Ignoring my question, Rhys slides his strong fingers beneath the brim of my newsboy, pulling it off in one easy motion. My hair falls around my face in a curtain of natural waves, and he sucks in a breath at the sight of it.

Reaching behind me, he drops the hat on the piano’s smooth mahogany lid and I let out a little moan when I hear him inhale my scent. He catches my hands in his before I can reclaim the newsboy. “You are beautiful, Evelyn. No matter how your hair looks.” Moving in toward me so that my butt is pressed up against the piano and I have nowhere to go, he links his fingers with mine, one at a time, each motion careful and taunting.

With him staring at me, standing this close to me, I feel like I’ve been stripped bare.

“If I was going to tell you what to wear – and if there was a chance in hell you’d listen – believe me, the hat would be the last thing to go.” Releasing my hands, he touches my chin gently, tilting my face up until we’re eye to eye. “But I want to see your face when you’re singing to me. I like trying to figure out what’s behind your eyes.”

My nostrils flare. I run my hands over his chest, feeling his muscles beneath my fingers. This is something I’ve wanted to do since the first time I saw him—well, the second time—and to my relief, he doesn’t stop me. I dig my fingers into the soft fabric of his blue t-shirt as his hands move from my face to my hair, gathering it in his fist and then releasing it. After all the memories of my past here lately, it’s almost as if his touch—no matter how confusing or crazy or wrong—is the only thing holding me together.

I trail my tongue over my lips. “You won’t like what you find behind my eyes,” I inform him.

“You’re wrong.” Tracing the tip of his thumb back and forth from my chin to the corner of my mouth in a slow, hypnotic rhythm, he dips his face close to mine, his sea blue eyes flashing a challenge.  “I don’t just want the beautiful, the happy-go-lucky, or even the sarcastic bullshit from you. You’re so much more than that. The pain and fear and anger—that’s the part of you I need to unravel.”

“The pain and fear.” I swallow hard. “And the anger.”

“Yes ... it’s the only way you’ll survive going back in front of Cameron during mid-terms in a couple weeks and then again at the end of the semester. She wants to see real emotion, and I’ve yet to get that out of you.”

Professor Cameron. He’s touching me and talking about music. More specifically he’s talking about my future in the music program. Now, I feel like an idiot for the uneven hitch in my breathing. The way my body has, inadvertently, curved in to his. The way I’m hoping our lips might touch, if even for a moment.

“You sound like a masochist.”

“Hmm,” Rhys murmurs thoughtfully. When he doesn’t say anything else, I jab the tip of my tongue into my cheek and glower at him. This is when his face begins a slow transformation. From intense and pensive to a broad, mocking grin. “And there we have it. Real emotion. About goddamn time.”

I start to give him another sharp retort, but then I look him directly in the eyes. “Are you going to kiss me?” I demand, and he presses his forehead to mine. “You want to.”

He tilts his head back and his expression changes, the mockery edging away into a guilty smile. “Is it that obvious?” Before I can answer, his lips touch the tip of my nose. Then I feel them against my temple as his hand cups my neck. And finally, he hovers his mouth right over mine and my breath hitches. “And what happens after we do this?” he wonders aloud.

“We pretend it never happened,” I suggest, feeling my head go cloudy when he finally—finally—skims his lips across mine before immediately drawing away. “We pretend that—”

“Do you think you’ll come in here three days a week and not want to do it again? Or that you won’t want more?” At my silence, he shakes his head. “Because you will. We both will. And if my boss, as you call her, finds out what we’re doing...”

I lean away from him as what he just said has a chance to drown into my brain. Crap. Here I am coming on to him and I never stopped to think that it might impossible for him to act on anything because of Professor Cameron. Turning away from him, I nod my head fiercely, wanting the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

“I won’t lose my job if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says quietly, “but it’s still unprofessional.”

“Oh.”

“Come here,” he orders, pulling me against his hard body. My chest hits his, and he feathers his fingers across my skin to touch my cheek and tilt my face up to his. “I want to touch you. Want to kiss you.” When I nod, his tongue flicks out and drags across the center of my lips. “Jesus, I’ve been trying not to do this.” I don’t have time to breathe before he covers my mouth with his.

As his lips learn mine, I mold against him. I open my mouth just slightly, giving him a chance to slip his tongue inside. Our lips and tongues crush against each other, tasting and exploring. My hands grip his black hair, and I pull him deeper into me. He taste good, smells even better, and ripples of pain and pleasure shoot through me as I feel his hands all over me.

“You feel so good, so right, Evelyn,” he groans against my lips. “I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time.”

Suddenly, that wary part of me—the one that was reluctant to even be around him in the first place—snaps awake. And I can’t help but wonder if he would be kissing me now if he knew everything there was to know about me? Breaking away from him, I stumble backwards. We’re both breathing heavily, our skin flushed and our lips swollen, and we stare at each other for several seconds.

“Fuck, Evelyn—” he begins, but I shake my head.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp, shoving past him. I grab my bag from the chair and burst out the room, struggling to breathe as I run down the steps and leave the building. He doesn’t follow me, but I also don’t stop moving until I’m in the freshman parking lot. I sit in the front seat of my car with my stereo volume cranked to the max and Skylar Grey serenading me about slowly freaking out.

The song is ironically accurate for my current situation.

“Shit. Shit!” I yell at myself, gripping the leather steering wheel. He had given me exactly what I asked for, and more, and the second it was over, I bolted like a fool. Catching my reflection in the rearview mirror, I make a face at myself. “Get a grip!”

As if agreeing with me, my purse starts to vibrate and when I pull my phone out, I see that it’s Kendra. Jabbing my radio’s power button, I answer. “You sound like you just finished running a marathon,” she says, her voice full of curiosity. “Alright, you’re upset. What’s up?”

I run my hands over my face. “I ... I just kissed my voice instructor.”

“The fifty-year-old woman who scares the hell out of you?” I can clearly picture her eyebrow lifting into a perfect arch.

“No.” When I finish answering her, I feel my frustration with myself spike with every word. “Her twenty-something assistant who I shouldn’t want to be around in the first place.”

“Ohhhh.” I hear a rustling noise and then she says in a soft voice, “I thought you pulled out of lessons with him. At least, that’s what you said you were doing last month.”

I roll my gaze up to the tan-colored ceiling of my car and hunch down in my seat. “I caved.”

“And then you kissed him. And since you’re breathing like that, I’m assuming you ran.” When I don’t answer because I’m close to tears, she releases an understanding sigh. “Why did you run?”

“I never said anything to him about meeting before,” I say, and before Kendra can give me one of her speeches on telling the truth, I defensively add, “I figured all it would do is make things awkward between us.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

I don’t know, which scares the ever-living crap out of me. It’s taken all my willpower not to act hastily because whenever that happens—well, that’s when everything goes to hell for me. Closing my eyes, I rest my head forward against the steering wheel’s smooth leather. Almost instantly, thoughts of how Rhys’ forehead felt pressed against mine hits me hard. I blow out a harsh breath and shake my head in hopes it’ll help knock the images from my mind, but of course it doesn’t. The memory is firmly cemented there now—a brand new addition to both the vault of What-the-hell-was-Evie-thinking? and Why-the-fuck-doesn’t-Evie-ever-follow-through?