He felt his lip twitch slightly, despite his attempt to repress an answering laugh. “You better be.”
When he finally finished with the buttons, he drew open her top. She was trembling when he lowered his mouth to her neck, but she managed to lie mostly still.
He trailed his mouth lower, and she gasped when he reached her right breast and gently mouthed it over the satin of her bra. The nipple peaked for him immediately, and he teased it with his tongue until she fisted the bedcovers with both hands.
He fondled her left breast with his hand as he tended to the other with his mouth. It wasn’t long before she was shifting her hips and stifling little moans.
He lifted his head to look down on her, his chest and his groin pulsing with feeling.
There was something about her responsiveness to him that he couldn’t get enough of.
She lay in a debauched sprawl beneath him. She still wore her top and underwear set, and her dark hair was spread out around her flushed face, kinking slightly because she hadn’t dried it all the way. Her green eyes—normally so lively and clever—were half-closed and glazed over with growing arousal.
His cock gave a throb of need at the sight.
He wanted to please her, though—far more than he wanted to please himself. So he took his time, and his touch was unhurried as brought his other hand up and fondled both of her nipples simultaneously.
Lori arched up into his hands, her mouth falling open and her eyes falling shut.
Ander felt a surge of desire as he watched her so overcome by his touch. He slid one hand down to her belly and stroked it gently, resisting to the impulse to dip into her panties and see if her pussy was wet.
“God, Ander!” Her hips squirmed as he continued to play with her tight nipples. “Feels so good. Are you sure this is okay?”
He knew what she was asking. She was worried about him—since she’d told him they couldn’t have intercourse. “I promise,” he murmured, “this is for you. I want to do this for you.” He cupped both of her breasts again, squeezing gently as she pressed up eagerly into his hands.
His erection was uncomfortably confined in his trousers, but he ignored it as he slid his hands down to Lori’s thighs, stroking the soft flesh there.
A visceral satisfaction pulsed through him when she whimpered helplessly as his hands got closer to her arousal.
“You’re so beautiful.” His voice was now embarrassingly thick. “So beautiful. I love to see you like this.”
Back when he was seeing clients, he’d been good at dialogue in bed—coming up with endless, creative dirty talk or sweet, romantic murmurings, depending on the woman’s taste. All of that had been fake, though. What he really felt when he made love to Lori couldn’t possibly be shaped with words.
She was panting, her chest rising and falling quickly, her nipples poking out shamelessly through the thin fabric of her bra. “Love you. Love this.”
Ander had to stifle a groan at the way her words made him feel. He slid down her little panties and parted her thighs, flooded with feeling as he saw how wet she was.
He stroked her with one finger, causing her to choke on a sound in response. He teased until she couldn’t hold her pelvis still and she made wordless, pleading sounds. Then he sank two fingers into her pussy.
Lori cried out in pleasure, her back lifting up off the bed. She clutched at the bedding desperately and bit down hard on her bottom lip as he began to fuck her rhythmically with his fingers, curling them up against her g-spot.
“How’s that?” he asked. His own arousal pulsed distractingly, but he kept telling himself to ignore it.
“Good!” she mumbled, her head tossing. “Oh, God, Ander, it’s so good.”
He sped up the pumping of his fingers. She was just barely rocking into his hands, and she gripped the bedcovers in an attempt to hold still so he could pleasure her.
The sight of her nipples beneath her bra was too tempting, and Ander leaned over to take one in his mouth without altering the stroke of his hand.
She cried out loudly as he suckled through the fabric, her body tensing so deeply she started to shake.
He could feel her pussy tightening around his fingers until she cried out again, a shudder running through her entire body as she climaxed.
Ander stroked her through the spasms, and he didn’t stop, even as she began to relax and gasp out her satisfaction.
He did lift his head though, so he could see her red face, her glazed eyes, and the sultry languor in her expression.
“Very nice,” she said, a little flicker of amusement in her eyes.
“It looked nice.” Ander glanced down at his fingers still pumping in and out. She was wetter than ever now, the slickness allowing his fingers to continue moving despite how tight she now was.
“Oh,” Lori said, as if she were surprised, when he pressed hard against her g-spot again. When he pushed against it a second time, she cried, “Oh, God!” and her arms flew up above her head.
Ander had never seen anything sexier in his life, and he had to fight the compulsion of his cock. “Can you come for me again?”
“Uh huh,” she mumbled, closing her eyes as the sensations washed over her. “Uh huh.”
He pushed hard on her g-spot until she came a second time, her hips riding out the spasms with shameless enthusiasm. Then, unable to resist, he lowered his face between her legs and closed his lips around her clit, drinking in the scent of her and the sound of her loud, eager response. He could no longer thrust his fingers, but he kept them inside her as he sucked hard on her clit.
She came again with a broken cry, almost sobbing in her intense pleasure as he continued his ministrations without giving her a break.
Finally, he slid his fingers out, gently stroking her intimate flesh.
He stared down at her limp, flushed form as she panted out a mumbled series of, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh God!” and tried to recover from her orgasms.
Ander’s eyes blurred over with desire and with a primitive pride that he had reduced a woman as strong and articulate as Lori to this state.
“So was that lucky enough?” he asked, after giving her a minute to recover.
His own body was screaming at him to take her hard and fast, but she was sore from last night and he wasn’t about to hurt her.
“Oh, God, I feel really, really lucky.” She reached up to caress his head.
He stiffly tilted it away from her hand. “Better not.” He was so aroused he might lose it at any moment.
“Poor Ander,” she murmured. “Maybe you can get lucky too, after all.”
His shoulder stiffened. “But you’re sore.”
“Not that bad. It will be fine. Just don’t be too rough.” She fumbled with his trousers until she’d freed his cock. “I want to, Ander. Really.”
He could tell she meant it, and he groaned in relief, positioned himself above her and then sliding in with a careful thrust.
She cried out on the penetration, her voice drowning out his hum of helpless pleasure at the feel of her around him.
“Okay?” he managed to say, holding himself up on shaking arms.
“Oh, yeah. It’s good.”
He began to thrust almost immediately, his control snapping. He moved in a fast, steady rhythm, desperately trying to rein in his need so he wouldn’t be too rough.
She was with him, though, bucking up her hips eagerly to meet each of his thrusts. And soon they were both gasping as they worked up toward release.
Ander wasn’t sure if Lori would be able to come again, but her cries of effort and pleasure got louder until her body froze and then shuddered. Her climax pulled him over the edge too, and he completely lost it as the pleasure clenched and then exploded out through his cock.
He must have cried out as loudly as Lori did, although he wasn't conscious of doing so. The next thing he was aware of was collapsing on top of her. He might have laid there far too long had she not nudged him gently.
He rolled off
her with a groan, too boneless and replete to even move. He had to meet with a faculty member in twenty minutes now, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy to make it to campus.
After a while, though, Lori turned her head to look at him. She studied him for a long time—so long Ander actually felt rather self-conscious, since he wasn’t sure what she was seeing in him.
“Are you all right?”
Ander pulled his eyebrows together. “What do you mean? That was great sex.”
“I know it was. That’s not what I meant. It just seems like maybe…maybe something else is bothering you. Something not about the sex.” Her eyes were unusually soft as they rested on his face. “Are you all right?”
He wasn’t all right. Not really.
She reached out to cup his cheek when he didn’t answer. “What’s bothering you, Ander? You know you can tell me anything, right?”
He wanted to tell her. He desperately wanted to tell her, but he didn’t want to be that man, the man he would be if he let down his defenses, if he let himself break more than he was already broken.
His father used to tell him he was weak when he cried, weak when he complained, weak when he asked for something he didn’t have.
He’d rejected everything about his father and was determined not to give the man any more power over his life.
This wasn’t about his father. He wouldn’t let it be.
What Ander needed was far less important than what Lori needed, and he wasn’t going to give her anything less.
“I know,” he said. “I’m really just tired from the trip.”
Three
The next day, Ander was working in the library when Lori called him, wondering if he was free for lunch.
He was supposed to have called her, but he’d gotten wrapped up in research and lost track of time.
Lori didn’t sound annoyed at his lapse, but he wasn’t going to risk hurting her feelings by refusing her invitation so he got his stuff together and headed out to meet her at a café near her conference hotel.
He would rather have just worked all day.
When he was working, he didn’t have to think about anything else. He could drown all brooding thoughts with words on pages—words about a culture that was dead and unchanging. When he was with Lori, however, his mind started to move in directions that were simply too dangerous.
He tried to focus on the conversation at lunch—on her enthusiastic ramblings about her morning at the writers’ conference she was attending. He met her eyes, nodded at the right times, laughed at her amusing descriptions of eccentric fellow writers and the argument she’d gotten into at one session.
The first time Ander had met Lori had been in a coffee shop, for an initial meeting to discuss terms and prepare for her first client session with him. She’d been pretty and young and nervous and surprisingly blunt.
She’d asked him about his unusual name, and for some reason he’d told her the truth.
“Ander,” she said, pulling his attention back.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
He took a bite of his sandwich to give him time to figure out what she’d just said. Finally, he had to admit, “I’m sorry. What?”
“What about May?” She spoke slowly and without any particular inflection, a clear sign she was growing impatient with him. “That would be in between the end of the semester and your next dig, and I don’t have anything big planned for the whole month.”
He blinked, finally processing that she’d changed topics and was now talking about wedding plans. “Okay.”
She frowned. “Is that not a good time for you? When would you prefer?”
“Whatever you’d like is fine.” He wanted to marry Lori—more than anything—but he honestly didn’t care about the date, the location, or the kinds of flowers involved.
“I’d just like to set a date so we can make plans. It really doesn’t have to be May. Do you want it earlier? We don’t have to—”
“Lori, May is fine. No reason to make it earlier.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her salad for a long time. “We can postpone it if you want.”
He had no idea why she was being so wishy-washy about this. He’d be happy to marry her whenever she wanted. Next weekend, even. “Make the date whatever you want it to be. I really don’t care.”
“Well, it’s your wedding too.”
He sighed, hoping the next eight months weren’t going to be like this. “I know.”
He shouldn’t be surprised she might get hung up on wedding details. They were important to a lot of women, and Lori had a very strong romantic streak in her, no matter how hard she tried to mask it with irony.
She was a romance writer, after all.
She’d intrigued him from the beginning. A romance writer still a virgin at twenty-six. It wasn’t that he’d found her situation implausible. Women all had different reasons for having or not having sex—he knew this better than most—and if authors could write convincingly about committing murder or living in the Middle Ages without actually doing it, then they could certainly write convincingly about having sex without having done it. None of that would have made him blink.
But her coming to him, trusting him with her first time—that had been beyond his experience. Being with her in bed had felt different, even in their first session. The more he’d been with her, the deeper he’d fallen, until he was hopelessly in love, with no way of shifting their business relationship into something real.
It didn’t take much for him to relive those raw, helpless feelings even now.
He’d stayed awake night after night back then, thinking about her, fantasizing about scenarios where she might fall in love with him, aching for another taste of real intimacy with her, when he’d had absolutely none of it in his life before he met her.
His mother had died early. And his father wasn’t a man who’d ever known how to love.
“Ander? Did you hear me?”
“What?” He blinked, trying to drag himself away from the memories and wanting to claw that awful shuddering from his chest.
“You totally zoned out. Did you hear anything I said?”
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
“You look awful.” She studied his face closely. “Do you feel all right? You look like you might be sick or something.”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just tired.” It was true. He was tired of so many things. Tired of never being able to move on from the past, when he had everything he’d ever wanted waiting for him now.
Lori sat silently, just looking at him. And he was suddenly scared she would see something in his expression that he didn’t want her to see.
“You’re not going to start to fuss over me and try to feed me chicken soup, are you?” He smiled, so she’d know he was teasing.
She laughed with what looked like relief. “Maybe. If you still look so tired when you come home tonight, I’ll have to coddle you a little.”
“I can think of certain ways I wouldn’t mind being coddled.” He twitched his eyebrows and was rewarded when she giggled again, her cheeks flushing a delicious shade of pink.
It gave him an idea. He could show her how much he loved her—since he’d been a flop at conversation today—and he could also distract himself from everything lurking in the shadows.
He glanced at his watch. “What time does your next session start?”
“Two. I still have an hour. Did you want to do something?”
“No. I need to get back to campus, but I think I left a book in your car. I’ll walk with you to get it.”
“I wasn’t going to my car. I’m in the parking garage next to the hotel, and I just walked over here. Anyway, I don’t think you left a book there. I haven’t seen one.”
“It probably slid under a seat. Do you mind walking with me to check?”
“Sure.” She looked completely innocent as she finished off her water and then reached for her bag.
T
hey walked together to the parking garage and then up the stairs and across the level to her car, a small blue SUV. When she clicked the doors unlocked, Ander opened the driver’s door. “Check the back, will you?” he asked casually. “I’ll check the front.”
Lori obediently opened the back door and bent over to look under the seat for the fictitious book.
Ander shut the front door. Then he grabbed her by the waist and heaved her into the backseat.
She cried out in surprise and then with a different emotion as he climbed into the backseat behind her and then hauled her onto his lap. “What are you doing?” she demanded breathlessly.
“You know me. Never one to miss an opportunity.” His hands settled on her ass, holding it possessively.
“But your book?”
“There was no book. It was a shameless ruse to get you where I wanted you.”
She flushed deeply red, but her eyes glowed with affection and excitement. “In the back of the car?”
“Only convenient place, unless you want to try a public restroom.”
She giggled. “You don’t want to wait until tonight?”
“We can tonight too. I’ve been gone a long time. We have a lot of time to make up for.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.” She leaned forwarded to kiss him. “But someone might see.”
“Who’s going to see? The back windows are tinted, and the car is facing a concrete wall.”
“I guess.” She glanced around, as if to affirm they were protected. “It seems as if your logic is faultless.”
He bit off a groan when she moved one hand to his head and caressed him, her other hand squeezing down to his groin. “My logic is a thing of wonder.”
“Your logic isn’t the only thing of wonder you can lay claim to.”
He was momentarily distracted by a rush of emotion—need, affection, understanding, tenderness, something like awe. He couldn’t believe this woman was his. Couldn’t believe she wanted him so much. Couldn’t believe she’d shaped her life around him as much as he had around her.
But that kind of emotion pushed him toward other feelings, the ones he wasn’t strong enough to process yet. So he made himself focus on other things.