What I Want, Chapter Three.

He'd been having dreams about her for a while. It was not a new thing. But these dreams would not do. This wasn't the first time he'd had an erotic dream about her, but it was the first time he'd woken up panting her name.

And it wouldn't do.

It was a damn good thing that Jean was at the conference, a damn good thing she'd been at the conference for almost a week too. Especially when he had seen the girl on the roof and been so terrified that she was going to jump. He couldn't *do* things like that when he was with Jean. He couldn't.

He knew he had to break it off, but he really didn't know how.

He'd pulled on his jeans, zipped them up, slipped his sunglasses on, and walked out of his room.

And now he was wandering down the halls, wondering why he was wandering down the halls. God, he couldn't go on like this, he didn't want to be with Jean anymore. Sure, at one point he had wanted to more than life, but no longer. He had grown out of their love. It had been a possessive love, a love where he knew what he wanted with her, and took definite, planned, steps to get there.

He'd asked her to marry him the day he'd turned twenty. That was when he'd felt that he was old enough for her, and she'd have likely agreed, had they talked about it beforehand. She'd accepted, though they'd never set a date. He doubted that they ever would.

They grown apart. He'd thought he was mature, grown, at twenty, and he was wrong. He was more wrong than he'd ever been. He'd still been wild, reckless, and by getting engaged, caged off that portion of himself.

But he didn't want it to be caged anymore. He wanted to be wild and reckless and free again. He wanted to be uninhibited in lovemaking, not mechanical-as he had been for so long with Jean. He wanted someone to love him just as much as he did her. Which he had with Jean, he was sure, but neither of them loved enough.

That was the problem, neither of them loved enough. There had been passion in the beginning, unmatched passion, but it had ended as quickly as it had begun. And now they had practically nothing.

He wanted something. Anything. And maybe that made him a selfish, heartless bastard, but maybe he was.

Mostly he wanted her. He let her name slide off his lips as he leant up against the wall. He didn't know what that made him, a cradle-robber, he felt like one, though she was almost twenty-she had skipped a good portion of her schooling while on the run-he was twenty five. Five years wasn't all that much. But she was his student, and it was taboo to even think about a student that way. But he did. He couldn't stop.

He had been walking, not realizing he was walking, but doing so nonetheless, and he found himself in the basement, at the laundry room.

Why the hell had he gone to the laundry room? He wondered. But having never been one to question fate, he walked in.

Only to encounter her. Practically naked, sitting on a dryer and singing.

God. Was his only thought. And as her head whipped around towards him, he realized that he must have said it aloud. Her eyes were clouded with confusion as they focused, and she realized that it was him. The one she'd been dreaming about for so long.