend's kid brother—but everything changed the moment Poppy walked up to me with her interesting proposal. And of course, I was all too happy to play along.
She was easy to talk to—we chatted about wide ranging topics from Darwinism to our favorite authors, both agreeing that the concept of having an actual favorite book was the most absurd idea we'd ever heard. Her eyes lit up when she spoke, her lips twitching when she got excited—she was mesmerizing.
A smile played on my own lips, remembering how she admitted that she liked to write young adult vampire romance, and then threatened me within an inch of my life if I ever told anyone that. I’d felt inspired enough to admit my early, atrocious attempts at writing bad sci-fi when I was still in high school. Poppy had laughed, her eyes sparkling on mine.
A knock on the door interrupted my memory. I glanced at my watch—8:50. Shit. I wasn’t sure if I was impressed or annoyed at the early arrival. I could’ve used that extra ten minutes to prepare for the meeting, or at the very least, take a mental cold shower by going over my plans for the day. I reached for the stack of papers that was already accumulating on my desk—who was this student again? A poet in the master’s program that I’d be advising. I hadn’t even taken the time to review the file. Whatever. It’d be fine. I stepped out from behind my desk and swung the door open.
“Good morning …” my words died on my lips.
It was Poppy.
Heat prickled down my spine—a mix between lust and fear. I wanted her, yes. But could I really remain objective and professional working alongside her? Did I even want to try?
Her honey brown eyes locked with mine the same way they had at the party, but this time, instead of watching them flicker in interest, I saw them widen with surprise. The color drained from her cheeks as I let myself give her a quick once-over—she was dressed more casually than she’d been on Friday night in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and she wore a hint of pink lip-gloss that I couldn’t help but imagine smeared all over my cock.
Jesus, Zach. There goes my mental cold shower right out the window.
“Poppy.” Her name on my lips was a soft murmur. I cleared my throat to start again. “You said we’d met again.” If it was meant to be … I didn’t add that last part, as I was pretty sure those words were coming back to bite her in the ass.
She blinked at me, the apples of her cheeks now a pretty shade that nearly matched her lips. And those lips… Christ. They were now parted as she drew a slow, shaky inhale.
“Come inside?”
She stood rooted in place. “This has to be some mistake.”
“Poppy Ellis, poetry grad student,” I read aloud from the folder I realized was still in my hands. “Welcome to the program. I’ll be your adviser.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat, Poppy gave a slow, solemn nod and followed me through the office door.
“Have a seat.”
She obeyed, hesitantly lowering herself into the chair in front of my desk while I took the one behind it. “’I’m sorry, but there’s got to be someone else I can work with.” Her eyes darted around my office, refusing to settle back on me. I waited patiently until they locked with mine again. Electric. She immediately looked back down at her hands.
She was perfection. Those soft waves of hair and honey-colored eyes. I wanted to drink her in. Instead, I focused on doing something useful—rolling up the sleeves of my dress shirt—since the room had suddenly become about ten degrees too warm.
I couldn’t help but notice the way her eyes clung to my forearms, or the ink that decorated them. Various quotes, short poems I’d written, my favorite philosophers’ prose scrawled in Latin. My tattoos were very personal to me that way, and suddenly I was regretting exposing so much of myself. I was the kind of man who needed to touch something in order to understand it, but rather than running my fingertips over the words, letting them ground me, I wanted to touch the young woman seated before me in a desperate attempt to understand her.
Of course, physical contact with students was not on the agenda, so I did the next best thing in an attempt to make myself useful. I thumbed through her file. She had already won several awards for her poetry, and a few of her pieces had been picked up by some prominent literary magazines. In that instant I knew it had to be me—the other advisor for her program hated poetry and he was a grade-A asshole. I tried to tell myself it had nothing to do with feeling possessive over her—though the idea of someone else mentoring her made me want to put my fist through a wall.
Decision made, I composed myself. “You’re a pretty impressive poet, Poppy, and I’m the most published poetry advisor on staff.” I let her file fall closed as I met her gaze again. “Seems like you and I are a perfect fit.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and shook her head. “I just don’t know. I mean, how are we supposed to work together after I practically begged you to be my fake boyfriend for a night, and then, well, you know.”
No way was she going to get away with not saying it out loud.
“Know what?”
She rolled her eyes. “The kiss, Zach.”
“It was a kiss,” I said, totally downplaying how I felt about said kiss. I could write an entire novel about that kiss. “And it’s not like it took much convincing to play along to make your ex jealous. You’re gorgeous, Poppy. But still, it was just a kiss. I’m not going to let it get in the way of us working together.”
She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. “Alright,” she said. “I guess we can give it a shot.”
This time, when I stuck out my hand, she shook it. I pretended not to feel goose bumps racing up my arm.
“Well, now that that’s settled, could I convince you to take this discussion somewhere I can grab a cup of coffee? The cup I had earlier isn’t cutting it today.”
Poppy had already grabbed her purse before I could even finish my sentence. “I’m dying for coffee,” she admitted. “I can’t stand Mondays and I might go postal if I don’t get some caffeine in my system.”
“Coffee it is,” I said, escorting her from my office. We settled on a coffee shop just a short walk away on campus.
“Drink’s on me,” I said, motioning for her to grab a seat.
“You don’t have to do that.”
I shrugged. “Consider it a welcome to the program. What would you like?”
She furrowed her brow but didn’t fight me on it. “Just coffee please. Black.”
I ordered us each a large mug of coffee and stuffed a ten-dollar tip in the jar for good karma. Poppy had already settled in at a small table in the far back of the shop. I joined her, sliding her mug across the table. “Is this big enough to get you through a Monday?”
She smiled. “Maybe after the second or third refill. Thanks.”
I nodded toward the notebook she still had pressed against her chest. “Anything good in there?”
She blushed, setting the notebook on the table and opening it to a list of goals for the year. Not quite the poems I was hoping for, but instead everything she was looking to accomplish this year at Vanderburg. Ah, so she was one of those people. A list maker. I preferred to let things ride and see where I ended up, believing that the journey was just as good as the destination. But I enjoyed listening to her talk, enjoyed the self-conscious way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way she led the conversation, and especially the way her neck and chest grew splotchy with pink flushes of color the few times she was bold enough to meet my watchful gaze.
Still, I hungered to see her poetry. To see her words on the page, bold and exposing as I knew they would be. I was dying to know what she wrote about. Something mundane like the changing fall leaves, or something serious like her relationship with her father, or something romantic like falling in love. I wondered if after her breakup, did her writing turn dark and morose, speaking from a place of a broken heart.
What little I knew about her, Poppy was a serious girl, but I wanted to know if she had a softer, more romantic side too. A reckless side. Shit, I didn’t know what it was about this girl, but I wanted to know about each and every one of her sides, examine them in the moonlight. Study them in the morning dawn while she stirred awake next to me.
Once she was finished reading over everything she was looking to get out of the program, she talked about her past work, and her publishing goals. I caught about every third or fourth word, and more than anything else I was intent on that pink lip-gloss and the thoughts of her waking in my bed with that mouth forming the sounds of pleasure as she came. So much for keeping work life and personal life separate but I was unable to stop myself.
“Right?” she said, blowing softly into her mug of coffee before taking a sip.
Shit. I had stopped listening. “Sorry, what was that?”
“I said that I promise I’ll stay professional about this,” she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. “You said you would, too, right?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I said that I wouldn’t let what happened Friday night get in the way of us working together. I’ll help you achieve your goals in any way I can, but I didn’t say anything about staying professional. We’re two grown adults, Poppy.”
She looked at me with curiosity. “How old are you by the way?”
“Twenty-nine. I’ll be thirty in March.” As my mother kept reminding me.
“You don’t look it.”
I nodded. “I’ve been told that a lot.”
“So, no wife and kids for you?”
I got the sense that she expected me to say no, either that I wasn’t ready, or I wasn’t interested. But neither of those things were true.
“Not yet. But hopefully someday soon. What about you? How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” she said softly, still watching me.
I nodded. Plenty old enough to know what she was doing. “As I said, we’re two grown adults. With an assload of sexual tension.”
“An assload?” She rolled her eyes.
“I believe that’s the technical term, yes.”
Her eyebrows darted up in surprise.
I had a feeling I would enjoy working with Poppy much more than was appropriate.