This must be one of his teenage nightmares, because his hands were way slower and clumsier than usual. The audiobook narrator warned, “If I touch you tonight, I’ll make you mine,” and across the desk, Danika made a choked noise of—horror? Yep, probably horror—and put a hand over her mouth.
“Zaf,” she half-shrieked, “is that porn?”
“No!” The word came out a bit too loud to seem honest. “No,” he repeated through gritted teeth, trying to sound like a calm, sensible man instead of a raging pervert. He finally managed to pause the app, then opened a desk drawer, shoved his traitorous phone inside (technology, like most apparently good things in life, clearly couldn’t be trusted), and slammed it shut.
“That was definitely porn,” Dani said, and Zaf was so busy wanting to jump off a bridge, it took him a long while to realize she was laughing. One hand still covered her mouth, but little chuckles escaped between her words, and her eyes creased at the corners in an unmistakable smile. The relief that hit him was so fucking intense, he almost passed out. With every good-natured giggle, a bit of his instinct to think the worst faded away.
“It wasn’t porn,” he repeated, and this time he didn’t have to shout over the frantic pounding of his heart, or the urgent moaning of his phone. “It’s an audiobook.”
“What the bloody hell kind of audiobook?” But she asked with a grin on her face.
“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, not because he was embarrassed about reading romance novels, but because now didn’t seem like the best time to explain it. “Listen, I really didn’t mean for that to—”
“I know,” she said, no hesitation, which was good. Because if she’d taken that fiasco as some kind of creepy, quote-unquote accident, Zaf would’ve had to run away to Guatemala to herd goats for a living. And he’d never been great with animals.
His cheeks still burning—thank fuck for thick beards and brown skin—Zaf stabbed a hand into his other pocket, found the protein bar, and handed it over. “There. Now piss off.”
“Rude,” she said, but she was smiling as she walked away.
“You’d better eat that!” he groused.
“Enjoy your sex book!” she called back. Then she swung open the door to the stairwell and disappeared.
Zaf exhaled and dropped his head into his hands. “Kill me,” he murmured to no one in particular. “Just kill me now.”
CHAPTER TWO
It was absolutely typical that Dani’s first year as junior teaching staff—good—had coincided with her unfortunate transfer to the hideous building that was Echo—bad. She should be teaching next door to one of her Ph.D. supervisors right now, in the tiny, cozy building on campus dedicated to literature and women’s studies. But back in October, there’d been an unfortunate incident involving a group of first years, clown suits, a piñata, and a surprising amount of asbestos. In the chaos of relocation, Dani had helpfully and foolishly volunteered to take the classroom no one else wanted to touch. After all, Jo worked in Echo, so how bad could it be?
Now that Jo was no longer her good friend and regular lay, the answer was: quite bad. Even the best thing about Echo—one rather entertaining security guard—had a habit of making her late. Or later than usual.
“All right!” Dani clapped her hands as she strode into her temporary classroom. “I’m here, shut up, hope you did the reading, because if you didn’t, you’re buggered.” She carefully removed her laptop from her rucksack, put it on the desk, then dumped the bag unceremoniously on the cold, hard floor. Uncapping a whiteboard pen, she pointed at the table of students waiting for her, all of whom looked slightly unnerved—which was just how she liked them. “Christina Rossetti, ‘Goblin Market,’ let’s discuss. Emily, start us off.”
The sleepy-eyed teenager wrapped a strand of long, blue hair around her finger and said promptly, “Totally about banging.”
Dani approached the board and wrote Goblin Market in a bubble. Traditionalists might find writing on the board unnecessary, but not all learners were aural, no matter their stage of education. So she scrawled a little arrow coming out of her bubble and wrote: Banging.
Then she turned back to Emily and said brightly, “Please elaborate.”
“Well,” Emily hedged, “I mean, it’s either banging or Christianity. One of those. Maybe both.”
“I think it’s both,” added the boy beside her, Will.
Dani nodded, drew another arrow, and wrote Tits out for Christ? Then she asked, “Anything more specific?”
“Tits in for Christ,” Will corrected.
“Tits wherever you want for Christ,” Emily