“Alejandro,” she whispered to him. He heard the censure in her voice — he knew he shouldn’t be looking at her this way while they were on campus — but he also heard the desire between the syllables of his name.

And fuck if he didn’t love that.

“Come on,” he said, tilting his head vaguely toward the faculty parking lot.

She took a few steps, and as she passed him, he bent forward to whisper softly into her ear. “I promise not to touch you yet.”

She shivered on that last word.

So did he.

It really didn’t take long to drive from campus to Deja’s apartment complex. On a bad day, like homecoming weekend or graduation, it was probably faster for her to walk than to drive, Alejandro figured as she directed him to her complex. Alejandro was only paying as much attention as it took to turn when and where she said, but the rest of his focus — most of his focus, honestly — was centered on his hand on her thigh.

It was possessive because now that he could finally touch her, he didn’t want to stop.

They’d gone over their schedules for the semester and realized that just like last semester, they were going to struggle to see each other as much as they wanted. Deja had early intro classes, and Alejandro had late graduate classes. They had meetings on top of meetings, although there was a bright spot since they were co-chairing that outreach committee together, but he was still waiting on a few people to respond to the Doodle poll, so those meetings weren’t on the books yet, and he was worried that by the time they finally set a meeting schedule, something else would have popped up in Deja’s schedule, and she’d have to pull out. He’d promised her that he would take on the burden of all the scheduling, so he hadn’t shared this fear. He didn’t want to her to feel pressured to stay on the committee if she really couldn’t make it work, and he really didn’t want to put one more stressor on her plate.

The reality was that Alejandro just wanted to take care of Deja as much as she’d let him. But he knew she wouldn’t just let him, so he squeezed her thigh with his right hand as he turned left into her apartment complex, reassuring her and himself that he was there. He pulled his car into a parking spot she indicated with one hand and reluctantly let go to shift his car into park and depress the button to turn it off, before grabbing her leg again and squeezing.

He turned to her and smiled. “So…”

A slow smile spread across her mouth in answer. “So,” she breathed. “You want to come inside?”