Beauty and the Professor Page 8

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I know, but it’s hard to remember sometimes.”

  Realization sank in his gut. Cold self-disgust settled in his bones. “And then I came onto you like that guy did to your mother,” he finished for her.

  “No,” she said, sounding surprised. “And then with you I can’t seem to let my guard down even though I know you’re nothing like him.”

  A grim smile twisted his lips. “Not totally different. I was still willing to use my position, my money to hold influence over you. I always knew it was wrong, but hearing about someone else doing it… Fuck. There’s no question.”

  He was a bastard. He deserved for someone to kick his ass as surely as he wanted to beat the shit out of this Doug’s dear old dad. And Doug, for being a pussy.

  “Blake,” she said, turning to face him. “I was grateful for the job, but it was my choice to show up for work each day. You didn’t come on to me even when I wanted you to. You never pushed me to do anything at all.”

  Her sweet brown eyes met his directly, almost aggressively. She never flinched away from his scars, not in the beginning and certainly not now. Instead her expression was one of…tenderness. He hated to ruin it, but he couldn’t lie to her anymore.

  “Erin, I put an ad out for a housekeeper on a whim. I figured I might call someone in from time to time, but when I met you, I knew I had to see you again, so I set up a weekly cleaning schedule. Then that wasn’t enough, so I increased it to twice a week. I’m as bad as Doug, doing whatever was necessary to keep you near me.”

  “Why?” she whispered, sounding genuinely confused. It broke his heart, that confusion, that despite the strength that attracted him to her, she didn’t know her full worth.

  “God, Erin. You’re kind, you’re smart. I knew it from the first day when you gave a mean, scary-looking guy a talking-to. You told me you would clean the house…”

  “But you’d have to clean yourself,” she finished.

  “It had been a week since I’d showered,” he admitted. “So I went upstairs and felt like a new man. And when I came back into the kitchen, you’d heated up soup for me to eat.”

  “All those pizza boxes were disgusting.”

  “I was disgusting,” he agreed. Then softer, “Though I think I’ve gotten better.”

  A smile played at her lips. “No more forts made out of pizza boxes.”

  “You noticed those, huh?”

  “Yeah, you were a mess,” she said with fondness. “But you do clean up nice.”

  He smiled too, then sobered. “I have no excuse for that, Erin. And I would understand completely if you want to break up with me…in fact objectively I think you should. But if you’d stay with me…God…”

  “What?” she whispered.

  He racked his brain for the right answer, the perfect gift that would bind her to him. And came up empty. “Nothing,” he said roughly. “I have nothing to offer you. Only myself.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and for a horrible second he thought she meant goodbye. Then she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. After a second of shock and pure relief, he crushed her to him, kissing her as if his life depended on it, because as he felt her hair brush away the ever-present pain in his skin, he did depend on her. He knew only pain, and she was freedom. He felt madness, and with her it was pleasure.

  He gathered her to him, reveling in the soft weight and warmth of her in his arms again. She moaned and ground her sweet ass against his erection. He shoved the slinky fabric of her dress up her thigh, savoring smooth skin and the thin slip of her panties pointing downward. His fingers followed the edge, meeting the fleshy outer lips of her sex.

  She gasped into his mouth. “Blake.”

  “Yes,” he grunted.

  And he gave her more, at once lighter and harder, faster and deeper, until neither of them could take it anymore. He found her clit and pinched lightly. She exploded around him, a lovely feminine moan of ecstasy, a soft rush of hot liquid against his knuckles and the tremble of her thighs draped over his own.

  He petted her softly as she came back down. His erection pulsed impatiently, straining against his jeans to get near her, but he forced himself to back up, to pull away before he impaled her. He had something to prove to himself if not to her. He could have a thoughtful conversation with her. He could watch a movie all the way through. Everything didn’t always have to devolve into sex.

  So when she turned those lust-dazed eyes on him and smiled sexily, he pulled the DVD case out of his jacket and held it up like a goddamned shield.

  She blinked. “Phantom of the Opera?”

  “You always brought a movie when you came over,” he explained. “Since I was coming over, I wanted to bring something.”

  Her look was sweetly reproachful as she connected the characters. “Very subtle.”

  “Hey, it was either this or Beauty and the Beast.”

  “At least in that one they end up together.”

  “Because he turns back into a normal man,” he reminded her. “There are no happy endings for the beast.”

  Her expression dimmed. She crawled to him, straddling his legs with hers, and shit, how was he supposed to restrain himself like this? His dick was right there. A few layers of cloth could disappear and he’d slide inside her. She plucked the DVD from his fingers and tossed it to the side table.

  “What are you doing?” he choked out.

  She slid down to the floor between his feet. Her eyes flicked up, troubled and wicked. “Proving you wrong.”

  She proceeded to do just that, using her tongue and lips and breathy sighs to drive him to ecstasy. The truest form of pleasure, a pure and potent happiness that was not what he’d meant but so much better. He wanted this all the time; he wanted her forever.

  Beneath her seductive touch, he trembled with need, with hope. But he’d wanted things before, and they’d exploded right in front of him. He’d dreamed these things before and woken up alone.

  He tried to resist, to accept the satisfaction of having her in his arms without the promise of a future, but it overwhelmed him. Like a tidal wave it swept him along, dragged him under, further away until he couldn’t see the shore.

  There was only an endless expanse of him and her together, of sex and love and hope converging on the horizon. He was lost then, hips jerking upward in helpless thrall and coming copiously into her warm, waiting mouth. Dragging her onto his lap, he licked and suckled and teased her breasts until she rocked her hips down onto him. In barely minutes he was hard again, an aching erection ever ready to serve her need. It wasn’t even about sex then but sharing. None of it mattered without her, not the beauty or relief.

  He impaled her onto him; this is what you do to me. He pushed up into her; feel me, take me, never let go. Her mouth was open in wordless entreaty while her eyes…dear God, her eyes. They burned with something more poignant than lust—there was knowledge. She knew what she did to him with her body, how low he could fall. She knew how hopelessly he thrust into her, desperate for more of her all the while aware it would never be enough.

  “Don’t hide from me,” she whispered.

  But he didn’t even know what she meant. He was looking at her. She could see the worst parts of him, in the ugliness of his face and the degenerate use of her body. He showed her every dirty, unkind desire and God help her, she never told him no.

  He realized she was murmuring something. Not a wordless sex-chant, but something more. “Let me see, let me see,” she moaned, and he shuddered beneath. He writhed, and it must have looked like pain. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. A fucking tear—how had that happened? He didn’t know, but it hovered there on the brink, and he was unable or unwilling to reach up and wipe it away. She wanted to see? He would show her what a coward he was, and even then he wouldn’t let her go. Mine.

  The teardrop slipped from his eye, falling over skin that should have died. But it wasn’t dead, it was wholly, painfully alive. It burne
d all day and all night as if the explosion had never stopped. The moisture of a single tear wasn’t nearly enough to put the fire out, but she rested her face against him, right there. Her soft skin was a balm anywhere, but there, on his burns, it was a goddamned miracle.

  He’d stopped moving, he realized dimly, but she hadn’t. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved over him in sweet, rhythmic sex. Her face was pressed against his, right where he was most disgusting, right where he was most vulnerable. He didn’t know why she’d want to see that, but it twisted something inside him. It made him desperate.

  Desperate, he grasped her shoulders and pulled her down. Too hard. She winced.

  Shit. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “No, that’s what I… Show me.”

  He shook his head, refusing even while he held on tightly and did it again. She gasped at the impact, the breathy sound spurring him on. He thrust inside her faster and harder, the room filling with the slaps of her skin against his, of her moans and her cries. He was cruel and relentless but instead of turning him away, her sex clenched around him. It squeezed him tight as she threw back her head. Beautiful, so beautiful.

  He shut his eyes tightly and placed hot, open-mouthed kisses at her neck while his body shuddered its release. He groaned against her skin, breathing her in while he ground her body down against his cock. Helplessly, his hand clenched in her hair. Her soft pussy tightened around his cock, her hips rocking gently, wringing a final spurt of come from his cock.

  Her contented sigh was hot against his neck.

  Chapter Nine

  Erin

  Consciousness came back to Erin, carrying an almost acute sense of loss. The chill of something found and then lost. Still groggy, she stretched slightly, feeling along the thin cotton sheets of her bed. They were cool to the touch—and empty.

  With a start, she opened her eyes, looking around for Blake. After their passionate bout of sex in the living room, they’d made their way into her bedroom for round two before falling asleep entangled in each other’s arms. It was the first night he’d spent over at her place, the first time he’d been here at all, and though his house was certainly nicer, it felt lovely to have him here. Like the first burst of bright spring, blinding hope on well-worn terrain.

  He wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom. She slipped out of the bed, clothed only in the lingering musk from their lovemaking. A puddle of white turned out to be his undershirt. As she picked it up, something flat and square flipped open.

  Little pieces of white floated down to the floor. His wallet. And she’d just spilled something. Bending, she started to gather the slips of paper when she realized what they were.

  She opened one. The key to your future lies in the past.

  Another. All your hard work will soon pay off.

  Do not let ambitions destroy small successes.

  Someone you care about seeks reconciliation.

  There were more.

  The fortune cookies. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. He’d saved the messages inside them, each and every one from their nights together. She was mildly impressed that some of them had come true, but far more moved that he’d kept these little folded pieces of paper, little notes of nothingness marking their time together.

  Clutching the fortunes in her hand, she pulled the undershirt over her head. It went down to mid-thigh, so she padded out into the dark living room.

  Blake stood at the sliding glass windows looking out, his silhouette both intimidating and forlorn. In that moment, she saw the warrior he usually kept carefully banked. His shoulders were broad and carved with muscles, angling down along thick arms crossed in front of him. His back was lean, sloping into loose-slung jeans he’d put on. His feet were bare, but she didn’t discount his fierceness for one second like this. His deceptive casualness, his quiet intensity—he looked calm but ready to fight. Not murderous but capable of killing. She shivered.

  The truth was that his time in the military wasn’t a reality she understood. Throwing yourself into danger. Fighting for your life. It was theoretical to her. She felt in awe of his service to his country but unknowing of the harsh realities—or aftereffects.

  Why didn’t he sleep? She’d asked him that night in his study, but he’d never answered. She sensed the answer lay here, in the turmoil that rippled through the air unseen. He didn’t sleep because he couldn’t. He couldn’t rest because his heart was still at war.

  In some ways, it was a far greater barrier to their happiness than her mistrust of men, than Melinda, his lover-come-lately. The pain inside him was an invisible enemy that invaded when they were most vulnerable, breathing desperation into their intimacy and inevitably into their sex. There were places inside him that she couldn’t reach, not with her words or her body. And if she could? She was a little afraid of what she would find.

  He turned suddenly, though unsurprised. She got the impression he’d known she was there, probably heard her wake up, his senses finely honed, primed for a battle left behind.

  “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, although it wasn’t really an answer, she realized.

  He crossed the room and took her into his arms. Some of the tension left his body, and she felt grateful at least that she helped him that much. If she could only be his balm, then she would soothe and soothe him until she was spread thin.

  She opened her palm, showing him what she’d found. Some of the papers dropped from her hand, twirling in the still air like dandelion leaves, wishes on the wind.

  “They fell out,” she said. “You kept them.”

  He spoke gruffly. “I thought if I saved up, then maybe I could have a future with you.”

  Her yearning felt like a knife, slicing her into ribbons from the inside. A future, a together, a moment stretching out onto the horizon, never ending.

  “Yes,” she breathed, revealing her want.

  “Yes?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure what he was asking for. A confirmation that they could have it, that they could last.

  He’d told her he loved her on the first night they’d slept together. Never since, as if sensing how much she feared the undeniable pull of him, the sense that she could lose herself in him and never find her way out. With Doug it had been infatuation, but this was more—so much more. How much worse would it be to have him look at her with disgust? How much worse for him to pass her by on campus without even turning his head in her direction?

  The memory of that winter break with Doug humiliated her, highlighting the worst parts of her life, how little she had to offer. She knew Blake didn’t judge her for being poor, but the fact remained that she paid her rent by cleaning his large, stately home. Her mother scrimped and saved from her own cleaning business to help pay for the rest of her tuition not covered by the scholarship and loans. She was in a different stratosphere, miles away even as he held her close.

  “Do you think love is enough?” she whispered, staring into his fathomless eyes.

  For a moment he was silent, and she thought he might not answer. He seemed thoughtful and…so far away she’d never reach him.

  He bent to press a kiss to her lips. “You pulled me back from the brink. I don’t talk about it because I don’t like to think about how close I was, how weak I was then, but it’s true. And I never want you to feel beholden to me, stuck with me because I’d fall apart if you left. The fact is, losing you would hurt ten times worse than having half my face blown off, but I’d keep going. I’d go on living because I don’t know any other way.”

  Her heart cracked a little then, an almost audible, tactile thing that filled her whole body with pain but also tenderness. A raw sort of hope, more jagged than love, more meaningful than all her fears.

  “I love you, Blake.”

  “God, I know,” he groaned against her forehead. “You can’t know how much that means. Do I think love is enough? It’s the only thing at all. The world is cold and hollow, but with
you, I feel alive again.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek, meeting his bare skin, dampening the crinkly hair and muscled plane of his chest.

  “Ah, don’t cry, Erin. I never meant to make you cry.”

  “I can’t help it. I just want so much…I need…”

  “Shh,” he soothed her, walking her back into the bedroom, pressing her down on the bed. They were numbing the pain, they were pushing the worry out of focus to be dealt with another day, but she didn’t care.

  There was only so much she could take, that he could take before he needed release. Before she needed to give it to him.

  He murmured to her, don’t cry, never cry, love you, love you, and she found that she wasn’t the balm after all; it was him. She wasn’t the one to heal him; she was put back together with each soft touch and firm invasion of his body into hers. Let go, he whispered, and she wasn’t held together anymore; she broke apart. She fell to pieces, awash in a sea of sweet senses, a land with no edges and no divides—just this.

  Just bliss.

  Chapter Ten

  Erin

  Erin picked up her clothes by the dawn’s pale light and left Blake’s room, shutting the door behind her. She slipped into the bathroom down the hall to change. She didn’t want to wake Blake. No, that was a lie. She wanted very much to wake him up, to make love to him, and to spend the rest of the day in bed with him. But real life was on her heels, right upon her.

  Two weeks of bliss tore down her every defense.

  Real life was here to build the walls back up again.

  Final professor assignments were announced today, and that meant textbooks would be listed in the university’s bookstore bulletin. She needed only one class for her last semester. The rest of her credits were for research, though in truth, the exploratory phase was complete. Now she had to write the final draft of her thesis, which would be presented to the committee at the end of the summer semester.

  She splashed water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror. College graduate. Barely making ends meet. Master’s degree candidate. Maid service. She didn’t know which side was the real Erin.