“I’m not going to catch up on the essays.”

The words left my mouth before I could sand them down into something prettier. Dr. Elias Thorne looked up from the disaster of red ink that used to be my paper, one eyebrow already climbing. The late-afternoon light through the office blinds cut across his face in sharp gold lines. Everyone else had left office hours twenty minutes ago. The hallway outside was quiet enough that I could hear my own pulse.

I stayed in the chair across from his desk, legs crossed, skirt riding higher than it had any academic reason to. My heart was doing something stupid and hungry...