untidywords:
God, what a thrill that look on Joshua’s face was. The one thing Jade could never do without were those kinds of looks. It didn’t take much effort to produce them, and any person that looked at her the way Joshua looked at her now was a person she often kept in her life. Even Joshua himself had started out merely being such a person – anything from subtly flirting with him when he was in a relationship to the tryst they’d had sparingly over the last year or so had gone toward that need for a thrill, that need to be as unconventional as she could be. Of course, Joshua had become… something more. Something Jade wouldn’t let herself think about, something she pushed down deep inside and hid away for fear what it would do to her. Any other person, she would have already run from by now. Any other person, and the fact that she had to push part of herself down in fear would have sent her out of their life faster than they could have reacted. But not Joshua. She kept coming back and back and back and back, well past the time in their “relationship” that she should. Jade chuckled into his lips, arms finding their way around his neck almost immediately. Making them sway as she deepened the kiss, Jade pressed her body even closer to his – though almost just as soon as she had, she pulled away. Lips red and swollen, she tilted her head to the side and grinned. “Wow, you weren’t lying,” she teased. Absentmindedly, her hands played with his hair. “The life of a professor not exciting enough to keep you entertained while I’m gone?”
There was a part of Joshua --- a small part, but a part nonetheless --- that knew he should have stayed away. All his friends had told him over and over that he had no future with Jade --- at least not the one he so yearned for. They said they knew women like Jade, knew how she smiled pretty and lured men with her beauty, knew how she could snap her fingers and have Joshua crawling back to her. Yet, for as much as Joshua understood that they were right in his future with Jade being as distant as whatever the word future meant, he also knew they were wrong to judge her. He felt something. He knew she did, too. It was in their kiss now, in the way she looked at him, in the way she lit up at his touch. It was all there! Or, Joshua thought it might be.
When she pulled away, Joshua licked his lips and smiled at Jade in the way he smiled only for her. His eyes shone with love --- even if he had not yet admitted to himself that he loved her. “No, not really,” he said, “not even the tests are keeping me entertained these days.” He chuckled. “Are you staying? Do you want to?” A part of him almost wanted to beg for her to. Something in him almost asked her to. But he refrained himself. “You could if you wanted,” Joshua said instead. “Have you had dinner? I could make something.”
He didn’t ask her to stay, but he might as well.















