Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle) Read Online Free PDF

about that right now, do you?”
    And bizarrely, he was right.
    I stood, pushing the leather chair back slightly as I rose.
    I glanced at the closed door—not even locked—and then looked back into Dr. Giacomo’s unrelenting eyes, locked with mine.
    Was I really going to do this? It didn’t make any sense.
    “Are you sure?” I asked, my voice somehow fragile.
    “Yes,” he said.
    I bit the inside of my lip, hesitating for just a moment. Then I reached down, gripped the bottom seam of my shirt, and pulled it over my head.
    My heart raced. I stood in my jeans and bra in my professor’s office, and I knew I wasn’t going to stop there. I’d already crossed the line. No point in stopping now.
    Giacomo said nothing. His eyes didn’t change.
    This was so foreign. So beyond my realm of usual experience. I felt myself moving on with dream-like inevitability.
    I dropped my shirt on the billiard-green carpet and kicked off my shoes. I pulled my socks off with my toes, which was a trick I’d perfected since high school. Then I unclipped my bra, freeing my breasts. My nipples stood out, already hard as the cool office air spread goosebumps across my body.
    Still, Giacomo’s expression stayed the same. He rocked back in his chair a bit and motioned toward my jeans with his pen.
    I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but part of that incredulity made pushing forward even easier. Because my own disbelief felt forced. Like disbelief was something I knew I was supposed to feel, something that I should feel, but it didn’t have an ounce of truth to it. I wanted this. I wasn’t under any kind of sway, no hypnotic spell from those crazy deep eyes of his. It seemed as though he’d somehow tapped into the exact thing that I’d been wanting to do ever since I stepped into that office—read it in my eyes, perhaps—but the idea had been too unthinkable for me to even properly consider it. I was acting out one of Ashley’s inconceivable fantasies. This was something she would joke about doing, and here I was doing it for real.
    M y heart pounded and breath slipped in and out of my lungs in shallow slivers. I unbuttoned my jeans and slid them down my legs. Then I stepped free of them and kicked them aside.
    I wore only pale green boy shorts now, which were Jeffery’s favorite . My stomach muscles tightened in self-conscious nervousness, but Giacomo’s eyes weren’t judging. Appraising maybe, but they hardly flickered from my own. I found it hard to look away.
    “And…” he said, prompting.
    I tightened my jaw and glanced at the door again. My thumbs slipped under the elastic band and hesitated.
    Giacomo raised his eyebrows expectantly.
    I slipped the boy shorts down, and then it was just me and Giacomo. I felt like I was holding my eyes too wide, and my skin felt tingly and alive. I had never felt so extremely naked in my entire life.
    He stood, and I watched him walk around the desk to meet me, his stride smooth and confident. I stepped the last few feet to him, and my breath came quick and desperate. I stood in his shadow.
    He wrapped his hands around the small of my back, his fingers warm. He pulled me close against his jacket, into the heart of his whisky-leather scent. He tipped my chin up with a finger, and my timid mouth found his bold and confident.
    The kiss passed through me like electricity, and I gave myself over to it.
    When we separated, his voice was soft and low. “Lie down,” he said, motioning toward the couch. “Face up”
    I left my clothes on the floor and crossed the room completely naked. I didn’t feel brazen. I felt… almost panicked. Not that I’d get caught, mind you—although that fear rattled around somewhere in the back of my head. Rather, I had started wanting many things, and I worried they wouldn’t come to fruition. I could taste him on my lips.
    He caught me and lowered me to the couch, his mouth never left mine even as I lay all the way down, the back of my head against the armrest.