her now with her guilty longings? She stared at him, feeling the chaotic churn of desire raging just below her surface calm.
He was dressed in faded Levis and an unbuttoned shirt over a navy singlet of the same blue as the briefs she'd seen him in that night - briefs that had strained to confine his erection. Unconsciously, her gaze drifted to his crotch as that scene replayed itself in her mind. She remembered his tight abdominal muscles, the large tentative hand...
"Dr Williams?"
Her attention shot back up to his face, her heart hammering inside her chest. "Come in." The words came out as a croak. She coughed and tried again. "Come in. Sit." She gestured to a chair in front of her desk.
She needed to focus. He had come with a problem. She would listen and deal with it, then after he'd gone she could fall apart if she had to. But not before. There was no need to feel panicked. Nothing could happen in an office in broad daylight.
But she hadn't expected him to close the door behind himself. He was big, at least six foot two, and as he stepped across to the desk she felt cornered, swamped by the awesome sexual pull of his body. Intellectually, she knew he couldn't be this attractive to all women, and a month ago she'd have said he was a nice looking boy. Yet now, inexplicably, he'd become a fatally attractive man. It was psychological, she was sure, but she could think of no way to negate it.
He sat across from her, looking vaguely nervous and Dee knew she should say something, but all she could manage was a tight swallow. His yellow blond hair, combed back from his forehead, was damp, and the clean smell of him enveloped her. To make matters worse, his billowing shirt had given her a good view of his magnificent chest beneath the thin cotton singlet. Up close he was devastating, and she had a flicker of imagining herself leaning across the table to get at him. Then she cleared her throat. The best thing to do was to get it over with as quickly as possible.
"You've got a problem, Billy?" she asked, in as professional a voice as she could muster.
He looked surprised, then smiled shyly. "You know my name."
Idiot , she castigated herself as she scrabbled for an excuse. "I'm training my memory. I've memorised all my students names," she lied, then was furious at how devastated she felt when the glow faded from his eyes. "The problem?" She only just stopped herself adding Billy . Damn, she wanted to say his name over and over. She wanted to hear him say her name. What was wrong with her?
"Yeah." He looked down at his large hands clasped together on the desk. Dee looked at them too, wondering if they were soft and sensitive, or callused from years of farm labour. "I can't seem to concentrate on the work," he said softly and Dee felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Dear heaven, what was he going to say?
"It's too hard?" She couldn't stop staring at his hands, wanting to touch them. Wanting it so badly her own hands trembled until she clenched them into fists.
"Actually..." He glanced up at her from beneath his lashes. "It's... the math."
That wasn't what he'd intended to say.
"But you're brilliant at math, Billy," she said without thinking. "Your assignments are perfect."
"How could you know that?" He was looking at her as though she'd just given him the most precious gift and Dee found herself slipping. He was so young, so keen... and she was so stupid . Now he'd think she was interested in him, which of course she was or she wouldn't have looked up his old reports. She have to bluff her way out of it.
"It's my job to keep track of my students’ progress," she said, then added gently, "It's not the math, Billy."
"No." He glanced out the window behind her, biting his lip in a way that made her stomach twist. "I
Under the Cover of the Moon (Cobblestone)