Chapter 69. Ride On

Ava

I woke up slowly, the way you surface from deep water, limbs heavy, skin humming, the taste of last night still on my tongue.

Sunlight sliced through the half open blinds and painted gold stripes across the bed. My bed. Not the rug downstairs.

Someone had carried me here after I passed out, boneless and dripping, on the living room floor.

I rolled over and there he was.

Professor Lang, standing at the foot of the bed in nothing but unbuttoned slacks riding low on his hips, shirt half on, hair wild, eyes wide and panicked like a man who’d just realized he’d robbed a bank and couldn’t find the exit.

He was trying to button his cuffs with shaking fingers, muttering curses under his breath.

Regret was written in every tense line of his body.

I’d seen that look before, on men who thought they could touch the fire once and walk away unburned.

I stretched like a cat, letting the sheet fall to my waist so my breasts spilled fr