Devil's Kiss (Sunset Cove #2) (10 page)

That was trouble with a capital T.

He knew the look that had flashed in Derek’s eyes, the interested tone of his voice, and he also knew his flight response had been the only thing that had saved him from making the biggest mistake of his overly privileged life.

When the fall semester had ended back in December, he’d congratulated himself on surviving it without having to have any more one-on-one contact with Derek Pearson. Then January had rolled around and he’d received his school roster, and was ashamed to admit he breathed a sigh of relief that Derek wasn’t on it.
 

The guy was too much of a distraction for him to be constantly worrying or thinking about. Especially after watching Brantley try,
and fail
, to keep his latest secret…well, a secret from him.

He had to give Brantley props, though—he was damn good at it. Jordan just happened to be a master at picking up subtle signs and cues. But there was no way that a life of sneaking around with a student was for him.
 

No one would ever accuse him of being the quiet and retiring type, and the thought of staying at home every night or on the weekends just about repulsed him. He wanted the freedom to go out and have a good time. Not be paranoid that someone would find out he was sitting in his car with a hard-on courtesy of his student, like he was right that second.

Shit.
 

Of all the gyms he could’ve joined for group classes, of course he’d chosen the one Derek was at. He slapped the steering wheel with the heel of his palm and shut his eyes, and all he could see was the knowing gleam that had entered Derek’s gaze when he’d finally let loose that devilish smile.
 

Jesus
, he really could’ve done without seeing that.
Or
hearing that Derek liked the idea of bottoming.
 

Double shit.

Drawing in a shaky breath, he reminded himself that he’d be fine. They would continue to avoid one another, just as they had up until now.
 

Yes, that’s it. Easy. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
 

Resolved in his decision, he reached into the side pocket of his bag for the phone he’d been trying to fish out at the gym in the first place, but as he felt around, he realized it wasn’t there.
 

Great. It must’ve fallen out inside.
 

Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair, resigned to heading back into the gym. As he turned to open his door, though, his breath caught in the back of his throat. A large hand with,
ah hell, black nail polish
, was rapping its knuckles on his driver’s-side window, and through the rectangle he could see the tight black material of Derek’s tank, and yeah,
fuck
, his red gym shorts.
 

Don’t look. Don’t look. Oh, who am I kidding?
Of course he was going to look while no one was there to see him. The shorts nicely molded over an impressive bulge, one that was more visible than Jordan figured it was designed to be, and that meant he was totally screwed. Because just as he’d suspected, their interlude had turned Derek on just as much as it had him.

Jordan ordered himself to get his shit together, and pressed the down button on his window. As the motor whirred and the window lowered, Derek bent at the waist to rest his forearms on the door, and just like that, he was all up in Jordan’s space.

Positioned as they were, there was hardly any room between their faces unless he angled his body back, and Jordan knew that would convey loud and clear that he was unable to control himself or worse, nervous—
and fuck that shit.
No one made Jordan Devaney nervous.

“You forgot something,” Derek said, and held Jordan’s phone out to him. He hadn’t dared to remove his hands from the steering wheel in case he did something stupid, like touch the guy. But he knew he had to or risk looking like a total weirdo.
But…look at him—how can I not touch that?

Angling himself toward Derek, he reached for the phone, but at the last second Derek snatched it back.
 

“Give me the
phone
, Derek.” Jordan knew his tone was pissy, but that was because he was about five seconds away from doing something stupid. When he got no response, he rolled his eyes.

“I like it when you do that.”

Jordan arched an eyebrow as if to say,
do
what?

“The eye roll. You never used to do it in class. But it’s hot. Lets me know I’m getting to you.”

“Oh please, you’re giving yourself way too much credit.”

Derek held his phone out again and Jordan dropped his eyes to it.
 

“No, I’m not. Right now, you look as if you’re about two seconds away from losing your shit. Why do you have such a problem with me?”

Jordan snatched the phone out of Derek’s hands, and this time he let it go. “I don’t have a problem with you. Actually, I don’t have
anything
with you. Not even a class anymore. And the fact that you like pushing my buttons only shows that you have some serious issues.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Derek said, his voice having lost the flirtatious quality. “You can thank my piece-of-shit father for that.”

Jordan faltered, his next words getting stuck somewhere in his throat at the rapid shift in Derek’s mood. He wondered if Derek would say more, but when nothing else came out, Jordan looked away to stare down at his phone, checking…what, exactly? That it was in one piece?

“Don’t worry,” Derek finally said, and his tone had somewhat thawed. “You only missed one call. From someone named…August?”

Jordan’s head snapped around, and when their eyes met he saw Derek’s lips tug into a crooked grin, erasing the awkward moment from a second ago. “What kind of name is August?”

Not understanding this man in the slightest, Jordan sighed. He knew he needed to end this conversation, yet at the same time found himself wanting to linger and ask questions about the secrets behind those intense eyes watching him.
 

In the end, he settled on the most basic of questions. One that would open a whole can of worms but must be done if they were to move on in any kind of normal direction. “What do you want, Derek?”
 

For a second, Jordan thought he caught a flash of longing in Derek’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a cocky glint and a smirk to match.
 

“Hard to know the exact answer to that. But right now, I wouldn’t say no to fucking you.”

Yeah, okay, the can of worms is now officially open.
 

If Derek had been any other person and they’d met under different circumstances, Jordan would be unlocking his car door in a hot second. But Derek wasn’t any other person. He’d been his student, and Jordan wouldn’t be touching him with a ten-foot pole—or his own pole, for that matter—regardless of how much he wanted to climb all over him and kiss and bite his bulging muscles.
 

No. There would be no climbing. No touching. And definitely no fucking.

Knowing his best course of action here was indifference, Jordan laughed as if Derek had just told him the best joke ever.
Time to hit his ego.
 

“Of course you wouldn’t say no to that. I’m gorgeous,” he said, giving a flirtatious wink for added sass. “But we’ve had this conversation, and unfortunately for you, in my bed, I do the fucking and I have no interest in fulfilling your hot-for-teacher fantasies. Now run along, little boy. I’m busy.”

He waited for Derek to explode. To accuse him of being the liar he was. But Derek’s stare turned contemplative and he nodded a couple of times. He then tapped a hand on the frame of the car and said, “Right. I do remember that conversation. I also remember you saying that
while
you were my professor it wouldn’t happen. And Devaney, I checked my schedule twice, and your name ain’t on it. So in case you change your mind, I added my number to your phone. Just hit one on your speed dial. Like I said before, I’d happily lie on my back for you any day.” Derek then added a hot-as-fuck wink of his own, straightened up, and left Jordan sitting there in the car watching his fine ass as he walked back toward the doors of the gym.

Oh my
God
.

Jordan looked at the phone in his hand like it was a gun and quickly opened the contacts. He scrolled through until he got to number one, and there it was like the fucking scarlet letter—DEREK—
in caps, too, the little shit.
He really needed to add a passcode to his phone.
 

He was about to hit delete, but at the very last second swiped over the edit button and deleted just the name instead. Jordan’s heart was thundering, as if he was doing something he shouldn’t, but all he did was replace Derek’s name.
 

Atop that number now read
He-Man.
 

He hit save and grinned despite himself. There was no way he would ever call that number. But for some reason, he couldn’t find it in himself to delete it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

One Week Later

DEREK SWUNG HIS arm around hard and fast, and when his fist connected with the red leather of the punching bag, a bead of sweat fell from the end of his hair to land on his nose.

Fuck this feels good
, he thought as his muscles tensed and he bounced on his toes, sparring with his inanimate opponent. It was early Friday morning before class, and he’d wanted to get out of the dive motel room he was staying in before all the other occupants surfaced.
 

He was wound up real good, and he could sense it in the way his skin felt tightly stretched across his bones. Damn, he’d needed some kind of outlet, and this place was perfect.
 

It had always been a safe haven for him, and over the last week it had been his go-to. He’d been spending more and more time there, largely in part because he could work out, use their showers, and then hit school.
 

Just another day in paradise, right? Yeah, hardly.
 

Just last night at the motel, he’d gone to sleep to the sounds of an argument in the room next door to his. It had ended with a screaming match, a broken bottle, slamming door, and then the familiar sound of a woman crying. Much like the soundtrack from his early childhood. Which was exactly the reason he was down at the gym beating the shit out of the punching bag swaying in front of him.

Life wasn’t cooperating. He was supposed to be living a better life free of his father, not dreading every hour he had to go back to a room that smelled of mildew and likely had some kind of bacteria growing on every surface.
 

Grrr…
He brought his leg around in a wide kick and his foot connected with the bag. A couple more minutes of this and then he’d have to quit and head to the showers if he wanted to get to the library before class. He’d missed his first statistics class last week when he’d been trying to track down a place to stay, and they’d been given a take-home exam. But after working out his money situation and what he could afford to spend on a place to stay, which wasn’t a hell of a lot if he didn’t want to use all his savings, he would try and find some quiet time and knock it out.
 

Over the last couple of nights he’d wondered,
How much can one person possibly take before they fucking lose it?
He wasn’t sure, but when he first left his father’s, it had spawned some kind of misguided hope inside him—which listening to last night’s shitstorm had dashed.

There’s no hope here,
he thought.
Just plain old desperation.

He landed his final punch with more force than necessary, imagining his father’s face pinned to the bag, and as he dropped his arms to his sides, his chest heaved with his exertions.
 

After his breathing had calmed, he walked over to where his gym bag lay on the ground and grabbed his towel to wipe it over his face. Squeezing his eyes shut, he willed himself to keep it together. Just go and shower, then head to school. He could decide what to do from there. But as all the decisions and responsibilities started to pile up on top of him, he felt more overwhelmed by the second.

He glanced at the phone sitting inside his bag and picked it up. There’d been so many times he’d thought about calling Finn this past week, but at the last minute he’d stopped himself. The guy still thought he slept several houses down from him, and there was no way he was going to tell his buddy that he’d left home. Finn would make it his mission to coddle him by having him stay at his house, and there was no way he was going to be a burden to the Finleys.

Yeah, not gonna happen.
So instead, he’d kept it to himself.

The other person he’d found himself close to calling was Devaney. When he’d entered his number into the guy’s phone last week, he’d also snuck a look at his contact card and stored the number in his own phone under number one. At the time he’d figured it was good to have in case something bad happened. But now the number seemed to mock him every night, just as it was right then.

Staring at his cell, Derek warred with himself for a few seconds, then decided—
fuck it.
Right now, he needed someone to talk to, someone to listen. He didn’t want pity; he just needed to get shit off his chest, and he knew there was no way Devaney would coddle him. If anything, he’d get pissed he had his number in the first place.
 

He swiped the towel over his face again and hit number one on his speed dial.

It rang several times before it connected, and when Devaney’s voice came through the line, the words he said took Derek straight out of his bad mood and slid him right into a good one.

* * *

JORDAN HAD BARELY stepped off his elevator when his phone buzzed in his back pocket. He fished his phone out as he walked over to the kitchen area, and when he saw
He-Man
on the display, he froze and dropped his canvas grocery bags on the tiled floor.
 

 
“No he isn’t…” he said as he stared at the vibrating device in his hand, then he shoved that thought aside because he didn’t want to be thinking about Derek and vibrating things in the same sentence.