d not have lips like that.
She sighed and interlaced her hands before resting them on top of her desk. “It wasn’t about what I wanted you to say; it was about what you needed to say.”
And there went all my composure. Again.
“What I needed to say?” I surged to my feet and clutched my hair as I began to pace the five feet of room I had in her snug office. “What I needed to say? What the fuck does that even mean?”
Dr. Kavanagh remained cool and collected, damn her, seated in her chair as she calmly watched me unravel into a hot pile of anxiety. “It means you didn’t do what you were asked to do. I wanted you to make a correlation between a character in the story and yourself. You made no such connection. In fact, you didn’t talk about you at all.”
I snorted. “Maybe I didn’t feel a connection with a bunch of rich-ass idiots from the twenties, whining about lost love while they spread around adultery like it was some kind of candy. How am I supposed to correlate anything when there is nothing to correlate?”
She fell back in her chair and sent me a frustrated frown. “Mr. Gamble…” With another sigh, she shook her head and ran her hands wearily over her face, which unfortunately made me focus on her lips.
God damn, that mouth should not be legal. I could picture it pursed so perfectly around my cock, could almost feel the wet slide of her tongue running up my entire length as she sucked me in deep.
Shit, now I had wood.
Fortunately oblivious to my crude, unwanted thoughts, she stiffened her shoulders, sat forward again and looked me straight in the eye. “Truly talented literature is truly talented for a reason. It always—always—finds a way to reach every person who reads it. It takes a theme about the human condition and makes it its little bitch.”
My eyebrows shot up into my hairline. What the hell? Shaking my head, I blinked. “Did you just say—”
“Yes!” she snapped. “I did. Because it’s true. Take one word about feelings or emotions and you’ll be able to find a theme for it in The Great Gatsby. I promise you.” When I did nothing but gape at her, she arched a curious brow. “You do have emotions, don’t you?”
“I’m having some right now.” And they were totally freaking me out, but fuck, I really liked watching her perfect, too-pure mouth forming dirty words. It was like some awful, humiliating sickness. I wanted her to do it again.
Say bitch again. Please. Just one more time.
But she didn’t.
“Good.” Her stare was direct. Knowing. “Let me guess. You’re feeling frustration. Anger. Hate.”
“Uh...” I lifted an eyebrow. Close, but not quite.
“That’s perfectly fine. You can use those. Make them bond with someone in this book and tell me all about it.”
As her words sank in, I frowned. Something hot and seeking inside me melted. Defeat. “How?” I asked quietly, feeling like a complete idiot because I still didn’t understand, would probably never understand.
She blinked. “What do you mean how? If you’re really frustrated, mad, and full of hatred for me right now, write about it, explain why, then explain where someone in the story shares these same sentiments and why they experienced them. Make the two one and the same. Bash me all you want on paper, just show me that correlation I want to see, and I will give you a better score.”
I snorted and shook my head. No way. No effing way. “I just don’t get why I have to write about my fucking feelings?”
She let out a frustrated growl, which only turned me on more. “So I know you understand the story and what happened.”
“Well, I didn’t understand the story. Goddamn it. I told you. I have nothing in common with—”
“Yes, you do!” she roared back, smacking both her palms on top of her desk before pushing to her feet to glare at me. “Everyone on the planet has at least one thing in common with at least one character in that story. Now go prove it!”
Seething, I just glared at her.
She closed her eyes and rubbed at the center of her head. “Okay,” she mumbled as if giving up the fight.
When she licked her lips, I almost lost it. Christ, this was getting embarrassing. Her mouth was going to be my downfall. If she asked me, I would probably take her on her nice, clean desk right then and there. I could so clearly see myself tossing her down, gathering up her frumpy skirt, wedging myself between her thighs and just hammering it home.
I also wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and strangle her for making me feel like such an idiot.
It probably wasn’t healthy to have two such drastic emotions roaring through me at the same moment, but there they were. Absolutely roaring.
The good professor sank back into her chair. “How about this? I’ll make your paper as easy as I can on you.”