Lust - 1 by Robin Wasserman

newspaper or French class, but about politics, movies, life —despite al that, he was a teacher and she was a student. He was an adult—worldly, cosmopolitan, bril iant, handsome—and she was just a kid. Nothing would ever actual y happen . Of course not. So there was no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about having a little crush—or occasional y wishing that her boyfriend would be a little more like Mr. Powel and a little less like, wel , Adam.
    Besides, it’s not like she was some pathetic twelve-year-old drawing hearts around his name in her notebook or dreaming about how good their names sounded together (although “Beth Powel ” did have a nice ring to it …).
    Okay, so she was being ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. She should forget about the whole stupid thing, focus on her work, on the newspaper, on her real relationship. She should stop wasting so much mental real estate on juvenile fantasies.
    But stil , she thought, crossing one leg over the other in what she admittedly hoped was a seductive shift in position, she was glad she’d worn the miniskirt today.
    After al , it never hurt to look your best ….

chapter
6

    There must have been something in the air.
    Harper stared down at her French quiz, the letters swimming on the page, as she struggled to focus on the subjonctif tense instead of on Adam.
    She’d been having just a little problem with that al day long.
    She’d seen him the night before, shooting hoops in his driveway.
    No shirt on.
    God, she wanted him.
    She had been about to go to sleep when she heard the rhythmic pounding of the bal on the cement pavement—and when she looked out the window, there he was, barely visible in the dim light of the ful moon.
    Racing back and forth across the driveway, his muscles straining with the effort, his hair wild, his movements fluid, one sculpted pose melting into the next.
    So lean and taut, so graceful. His large, warm hands, his supple fingers massaging the bal .
    She liked to imagine those fingers grazing her body, climbing through her tangles of hair, stroking her legs. Too bad it was only her imagination; too bad his fingers were, for the moment, taken. Just like the rest of his body, from his thick calf muscles to his tight pecs to the light sprinkling of freckles across his nose.
    Her memory was far from photographic, but when it came to the minutiae of Adam’s body, in al its curves and spots and ripples, she had total recal .
    Harper forced herself to scrawl down a couple of answers and then lay her pen down and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the warm pressure of his arms wrapped around her, his lips kissing their way down her neck, her shoulder, her breasts ….
    Her body was tingling, and she raised a hand to her breastbone, lightly grazing her fingers across the bare skin.
    If only …
    If only she would just trust him. If only she would just get over whatever it was that—
    No.
    Adam shook his head. It’s not that sex was al he wanted. He wasn’t that kind of guy. (Not that Beth seemed to notice.) But he was a guy , for God’s sake. He was eighteen, he loved his girlfriend—was it so wrong that he wanted to be with her?
    Did it bother him that al his friends just assumed that he and Beth were sleeping together? That they would probably laugh him out of the locker room if they knew the truth?
    That half the cheerleading team would be happy to jump him and tear off his clothes—and yet he was stil a virgin?
    Okay, yeah, maybe a little.
    Enough that he couldn’t look at Beth without thinking of sex.
    Hel , he couldn’t even think of Beth without thinking of sex—and sex was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about while sitting in history class staring blankly at his middle-aged teacher and her poorly bleached mustache. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he was fourteen again—total y out of control.
    It wasn’t a status thing, it wasn’t about his reputation. He loved her, and he wanted her—those slim arms