It's Not Shakespeare by Amy Lane Page A

his voice with his first half whine.
    Eeen… ffff…. Yeah. Rafael, could you maybe get a car you don’t love so much so I can satisfy my need to be a stuck-up white man? Yeah. That doesn’t make me too much of an asshole, does it?
    Asked and answered, right? So James made an effort then, not just to tolerate the car, but to love the car.
    One day Rafael drove him to work in the morning and came back to pick him up in the afternoon. James eyed the car with an open mind, running his hand over the well-waxed paintjob and feeling the metal warmed under the spring sun. It wasn’t inherently evil, was it? No, it was just put together in a way that made it powerful and strong. That wasn’t bad, right?
    “You want to drive it, baby?” Rafael asked with a smile, and James caught his breath.
    “Really?”
    “Yeah, really! It’s a car, not an eggshell! Come on!” And with that, the keys went up in that shiny, jingly arc, and no one was more surprised than James when he caught them. He walked around the back, crossing by Rafael to get there, and he handed off Marlowe’s lead. As their fingers brushed, he impulsively leaned forward and rubbed his lips against Rafael’s, who was so surprised his mouth opened, and James made the kiss hot, deep, and dirty. He pulled away and Rafael blushed.
    “Be careful, Mr. Professor. You don’t know who might be watching.”
    James grinned, trying very, very hard to be brave. “I know exactly who’s watching. My douchebag department head is right over there. Turn and wave to him, okay?”
    Rafael’s eyes grew wide and bright, but still he joined James in a friendly, unselfconscious wave in the direction of Lee Cresswell, who was climbing into his ginormous urban Humvee. Lee was still dressed in his suit (when even James had gone to khakis and a polo shirt, given the eighty-degree April days) and his thinning hair was spiked heavily with gel so it didn’t look like middle age was catching up with it. About the only thing James had ever liked about Lee was his wife, who was charming and kind—and who was probably the only reason James had never confronted Lee himself about the drunken blow-job he’d gotten at the staff mixer.
    Because as sure as water was wet and the sky was blue, Lee hadn’t really liked him from that night on. James wondered what in the hell he could have said to the man—because as little as he remembered about that night, “I’d rather you not suck my cock!” didn’t seem to be on the list.
    Lee took a deep, long-suffering breath and then climbed down out of the Humvee and walked over toward the Charger.
    “You know, there’s a rule prohibiting faculty dating students.” Well, how do you like that? Not even a “Hello!” or “How are you?”
    “He’s not a student,” James said, catching Rafael’s bright-eyed take on what he’d probably call “the coming smackdown.” Suddenly, standing there in the spring sunshine with the keys to this really powerful young-man’s car, made him feel like he could do anything.
    “Then what is he doing here?” Lee asked, without even giving Rafael a sideways look.
    “Why don’t you ask him?” He looked at Rafael and shrugged. Rafael shrugged back.
    “What are you doing here?” Lee turned to him impatiently, and Rafael allowed some of his disdain to show.
    “Wondering why you on my boyfriend’s case, mostly,” he said. “You don’t start nothing, there won’t be nothing, you feel me?”
    There was a sudden heat in Lee’s eyes, and James glared at Rafael, who was suddenly flustered enough to say, “Not that way. Jesus, don’t even look at me like that!”
    James tried not to snicker. “Lee, he’s not a student, and we were just leaving. Give my regards to Sondra, okay?”
    “Leave my wife out of this!” Lee snapped, and James blinked hard.
    “I thought I was. Can we go now?”
    “You just need to watch yourself,” Lee growled, moving in. “Tenure is not an iron-clad guarantee. You know that,