Monday morning, I walk into work feeling fucking phenomenal, despite having logged less than an hour of sleep the night before. I hadn’t been upset by the traffic jam on the interstate that had made my drive back to Marysville a six-hour ordeal, because my mind was alight in ideas. I’d gotten home and immediately set back to work, ironing out the entire plot for my novel and knowing exactly what I needed to get done. I’d written into the night, my fingers moving so fast that I’m surprised I didn’t set the keyboard on fire.

Then I step into Dean Armstrong’s office.

Her face is grave. She removes her glasses and lets them hang on the chain around her neck, then lifts her tiny body up from behind the enormous desk and studies the array of old leather-bound books on the shelf behind her. Then she turns to me. “What do you think you’re playing at, Hill?”

I cross my arms and look at crest on the wall across from her. The words embossed on the ribbon underneath the seal say Diligentia, Fidelitas, Integritas. Diligence, Loyalty, Integrity. “If the administration of this school takes issue with my grading system,” I say, pointing at the crest, “At least one of those is definitely lacking here.”

She doesn’t take her cold steel eyes from mine. “Don’t,” she warns, pressing her knuckles against the desk and leaning over the blotter. “Hill, you were given every opportunity to diffuse this situation. And yet you decided to escalate.”

I notice she’s dropped the “Doctor” from my address, a slight but obvious threat. “It was not my choice to escalate. I simply refuse to lie,” I explain calmly. “There is a difference, one that most places of employment would appreciate.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not lying,” she sighs. “If you gave her another chance to complete the assignment—“

“These are young adults, Dean Armstrong,” I counter. “They’re not children. I don’t hand-hold in my class, and I pride myself on grading my students as fairly as possible.”

She clamps her mouth shut. Then she writes something on the pad in front of her. “All right, so be it,” she mutters, not looking up at me. “We’ll be scheduling a meeting with all parties involved sometime in the near future.”

I nod. “I welcome it.”

I throw my jacket over my arm, grab my briefcase, and stride out of the room. It’s only when I’m back at Miller Hall that I’ve fully processed the situation. By then, I’m full of rage and indignation. It’s not that I care so much about the job. No, what I want to do is punish this woman, Addison’s mother, and clearly, fucking her daughter wasn’t enough. Because Addison’s right. Someone needs to stand up to her, to punish her for thinking she can raise a hand to her daughter.

Addison is particularly gorgeous this afternoon, wearing a short flowered skirt despite the crisp fall weather that fell in our laps, seemingly overnight. She crosses her bare legs seductively as I discuss the particulars of the short story we’re dissecting. All the while I lecture, I imagine my tongue working its way up those milky thighs, parting her legs and delving between her wet folds, eliciting sweet little cries of pleasure from her.

When class ends, she – thank God—takes her time packing her books into her backpack. Then she sidles up to my desk and drops something in front of me.

My book.

“It’s amazing,” she breathes. “The best thing I’ve ever read.”

I stiffen. I hold up a hand. “Don’t.”

“I mean it!” she says with a smile.

She thinks I’m being humble, demurring on the compliments, but no. This isn’t about that. This is not what I wanted from her. I shove the pile of papers into my bag.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, finally catching on.

“No.” Layla was the only one I trusted to read and critique my books, back when she still had faith in me. At first, she encouraged me, giving me the idea that maybe my work was worth something. I don’t need a fucking confidante, and I don’t need a muse. I refuse to let any woman mean that much to me, ever again.

Your opinion means nothing to me. I almost say that. But something about her big blue eyes stops me before I can be a total dick. “It’s my editor’s opinion that matters, not yours.”

She blinks. “Oh. Well. I mean, I’m only a C student in creative writing,” she teases.

“Not currently.” I pull out her latest work. I’d asked the students to write page 183 from their autobiographies as an exercise.

Her eyes travel to it and widen. “An eighty-nine? You mean, I’m getting better?”

I nod as if I’d been generous. Frankly, she probably deserved a higher grade. She’d shocked me. I’d read the page, something about when she visited her father’s grave for the first time, and my first thought was: I want to read the rest. I want to know all about her. But then I reminded myself that she was no one to me, just a girl I’d schooled in the ways of sex.

She claps her hands excitedly. “That’s almost like an A, since you don’t give A’s.”

“You have to really work hard for that,” I mutter.

“I wish you would work me hard right now,” she says with a soft lilt in her voice, and leans in so that I can smell those strawberries. “How was the meeting with the dean?”

“Your mother’s out for my balls,” I answer, handing the paper to her. “I just have to wait for the meeting to find out when the ax will fall.”

She gnaws on her lip. “You look tense. I feel bad. It’s all my fault.” She glances over her shoulder at the door. Then she reaches for my hand and guides it under her skirt. She’s not wearing panties. Instantly, I’m hard.

“Not here. My office,” I murmur, guiding her out the door, with my hand a steady presence at her back. We climb down the stairs to the basement, passing students and professors on the way. All the while I’m blathering about mythic structure, repeating almost verbatim my earlier lecture, just to give everyone in the hallway the impression that we’re not lovers.

But the moment we step inside the cramped office and the door clicks closed, I press her up against the door and crush my mouth onto hers. I lift her sweater to her chin and stroke my hands over her ribcage, molding her tits as she works my belt and zipper.

It’s a frenzy of fumbling, too many clothes in the way, the need too intense. Breath and heartbeat and urgency. In seconds my cock springs free, and she wraps her legs tight around my hips, tilting her pelvis in to me urging me closer. I push inside her, knocking her back against the door, and then I finally have what I need, my cock buried deep inside her. But I need more. I start to thrust as she claws my back.

The door is shaking so much that I can only imagine what anyone who passes by must think. “Hold on,” I tell her, lifting her and guiding her to the desk. She goes along with me, ever the eager student, as I instruct her to bend forward, pinning my thighs against hers. I lift her skirt and sink my cock deep into her.

“Oh,” she murmurs, grabbing onto the desk for dear life as I pull out and thrust again. “Harder Cain. As hard as you can.”

She’s fucked a handful of times, and she’s already commanding me. I give her what she wants, yanking on her schoolgirl ponytail, my thighs hitting the desk with each movement, until it is flush against the cinderblock wall opposite. She moans my name and I can feel her come, feel her insides constrict and shudder, so I finally let myself go and come into her, my body spasming as she gasps.

I pull slowly out of her, returning her skirt to the proper position, and rolling her over and helping clean her up. She’s sitting on the edge of my desk, legs spread, blouse askew, her breasts still visible through the open buttons, a post-fucking pink glow on her cheeks. Finally, this sorry excuse for an office looks good.

“So you’re not just going soft because of my mother?” she asks unsurely. “You really thought my paper was good?”

“Passable,” I say as I tuck my shirt into my trousers. I eye her bare breasts lasciviously. “And how could I possibly go soft on you?”

She wrinkles her nose. “I thought I might do better at the fiction part of it,” she explains. “My father was a novelist, after all.”

In the heat of the moment, I’d dropped my briefcase on the ground, spilling its contents. I lean over to scoop the assignments up and start stuffing them back. “You said he was a writer. So he wrote books?”

She nods solemnly. “One, actually, before he died. But it was literary. Small press. It won an award, though.”

“Oh yeah? I happen to travel in literary circles from time to time,” I say with a smirk. “What award?”

“The Steinbeck Prize,” she says, like it’s nothing. When I look up at her to see if she’s joking, she says, “The book was called Times of the Tides. Have you heard of it?”

I sit back so fast that I fall onto my ass with a thud. The book hadn’t made bestseller lists, but I’d read it in college, and I can still remember the way it’d changed me. It was the first book that made me see that writing was more than words on the paper—it was transformative, the model for everything I wrote. “Wait.” I stop, then open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

Dazed, I remember going into the college bookstore, wanting anything else this man had written. The woman there told me he’d committed suicide, right before the book had been published. The Steinbeck prize he’d received had been awarded posthumously. I think of Addison’s autobiography page of visiting her father’s grave.

She’s looking at me, vaguely concerned, so I jump to standing and smooth my pants. I can hardly believe it, even as I say the words, “Is your father Hayden Eco?”

She nods. “So you have heard of him?”

Holy fuck. I run a hand through my hair. Her expression transforms and now she looks as if she’s contemplating my mental health, so I explain. “You could say that. He’s the reason I’m a writer, actually.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“Well, yes. Have you read it? It’s utter brilliance.”

She shakes her head, tossing her blonde ponytail from side to side in a way that makes her look younger. “There hasn’t been much room in my house for literature since my father left.”

I stare at her, incredulous. Then I remember just who her mother is, and it makes sense. Her mother calls the shots, and knowing the way she felt about creative writing, it’s clear why she doesn’t have a copy of Eco’s book in the house. Their relationship couldn’t have been an easy one. If gentle, sweet Addison, couldn’t escape that woman unscathed, then I doubt anyone could.

When she jumps up from the edge of the desk and checks her phone, a worried look on her face, I know she’s thinking of her, too. “I’ve got to go,” she says with a smile, hoisting her backpack onto her shoulders.

“Wait,” I say, cornering her. I come up close to her, and damned if my cock doesn’t respond, wanting her again. With her, once is never enough. And she’s . . . fucking Hayden Eco’s daughter. “You said my book was good?”

She bursts out laughing. “Oh, so the literary opinion of Addison McBride means nothing, but the literary opinion of the daughter of Hayden Eco means something?”

I scoff. Then I realize that, yes. That’s exactly why I was asking her. It makes no difference, and yet it does. Everything I find out about her only makes me want to know more, to get closer. And I need to stop it, the way I stop it with other women. I need to stop before she’s entwined her web around me and I can’t escape.

But why the fuck is it so hard, with her? Maybe because she’s pulling every chord inside me expertly, as if she knows exactly which one will leave the biggest impression. Or maybe this is what is called fate, serendipity, things aligning so perfectly, pointing me in the exact direction I need to take. She’s looking at me with those wide, puppy-dog eyes, and damned if I don’t want to fuck her again, to take her home to my apartment and spend all night there.

Instead, I settle for the next best thing. “Friday night? Same time and place?”

Her top button is still undone, something I know her mother wouldn’t approve of. I reach over and button it.

She nods. “Same time and place.”