Her Dirty Professor Series (21+)

I throw my arm up to shield my eyes, but as I do, there’s a thud from the front of the vehicle and the front bumper warning sensors go off.

I slam on the brakes as another flash lights up the night. “Fuck!” I bring the huge SUV to a dead stop, peering out my driver’s window into the wet street, straining in the dark and rain to see what I’ve hit. I see a red dress soaked and clinging around a motionless body lying in the street.

I throw open my door, my heart pounding, and a flood of relief rushes through me as she moans, trying to sit up.

“Easy.” I cradle the back of her head and see blood mixing with the rain and making a red rivulet in her blonde hair.

Her red lips open as she tries to breathe through the downpour, eyelids fluttering as she looks up at me.

And suddenly I feel like I’m falling.

Tumbling into the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her bright red lipstick matches her soaking silk dress, which clings to her every curve and shows off hardened nipples under the thin fabric.

“You hit me!” she snaps, blinking away the rain that clings to her dark lashes.

“I didn’t see you.”

She winces and brings her hand to the side of her head, pushing herself up on the pavement with her other arm.

“I’m wearing a red dress,” she hisses, motioning with her hands to her midsection. “How could you not see me?” She smacks my hand from the back of her head. “Stop touching me!”

I feel a loss as she shoves my hand away, and I want to scoop her up to draw her in closer. “I’m sorry. It’s not the greatest weather for seeing things,” I mutter, unused to making excuses or apologizing. “Even beautiful, red things.”

Esme

THERE ARE BAD DAYS.

Then there are bad days.

After everything else going on in my life, I’m now laying in the street, soaking wet, looking up at a man that looks like he could kill me with his pinkie.

Or break my heart with his eyes.

“What are you doing running around out here in the rain, anyway?” he asks, reaching down to slide his hand under my back even after I slapped him away a second ago.

I let it go because… ugh… I kind of want his hands on me.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” I snip, the pressure from the day and the horrific outcome of what I thought could be a saving-grace job bringing out more bitchiness than is my usual. “And you don’t need to know.”

“Okay, then.” His voice is as deep as the thunder rumbling above, and another crash and flash of lightning make me startle and yelp. “I don’t need to know, but I do know we both need to get off this street. Let me get you in the car before we become lightning rods-or we both get run over. You okay to stand?”

He runs his hand down one leg, then the other, making my heart pound. It’s not sexual-his touch feels protective-but it’s having a crazy effect on me nonetheless.

The headlights from his SUV show a face that looks like it’s seen its share of fights, but the ruggedness gives him an edge that is wildly sexy. He’s older, like a lot older, but that, too, is only adding to whatever voodoo he seems to have cast over me. Rain is dripping from thick black hair plastered onto a jutting forehead and running down over lips that were made for kissing.

Even crouched down next to me, he’s enormous. Like, otherworldly enormous. And I wonder if he has to have all his clothes custom made.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, realizing it must just be the bump on my head making me feel weird.

“Yes, I can stand,” I answer, shifting my legs under me and smoothing the wet fabric of my dress down around them, trying to shake away the vulgar porno playing with him as the lead in my head. “They don’t hurt, just scratches.”

That’s a lie because my head is pounding, and my knees are burning from smacking the pavement. Water is running into my eyes and down my face, soaking through the dress and sticking it to my skin. My nipples tingle and harden, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s from the freezing rain or something else.

There’s something about this guy that feels both dangerous and safe at the same time. He looks like he belongs in a boardroom, but the energy around him feels more like The Godfather.

He helps me up, leads me around to the passenger door and lifts me up and inside before jogging around the front of the SUV and hopping in the driver’s side while I fight back more tears.

When I showed up for work yesterday morning at the courthouse, bringing everyone who’s anyone their morning coffee, as usual, I did the best I could to hide my swollen, red eyes. I had spent the night before at the dining room table with my mother at the home where I grew up, two hours away in Greenbriar, going over the mountainous stack of medical bills and other past-due expenses for my father’s now full-time nursing home care.

He broke his back falling off a ladder six months ago. I offered to postpone school and come home and help, but my parents were both adamant that the best thing I could do for them was to stay in school and work my hardest. So that’s what I did in between bus trips home to visit and offer the best support I could.

My parents ran a house painting company their whole lives, but when Dad fell, their medical insurer weaseled out of paying, citing a loophole in their policy that work-related injuries needed to be covered by a separate rider. I didn’t know how serious their financial struggles were until the night before last, when Mom finally told me that, despite fighting, there was no insurance money.

The only saving grace, as I know from a case I worked on, is that as long as we make a payment plan with the doctors, hospital, rehab, etc., we can manage it all. But they still need money every month to make that happen.

Being an intern for the district attorney’s office was what I planned for all year. I saved money from my waitressing job to be sure I could afford a little apartment and my meager expenses for the summer. I got a full-ride academic scholarship to the University of Michigan, so I could save almost everything I made during the school year. Little did I know taking an unpaid internship-emphasis on unpaid-would leave me desperate and wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.

Hence the need to find paid employment that could fit around my work schedule.

Yeah, that didn’t exactly work out as planned.

I glance over now to see the man looking at me. His size is even more evident here inside the vehicle. He takes up the entire space behind the wheel with the seat pushed back as far as possible, and I wonder if I’ve just put myself in another position I will regret.

“Here.” He reaches into the back seat and pulls a suit jacket off a hanger, handing it to me. “Lean forward.”

I’m shivering, so I do as he asks, and his monstrous hands wrap the jacket around me as though I’m as delicate as a rose, then I settle back in the seat, wondering what the hell I’m going to do now.

I reach up and wince as my fingers touch the throbbing knot just above my temple where my head hit the street.

“Thanks,” I mumble, running my hands up and down my arms under the jacket. “I’m fine now. I’ll call an Uber. Or just drop me off somewhere I can go inside. I’ll find my way home.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

“No,” I half shout, then try to control my tone. “I’m fine. It’s a little bump, no hospital.” I shake my head, and it makes me dizzy.

He clears his throat as he puts the oddly quiet SUV into gear and begins to drive forward. His masculine scent is mixed with the unmistakable new-car smell as he turns up the heat, and the warm air blows around my feet.

“You hit your head. You need an X-ray at the very least.”

“Just, I can’t-”

“Can’t what?”

“I’m fine,” I try again, but I can see he’s having none of it, so I decide to try the truth. “I don’t have insurance. I can’t afford a hospital, and I’m really fine.” The pain in my head begs to differ, but having gone through all the bills from my father, I know what one simple emergency room visit is going to cost.

“Don’t worry about that. I hit you. You aren’t responsible for paying. I insist you go, and I’ll take care of any costs.” His tone darkens, and it makes me nervous, but in a way that feels exciting.

I chew on my bottom lip, trying to get a grip on this energy I feel between this stranger and me. For all I know, and with the day I’m having, he’s probably a serial killer.

But somehow, and maybe it’s the bump on my head, I can’t fight this odd attraction I feel toward my soon-to-be murderer.

We drive toward the hospital in silence, then after barely a minute, his hand comes over to take mine from my lap and my heart leaps. He looks over, and I see kindness in his dark eyes and feel warmth in his touch.

“You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

I nod, unsure what else to say or do, and my thoughts drift back to why I was running around in the rain in the first place.

After delivering the coffee to everyone yesterday morning at work, there was a bright spot when one of the paralegals came around my desk and asked me what was wrong. Her name is Nadine, she’s been decent with me since I started, and she’s easy to talk to. She’s the sort of person that tells you how pretty you are just to brighten your day like she’s not three steps higher up the ladder than me. So, feeling ready to snap and running on little sleep, I gave her the Reader’s Digest condensed version of what’s going on with my parents.