“Earn that,” he said tightly, and hated how unsteady his own voice sounded. “Do something brave to earn that, and perhaps I’ll consider making this an everyday thing.”
Summer would back out, he thought.
Summer would back out, let his anxiety take control, and retreat from the challenge.
And then this little farce would end, and Fox could return to normal.
But Summer only made a deep, inarticulate sound in the back of his throat, bordering on a growl—before he said breathlessly, “Fine. Give me the lesson plan.”
A pause, as Fox’s eyes widened and he glanced over his shoulder at the fierce way Summer’s brows drew together, the determination in the glint of his eyes, the set of his shoulders.
“You want me to be brave?” Summer said. “Then I’ll lead your next class.”
Oh, Summer thought. Oh.
He thought, perhaps...
He had made a very large mistake.
He stood up in front of the classroom that had been the focal point of his life for his entire senior year. Still the same dark, peeling walls, still the same row of windows lined with potted plants and psychology textbooks along the back wall, still the same rows and rows of wooden desks that were the only ones in the school not scratched up and marked with pencil and pen graffiti.
Because everyone was too afraid of Professor Iseya to risk it.
But Summer wasn’t Professor Iseya.
Summer was just Summer, and as he looked out over the sea of bored, disinterested faces, a few boys looking back at him with smirks as though sizing him up and wondering just how long it would take to break him...
He thought maybe he’d jumped in a little too fast, feet-first, and gotten in over his head.
Maybe he could blame hormones.
Because even over the hours he’d spent reviewing the lesson plan in Iseya’s office while the professor quite pointedly ignored him without a single word or even a look...
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss.
That hand on his throat again—he would never stop thinking about that hand on his throat, the way Iseya seemed to need to naturally assert dominance and make Summer go weak with the inherent control in that touch. Such a light thing, a subtle thing...
But it had left him turned to an utter helpless doll, in Iseya’s hands.
While Iseya had kissed him.
Iseya had kissed him.
Deep, slow, a thing of languid strokes and hot, firm lips that completely melted Summer, the teasing exploration of a tongue that knew exactly what it was doing as it slipped against every sensitive point in Summer’s mouth.
If he had ever thought Iseya was cold...
That idea had been completely shattered, this morning.
He’d been completely shattered.
And willing to do anything to convince Iseya to do that again.
But he couldn’t feel that heat, right now.
Not when he’d been trying to speak for the last thirty seconds, but all he could manage was an odd, thick sound as his tongue dried and gummed and stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Not when he could feel Iseya at his back, watching him with those cool, inscrutable eyes, not saying a single solitary word.
And not when every last one of these boys was the mirror of the ones who’d made him feel so small, so invisible, so unimportant and shriveled and worthless every day he’d spent surrounded by people his age who came from a different world—one where he didn’t matter a single bit if he wasn’t a trust fund baby, if he couldn’t pay his tuition with his weekend allowance.
He’d known what he was to them.
The legacy, free tuition, sad thing who only got into such an elite academy—hell, passing Iseya’s psych classes had been his first AP college credit—because his father had worked here, instead of because his father had had money.
He wasn’t that boy anymore, he told himself.
But his silent tongue and locked legs and shaking knees couldn’t seem to remember that.
“I... I...” He cleared his throat, but it didn’t really help; just made him feel like he was swallowing his fear in little spiky balls. His pulse jumped, his heart racketing up into an awful twitching rapid beat, fluttering like a cornered rabbit’s breaths. “My...my name is Summer Hemlock—”
“For real?” came from the back of the class, followed by a chorus of sniggers. “That’s not a real name.”
“Maybe it’s an anime name,” someone else said. “Maybe he’s a weeb. You a weeb, new guy?”
Laughter erupted. Summer darted his gaze left to right, searching for the speakers, but all he saw was grinning faces, glittering eyes, contempt.
He threw a helpless glance over his shoulder at Iseya, but Iseya was impassive, unmoving, just watching him with one brow slightly arched.
Waiting.
He was on his own.
He was supposed to control the class, and he was on his own if he was going to do this thing he’d said he was going to do.
He swung his gaze back to the class. “Y-yes. Yes, th-that’s...that’s my name, and I-I’m... I’m your new TA, and t-today we’ll...we’ll be going...over...”
His voice didn’t want to work.
His voice didn’t want to work, trailing off into a faintness that wasn’t even a whisper, just this thready thing crawling out of his mouth and falling limply off his lips.
He couldn’t feel his body, but he felt everything at the same time, every hair standing up in a fine prickle and panic running through him like water, this spike of awfulness bolting right down the center of his chest and screaming at him to run.
It didn’t make sense.
It never made sense.
Rationally he knew there was nothing threatening him, right now.
Just a bunch of kids being little assholes, because that’s what kids did.
But when his brain latched on to that little panic-rabbit breathing fast and swift and terrified in the center of his heart, nothing he knew could make its thumping stop.
“What was that?” one of the students jeered. “C’mon, Winter Crabapple or whatever. Rain. Storm. Hey, maybe I’ll call you Stormy like Stormy Daniels. You wanna talk a little louder?”
Summer barely
