Slow Burn

I sigh as I pull open the door, wanting to melt into the cool air-conditioning of the Fine Arts offices. The southern California heat mixed with the second week of school has really done a number on me. I’m tired from a late night hanging out with Layla—my fault but still aggravating nonetheless—and having to deal with some dipshit undergrads in my teaching assistant session I just came from isn’t helping matters.

I don’t mind if a student doesn’t get something. I have no problem helping them so that they do. But when the students are too busy chasing skirts and worrying about who the Trojans take on this weekend to listen, it’s not my problem they received bad marks on their first pop quiz.

And it’s not helping my mood that I need to get laid something fierce. There’s nothing worse than a woman in need of a good orgasm.

Or two.

Or three.

I drop my backpack on the counter with a shake of my head and a mental note to rectify the situation with the first willing candidate who meets my discriminating standards. Then again I’m on the verge of being desperate enough, I might throw them out the window for the right mistake.

I start rifling through the bazillion pieces of paper stuffed in my mailbox—such is the life of a graduate student in the Cinematic Arts. Shit, save a tree people. Use e-mail. I start filtering through them, tossing almost all of them into the recycle bin. I automatically toss the ones about elective seminars without even reading them because at the beginning of a semester the last thing I have time for is something that does nothing to further help me write my thesis.

“Quinlan! Just the person I wanted to see!”

As I turn around to face my graduate adviser, the smile comes naturally to my face since I’m one of the select few fortunate enough to be under her tutelage. “Hi, Dr. Stevens.” She gives me a stern look, which causes me to laugh at the formality of my greeting, so I cave to her oft-repeated request and correct myself. “Hi, Carla.”

“Better.” She laughs the word out. “Now I’m not looking for my husband when you say that,” she says, referring to her spouse, who is a cardiologist.

I nod my head in agreement. “Why do I have the feeling that I’m not going to like the fact that you wanted to see me?”

Please, God, don’t let her ask me to add something else to my already overflowing plate of obligations, deadlines, and drafts I need to write.

“I’m kind of in a jam and I need your help.” She scrunches up her nose like she knows I’m not going to be too happy with what she’s going to say next. “Like, ‘I’ll give you a three-week extension on your first draft due date’ kind of help.”

I worry my bottom lip between my teeth and know that no matter what she asks, I’ll say yes. She’s my mentor, for God’s sake. Anything not to disappoint her. “Okay?” I draw the word out into a question, fearful and curious all at the same time.

“Well, Dr. Elliot has a seminar under his department that is starting …” She looks down at her watch and winces. “Well, it started about five minutes ago, actually. Anyway, he’s asked if I can help him. His TA, Cali, was supposed to do it, but she had a last-minute schedule change to accommodate one of her professors … and all of his other teaching assistants have classes right now….”

I bite back the urge to make a smart-ass comment about how Cali’s conflict is the need to flirt ridiculously with the professor she has the hots for, university protocol be damned. Instead I look at Carla and blow out an audible breath, sure that my expression reflects my displeasure.

I’m usually on top of all of the department’s goings-on, but my last-minute trip to the Sonoma race to watch Colton mixed with playing bestie to Layla’s unexpected breakup and the usual first-month-of-school discord has left me in the dark about course specifics. It had better be a damn good class if I’m going to have to be stuck sitting through it.

“You know I’m agreeing to this because I’m already behind on my draft and need those weeks, right?”

“Exactly!” She smirks. “I don’t have that PhD behind my name because I’m unintelligent.”

“That’s low.” I just shake my head and smirk as I reach over to grab my bag. “So give me the details.”

“You’re a lifesaver!” She reaches out and pats my shoulder before handing me a folder full of papers. “So the seminar is on sex, drugs, and rock and roll, in a manner of speaking.” She quirks her eyebrows up, eyes asking if I’m okay with that.

Like I have a choice. I can just imagine some stiff professor giving a seminar about something so completely foreign to him. Now I’m going to have to waste my time mollycoddling someone when I have so many other things that would be a better use of my time. Sounds like a real barn burner.

“Who’s teaching it?” I ask, my tone reflecting the cynicism I feel over the contradiction between teacher and subject.

“A guest lecturer. I forget his name, but he’s a big deal in rock and roll.” She rolls her eyes. Her musical taste includes only classical music and jazz. “Oh and he’s cute,” she says with a smile, and then she cuts me off before I can ask her any more details. “Now, shoo. He’s probably mangling the sound system as we speak. Microphone on upside down or something. Class is in the GFA building, room sixty-nine.”

Mentally I roll my eyes at the room number, thinking how something else that number represents is a much better way to occupy my time than listening to a monotone oration.

I shake my head one more time and sling my bag over my shoulder. “Thank you, Quinlan,” she says in a saccharine-sweet tone that makes me laugh.

“Just so you know, I’m cursing you right now,” I say over my shoulder as I open the door and begin the journey across campus.

I’m winded, hotter than hell, and cussing out Carla even more by the time I reach the closed door of the lecture hall. I pull open the door and step into the mini-reception-type area. The doors to the actual theater of seating are open, so I hear laughter from the students inside when I walk in.

Two coeds exit the bathroom on the other side of the atrium, both way overdressed for students attending a lecture, and one is applying lipstick while the other is giggling uncontrollably. They walk past me, and I hear hushed comments about how they “just had to see for themselves” if he’s as hot in person and “damn security for kicking them out” before they push through the doors I’ve just entered

My curiosity is now definitely piqued. Who the hell is the guest lecturer if there is security here?

Maybe it’s one of Dad’s friends. Stranger things have happened.

“So you see, it was the Grammys…. It’s not like you can say no to him when he just won album of the year and asks you to hang out. Little did I know,” the male voice says in a low tenor that’s almost a contradiction: smooth like velvet but with a rasp that pulls at my libido and makes me think of bedroom murmurs and hot sex, “that I’d go with him and walk into a private club where everything is laid out like candy—drugs, women, record producers. He turned and looked at me and said, ‘Welcome to Hollywood, son.’ Shit, I looked at Vince here and thought, Is this what I have to do to make it here? Play this game. Or can I do this the old-fashioned way? And I don’t mean sleep my way to the top, either.”

The room erupts into laughter with a few whistles as I clear the doorway. I recognize him immediately. He may be on the stage at a distance, but his face, his presence, is unmistakable. I’ve seen it gracing tabloids, TMZ, Rolling Stone—you name it, and he’s been on it.

He’s Hawkin Play, front man and lead singer of the highly popular rock band Bent.

And according to his most recent press, a man on a path to drug-fueled destruction. So that exaggeration most likely means he was caught in possession of some drugs.

Why in the hell is he here, then?

I walk farther into the auditorium and falter at the top of the steps because just as my ears are attuned to his voice, my body reacts immediately to the overpowering sight of him.

And I sure as hell don’t want it to.

I tell myself it’s just because I need some action. That my battery-operated boyfriend is getting old and the visceral reaction of my racing pulse or the catch in my breath is just from my dry spell. Well, not really a complete dry spell, per se, but rather a lack of toe-curling, mind-numbing, knock-you-on-your-ass sex, which I’m not able to find lately.

Don’t even think about it. He may be hot, but shit, I grew up with Colton, the ultimate player, so this girl knows what a player sounds and acts like. And from everything I’ve seen splashed across headlines and social media, Hawkin plays the part to perfection.

But the notion that just like the drug rumors blasted across the magazines, him seeming like a player could be manufactured just as easily lingers in my subconscious. I stare at him again as the class laughs, his ease in front of a large crowd completely obvious, and I immediately wonder if I had a chance with him if I’d take it.

My head says to stop thinking thoughts like that, things that are never going to happen, while my body is telling my legs to open wide.

I force myself away from thinking such ludicrous thoughts and focus instead on finding an open seat in the room packed full of coeds. I begin walking slowly down the aisles, glancing back and forth to try to find an open seat, but there’s not a single one to be found.

I glance forward to see a beefy guy walking toward me with an irritated expression on his face. It immediately hits me that I have nothing to prove I should be in this class, no paper, nothing to show to the security that appears to be bearing down on me that I’m not a fan girl and have a legitimate reason for attending the lecture. Well, maybe they’ll kick me out and then he won’t have a TA for the day.

Just one less class I’ll have to sit through.

He approaches me and reaches out a very muscular arm toward me. “Course paperwork?” he asks in a hushed whisper, trying to not disrupt whatever Mr. Rock Star at the front of the class is babbling on and on about.

I take in a deep breath, trying to figure how I’m going to play this. What I really want to do and what I know is right are two different things, so I suck it up and take the higher road.

Reluctantly.

“I don’t have anything,” I whisper back. “But I’m the TA for the course.”

“Sure you are.” He chuckles with a roll of his eyes. “TA doesn’t stand for ‘tits and ass,’ honey.”

I clench my jaw, reining in my frustration as we begin to draw the attention of those around us. “I just came from the department offices. I don’t have—”

“Is there a problem, Axe?” his liquid sex of a voice booms across the room, causing all of the heads in the room to whip over toward us on the stairway.

Axe, I presume, turns his body to look back at Hawkin, which opens up his line of sight to see me.

“No problem,” Axe says, and before he can say anything else, Hawke speaks again.

“So nice of you to show up on time.” Sarcasm drips from his voice, and my eyes snap up to meet his despite the distance between us.

And I swear I hate everything about myself right now because I feel a jolt to my system and a quick bang of lust between my thighs as our eyes connect, and that slow “I’m a God. You Can Bow Before Me” smile slowly curls up one side of his mouth.

And damn it to hell if that doesn’t make him look even sexier.

But good looks sure as hell don’t make him any less of an asshole.

My own lips pull into a tight, scowling grimace, thoughts firing, but the damn words don’t come because I’m still momentarily frozen by whatever just ricocheted between us.

“Well, at least you’re quiet, huh? Not one to disrupt unless you count arguing with Axe on the stairs.”

How did I know he was going to be a prick? “I wasn’t arguing. I’m not a—”

“Look,” he says, cutting me off. “There’s one seat left, and it’s right here.” He points to a front row seat right in front of the lectern when a man hurriedly stands and vacates it. I watch the occupant stroll to the side of the room and turn to lean his back against the wall, arms crossed, grin wide, as all the while he shakes his head at Hawkin like they have a private joke between them.

He seems vaguely familiar but I don’t get a chance to figure it out because Hawkin speaks to me again. “C’mon now. I don’t bite…. Right, guys?” he says to the rest of the lecture hall, and the audience erupts in a cacophony of hoots and hollers, egging me on to go take the seat.

I also hear a few offers from the females that they’ll take the seat if I don’t.

I’m sure they would. Particularly a seat that’s astride his hips if my hunch is right.

“Please, take your time. We like waiting.” His voice floats through the room but grates on my nerves.

I grit my teeth as I move reluctantly, my anger escalating with each step I descend toward the front of the room. As much as I don’t want to be here dealing with the likes of a cocky asshole like him, my graduate career does have requirements, and I really don’t think pissing off what I have a feeling will be one of the most popular lecturers of the year is the brightest idea.

But hell if I don’t want to tell him to kiss my ass with that smart mouth of his while I stride up the steps toward the exit and flip him the bird instead.

But my degree is more important, so I swallow my pride and my anger, even though I’d much rather verbalize it as I reach the front row. I keep my eyes fastened to the honey color of his gaze, refusing to let him think he’s gotten the upper hand, despite me following his directive and taking the seat he so graciously offered.

I reach the seat and stop before I sit down and stand my ground, my eyebrows arched and eyes telling him everything my lips can’t. He meets them challenge for challenge while all the while those lips of his smirk and taunt me.

I force my eyes to remain forward, not to wander and take in the whole of him because I don’t want to see how sexy-hot he is face-to-face; don’t want to notice his cologne, which is a mixture of fresh air and outdoors; don’t want to feel my cheeks flush because I know my nipples just hardened and I’m quite sure they’re more than obvious through the thin layer of my bra’s lace and my T-shirt’s cotton.

After a moment, when I know I have no point I can really make in front of several hundred students, I lower my eyes and take my seat. But instead of continuing on right away, he stands in front of me a few seconds more, making sure I know who has won this ridiculous little show of control between us.

And of course as he stands in front of me with his hips right at my eye level, I can’t help the two thoughts colliding: the one of him being in control with the one of just how well his worn denim jeans are filled out behind that button fly of his.

I immediately chastise myself. Tell myself that it’s my sex-deprived brain—well, more like other deprived body parts—that is directing my thoughts like a nympho’s. And that alone fuels my dislike of Hawkin even more because I should be focused on being pissed off at him rather than wondering about how he performs in other ways … off the stage.