She shivered as she walked past him, the warmth of his large body seeming to penetrate the many layers she was wearing. Her legs felt stiff as she walked up the short staircase to the first floor. It almost felt like when they’d done this last month, but different. Deja’s dread at the Dean’s new assignment was still threatening to choke her, but there was also a crackling of tension between them that she didn’t know what to do with except revel in it.

When she reached the first floor, she turned once again to thank him, but he’d already stepped up onto the next staircase, his eyes lifting because he’d been watching her ass. He blushed but then gestured at her to keep walking.

Deja was too shocked to do anything but listen to his directions. She bit her lips shut and walked up the next two flights of stairs with wide, shocked eyes and the heat of Alejandro’s presence at her back.

On the top floor, Alejandro reached around her to open the door just as she touched the handle, and their fingers tangled together for a second before Deja flinched away.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologize,” he whispered back as he pulled the door to the Sociology floor open.

Deja was frozen. Alejandro’s chest was a firm presence at her back, and the smell of his cologne had engulfed her, making her feel lightheaded and aroused. She turned her head toward him, and her eyes caught on a delicate gold chain around his throat. She’d never noticed that he wore jewelry before because they’d never been this close before.

She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, and his Adam’s apple bounced as he swallowed. She bit down on the soft flesh between her teeth and let her eyes roam over the perpetual five o’clock shadow on his jaw, his full lips, the tip of his nose. When they made eye contact this time, they were so close Deja knew she wasn’t imagining the heat she saw there; she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Alejandro wanted her as bad as she wanted him.

“Can I walk you to your office?” he asked in the softest, sexiest whisper Deja had ever heard from anyone ever. Those few words made her sex shudder in anticipation, and Deja surprised herself with the answering gasp that fell from her lips. She’d never heard herself sound so…soft before. She was even more shocked at how her anxiety had been momentarily burned away by the full force of her desire.