Kiss The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights) Read online

  She stops blinking. Her vision clears, thank God, leaving her with strained breaths and a rushing sound in her ears.

  When she looks up, she finds herself staring into her teacher’s eyes. She’s never found anger beautiful before, but that’s the only word she can think of to describe the rage that’s hardened Michael Brouchard’s features into statuesque angles. He’s been studying her, taking in the physical signs of how deeply Briffel’s comment wounded her, and when he shifts his focus from her to Briffel, Laney hears the sound of a gun cocking somewhere in her mind.

  “Mr. Briffel,” Michael says. “Since we’re all speaking so freely now apparently, allow me to take this moment to tell you how impressed I am with the speed at which you Google the answers to most of my questions on your phone underneath your desk. However, I’m a bit concerned that even those assignments for which you are given adequate time to prepare are also reading like you just Googled a bunch of crap on your phone under your desk. So with that in mind, I have the following suggestion. If you would like to place your focus on those classmates of yours who are working a lot harder than you are, perhaps you should take what you see there as motivation for something other than an inappropriate comment which could result in a reduction of your grade.”

  “You can’t do that,” Briffel whines. “You can’t reduce my grade just ’cause I made a joke.”

  “Try me,” Michael Brouchard says. It’s not quite a growl, but it’s close enough to one that Laney can almost smell fur.

  Michael rests both fists on the front edge of Jake Briffel’s desk. The frat boy stares up at him slack-jawed, too frightened to come up with his next move or even a passable response.

  Laney wouldn’t be surprised to see a wet spot in the dude’s pants.

  Lord knows, there’s about to be one in hers, although of a different origin.

  Briffel’s been a jerk from day one, but he’s never been quite this mean to anyone in class before now. Maybe that’s the only reason their teacher went after him with such focused, passionate anger. But when Michael turns away from Briffel’s desk, his eyes meet hers for a telling instant. Just long enough to tell her he’s got her back. Just long enough to suggest his thoughts about her might be as full of passion and abandon as the thoughts she’s been having about him.

  Laney’s no stranger to lust. She is, however, a stranger to gorgeous, intelligent men leaping to her defense. The combination of the two not only makes her head spin, it makes the memory of Briffel’s cruel joke feel as distant as China.

  “Laney?”

  Michael’s call halts her steps and sends gooseflesh racing up her back. It sounds like he’s only a few feet away, which means he must have rushed out of class with most of the other students in order to catch up with her. Two urges battle for control of her legs—the urge to run like hell, and the urge to fall to her knees on the sidewalk in a gesture of total worship as he approaches.

  “Too much?” Michael asks once he’s a few feet away.

  He’s winded, she realizes. He did run to catch up with me. The thought of him giving the brush-off to other students as he slipped from the classroom in pursuit makes her feel both giddy and guilty.

  It’s a crisp fall day in New Orleans, just cool enough for a light, hooded sweater like the one he clearly slid on in a hurry given how unevenly it sits across his shoulders. Sunlight bounces off the tinted windows of The Jillian Stein Arts Center behind him, making the trees that surround the building look like they’re on fire. It lances the oak branches overhead, a shaft of it falling across his right eye, causing the hazel iris to shimmer in a way that makes her gasp.

  She’d never thought of a man as being beautiful before she met Michael. Plenty of guys she’d met were hot, handsome, or ruggedly handsome, that special third category she used to define edgy, unconventional sex appeal. But something about his combination of hard angles and lingering, thoughtful expressions, of determined masculinity matched with a gentle, careful demeanor—beautiful is the only word she can think of to describe those contradictions and the effect they have on her pulse. And it’s the only word she can literally think as he stares into her eyes, waiting for a response to his cryptic question.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally says. “Too much? What do you mean?”

  “Some students, they don’t like it when…you know, a teacher kind of steps up to bat for them. It makes them feel—”

  “Nice?” she says before she can stop herself.

  At first, it looks like her answer has made him wince. But after another second or two, it’s clear Michael is fighting a smile so strong it looks ready to conquer his face. But he’s fighting it, that’s for sure. Because the fact that he made her feel nice pleases him, and it pleases him a little more than a teacher should be pleased by his student.

  “Or nice,” he finally says.

  “I appreciated it. Honestly.”

  “Well, you know, Jake is such a jerk and—wow. I shouldn’t be saying that. Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about another student that way. I shouldn’t…”

  And suddenly he’s lost his grip on his words and his eyes are roaming her body as if he’s thinking all sorts of things about it he shouldn’t. And she can feel Michael, the guy who’s only three years older than she is, fighting with Mr. Brouchard, the guy who’s supposed to be her teacher, the guy who’s probably signed some sort of contract that says he won’t do any of the things he’s thinking about doing to her right now with any student ever.

  “You make me say things I shouldn’t, Laney Foley.”

  “Make you?”

  “Sorry. That’s not exactly fair, I guess.”

  “You apologize a lot when we’re not in class, Mr. Brouchard.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever I did to make you call me Mr. Brouchard, I apologize.”

  “You’re right. Jake is a jerk.”

  “Still, I shouldn’t have said it…”

  “The thing in class?”

  “No. Just now. When I called him a jerk. The thing in class? If you’re good with it, I’m good with it. Because to be honest, that was the only thing that mattered to me. That you were good with it.”

  “I’m very good with it,” she says. It feels like she spoke in almost a whisper, but Michael nods like he’s heard her clearly.

  “A couple weeks into semester, you went quiet. I wasn’t sure what happened. But I missed you. I missed your contributions, I mean, and today, when you spoke up again, I was so happy, I wasn’t about to let Jake Briffel scare you into hiding again.”

  “Hiding?” She hates the defensive tone in her voice. “I’ve got perfect attendance. For the discussions and the lectures.”

  “There are lots of ways to hide.”

  “Still…”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “No, it’s just… I’m not like a lot of the students here, Michael.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re better than most of them.”

  “Well, no, I just meant that—thank you, by the way, for saying that—but what I meant was when I first got here I was kind of…Well, I was kind of a bitch.”

  “Not in class, you weren’t,” he says.

  “Everywhere else I was. I guess because I’m one of the lunch ladies. I was expecting people to reject me right off so I thought I’d beat them to the punch by speaking my mind even when they didn’t really ask me to.”

  “What’s wrong with speaking your mind?”

  “Well, for instance, if I gave you my honest opinion of that sweater and you didn’t ask for it…”

  Startled, Michael lifts his right arm and examines the heather-gray material of the sweater’s sleeve. “You don’t like this sweater?”

  “No. It’s great. I was just using it as an example. But if I really didn’t like it, and I just told you I didn’t like it even if you hadn’t asked me if I’d liked it or not, well, then, you know…that would kinda be, you know, like how I was when I first started…” The last time she felt this stu
pid and nervous she’d been stumbling through a toast at her friend Tiffany’s wedding, a toast Tiffany had asked her to give at the last minute because no one in Tiffany’s family was willing to salute her marriage to a groom who was fifteen years older than her and had shown up to the ceremony in a tuxedo-painted T-shirt and khaki shorts with the bulge of his flask visible in the back pocket. Her face feels like it’s turned into sandpaper, her throat like she’s breathing through a straw, and all this is distracting her from the fact that Michael Brouchard is pulling his sweater off, sleeve by sleeve, reaching up and adjusting the collar of his shirt, making sure the top button is still undone, before looping the sweater over the top of his satchel. Once he’s done, he gives Laney a warm smile.

  “Is that better?” he asks.

  A patch of hard chest is visible now. And then there’s that thick, muscular neck, and those forearms, those forearms of total sexual destruction, forearms she’d love to leave handprints on in her efforts to pull him deeper inside of her. The only thing that would make the scene better would be if he were gently sliding a chocolate covered cherry in between her lips and asking if he could rub her feet.

  “Better,” she says.

  “Good,” he says, with a smile that almost knocks her on her ass. Has he ever smiled that way with her in class? Has he ever smiled that way with anyone in class?

  “So this I’m not allowed to speak my mind trip you’re on,” he says. “I’m feeling like these words aren’t entirely yours,” Michael says.

  “My friend Cat kinda contributed.”

  “I see…”

  “Do you?”

  “I feel like I’m seeing more of you today than I ever have.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the first time we’ve ever talked outside of class. Really earning your paycheck with that deduction, aren’t you professor?”

  “Okay. A little bite there. I can see what Cat’s talking about.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing, Mister Brouchard.”

  “Michael…”

  “Sorry. Michael.”

  “It’s the Rose Scholarship, isn’t it?” he asks suddenly, as if he’s nervous to put the question so bluntly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The scholarship you’re on. It’s the Rose Scholarship.”

  “You’ve been researching me?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I have.” Not sort of. Not kind of. He didn’t attach qualifiers to it. He didn’t apologize for it, either. He simply said, yes, he’s been researching her just like she’s been researching him; hunting down his Facebook profile to find out how old he was, Googling his full name to find out where he did his undergraduate work—LSU—and if he was also born in New Orleans—he was, and if like her, he had to fight and claw for just about everything good in his life, or if like most of the other students here, privileges galore had been handed to him on a silver platter by several assistants. She hasn’t been able to find an answer to the last question, and she wonders if this is the best way to do it. By actually talking to him, rather than tapping keys on her computer late at night while building a fantasy life for him. For both of them.

  “Yes,” she says. “It’s the Elizabeth Rose Scholarship.”

  “Full ride, but you lose it the minute your GPA drops under a three point six.”

  “That’s the one,” she answers.

  “That scholarship’s got something like six hundred applicants every year. That’s pretty damn impressive, Miss Foley. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Who said I was ashamed?”

  “Briffel implied you should be. I’m here to say he’s wrong. Dead wrong. And a jerk. But like I said, I’m not supposed to call him that.”

  “And if I’m not supposed to call you Mister Brouchard, then you shouldn’t call me Miss Foley.”

  “My apologies, Laney.”

  “No more apologies either. You know, unless you do something really shitty.”

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he asks. It’s the first time he’s broken eye contact with her since they started this conversation. “A not-shitty drink.”

  “Like a drink-drink?”

  “Yes. You’re twenty-three, right? I’m sorry…if you’re sober, I didn’t mean to...”

  Yep. He’s totally been Googling me. Or Facebooking me. Or whatever I’ve been doing to him.

  “No. I’m not sober. It’s just…”

  “Or if there’s another way you’d like to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “The fact that you got the Rose Scholarship.”

  “C’mon. It’s not like it’s the Rhodes Scholarship.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Jake Briffel.”

  “Lord. Kill me now.”

  “Not a chance. All right, fine, so I guess I missed the big blowout you had when you found out you got the scholarship and that’s it? No more celebrations for you?”

  “There wasn’t a blowout. There wasn’t anything, really.”

  “Really?”

  “No. When I got the news, I made the mistake of telling my dad.”

  “The mistake?”

  “He thinks college is a waste of time. And he thought the time I spent trying to get into a good one was also a waste of time. So mostly he looks at me and just sees…a waste of time.”

  It’s one thing to make this kind of joke with someone like her friend Cat. Sarcasm is their preferred means of communication, after all. But Michael’s been so gentle and kind, stating the cold hard fact of her family situation plainly feels like she’s showing him an open wound.

  “I have a feeling you’re a lot more than that,” Michael says softly.

  “Than a waste of time?” she asks.

  “I can’t imagine referring to someone of your accomplishments and intelligence as a…waste of time,” Michael says. She can feel the pulse of protective anger moving through her teacher as he struggles with these final words, as potent and shiver-inducing as when he stared down that loudmouth Jake Briffel. And because Michael is a polite and intelligent man, she realizes this is his most diplomatic way of calling her father a jackass. Which is exactly what her father is.

  “He got over it. Eventually. The way he gets over everything.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “He never talks about it again.”

  “That’s rough.”

  Oh, honey, she almost says. That’s nothing. Let me tell you about the three times I got held up when I was working at the gas station. Or my best friend from high school who dropped out junior year because she got pregnant and ended up turning tricks for six months after she had the kid and before I dragged her into the first rehab that would take her family’s crappy health care plan. But that’s the kind of speech Old Laney would have launched into at the drop of a hat, laying it on too thick and too soon so her classmates would know from the get-go she wasn’t like them; so she could spare herself the pain of future rejection once they found out where she’d come from.

  New Laney lays low. New Laney flies under the radar, blends in as much as she can even though she can’t afford the outfits required to do it.

  She didn’t come to Chamberland University to make friends. She’s here because she wants options, the option to be something other than a gas station attendant or a lunch lady. Maybe it was her fault she’d never found a way to say that to her father without making him feel bad about his own life. But that’s just the way it is. For now, anyway. Until she can get a job good enough that her dad can finally retire. Maybe then he can finally take the time he needs to grieve the loss of her mother, a task he’s been putting off for years. But until that blessed time comes, she doesn’t want to spend the next three years completely alone as she builds a better life for herself, and while she’s got no plans to pledge a sorority any time soon, maybe if she follows Cat’s instructions, she’ll have less trouble finding study partners.

  “It was my fault,” she says, because it sounds like something New Laney should say. Humble
, meek, obedient. Not angry. Not wounded. Not poor.

  “How’s that?” Michael asks.

  “He’d just worked a double offshore and I shouldn’t have—you know, I shouldn’t have expected him to be excited for me when he already told me he wouldn’t be. I just thought that when the actual news came in, maybe he’d…”

  “So what you’re saying is you never had a party or a dinner or any kind of celebration at all?”

  For some reason, this admission shames her, even though it shouldn’t. Even though she wasn’t the one who stormed out of the house in a rage because she’d dared to speculate about more than one possible future for herself. But there’s no judgment in Michael’s voice. There isn’t any in his expression either.

  “No,” she finally says. “Never.”

  “All right, then. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “What?”

  “Eight’s better? Maybe six thirty?”

  “Seven’s fine, but what do you—I mean, what are we doing?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’m in Berry Hall on East Campus.”

  “Great. I’ll be outside at seven.”

  He’s walking away quickly.

  She calls after him, and when he stops and turns, she can see the eagerness and the fear in his expression, both of which he was trying to hide with a rapid-fire invitation and a hasty escape. A dozen different versions of a rejection gather in her mind. You’re my teacher, I can’t. It’s not appropriate. You’re way too hot. I can’t be trusted alone with you.