by Lara Norman
“Take care of yourself, do you hear me?” His voice was gruff and even deeper than usual.
“You have to do the same, you know.” She sniffed and buried her head further into his chest. He was practically strangling her with his death grip around her back, but she didn't care. She hated to let him go.
“I do, I promise.”
“You work and don't have any fun,” she accused him. “Date somebody, fall in love. Make me an aunt.”
“Watch your mouth.”
She laughed.
“I love you, Ray.”
“I love you, big brother. I’ll see you in less than a month.”
He looked up at Luna. “Are you going home for Christmas? You're more than welcome here.”
Reagan pulled away from him to look at Luna, and she held her arms out to her friend. Luna joined them for a threeway hug.
“I’ll go home,” she said as she pulled away. “I haven't seen my parents since the summer. I’ve been saving up for the trip.”
“Okay.” Reagan wiped her face. “We really should go.”
Now Reagan sat in Hudson's class feeling devastated. She hated being back there in that place. She missed Grant, she missed his hugs, and she missed the time they’d spent with Luna. She wasn't happy to be in Hudson’s class while she looked like shit. Her eyes were red and there were circles underneath them. He, of course, looked good enough to eat. He hadn't shaved his face in a few weeks and the beard he grew occasionally was back. She shivered as she thought of that beard and how it had felt against her sensitive skin.
They were heading into final exams and spent most of the classes in the month of December going over the exam subjects. Reagan knew she would do fine, especially in his class, but she was overall unprepared. She felt like she was out of sorts, unfocused and easily distracted. She chalked it up to missing her brother, but Luna told her she was acting like she was lovesick.
“I thought you said there wasn’t anybody in your life.”
“Why would you say that?” Reagan looked up from her spot on Davis’s couch where they had been studying for the past hour.
“You’re mooning over someone. You need to get laid.”
“You need to get laid.”
“Yeah, you know I'm right, especially since you’re so sensitive about the subject. Who is it?”
“Luna, leave her be,” Davis spoke up. When she saw him for the first time after coming back, Reagan had been surprised to discover how much she missed him.
“Ugh, can we drop it?” Reagan frowned as she attempted to look back down at her notes. Of course, Davis knew who her crush was, but he’d promised never to tell Luna.
“You know who it is!” Luna accused Davis.
“Nope.” He kept his head down as he pretended to read a book, but Luna knew him too well. She was hurt that he knew, but Reagan hadn't felt like she could share it with her.
“Okay, fine.” Reagan slammed her book closed. “If I tell you, no judging, and then can we eat? I’m tired of studying.”
“Fine by me,” Davis said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll go order pizza while the two of you talk.”
They watched him walk out of the room and then Luna turned accusatory eyes to her friend. “What the fuck, Reagan?”
Reagan sighed. “Okay, I'm sorry I told him and not you, but it was a long time ago and I’d forgotten about it.”
Luna just waited, her arms crossed.
“It’s my lit comp professor.” She waited for the fireworks, but there was nothing but silence. “Um, we met on the way here to college. It was storming, I was running late, and had decided to stop at a hotel for the night. I spotted a broken down car on the side of the road, and pulled over to help. It was him.”
“I’m assuming he was a stranger to you at that point?” Luna frowned as she imagined her young friend pulling over in the dark to help a strange man.
“Yes.” Reagan nodded, pushing her hair behind her ear and swallowing before continuing. “I did something I’ve never done before.” She shot a look toward the door where Davis had gone. “I went to his room and asked him for a one night stand. I didn't tell him that I was a virgin.”
“What the crap, Reagan? It must have been so bad.” Even Luna had to shift in her seat at the thought of how painful that would be.
“It kind of was, at first.” She looked down. “But by the third time, it was amazing.” She couldn't help it, she shot her friend a huge grin. “I know I didn't have anything to compare it to before then, but still. It can't always be like that. He likes certain things, from what I gathered, and he turns me on so ridiculously. The problem is that we can’t date while I'm his student or he’d be fired.”
“Okay, so three more weeks?”
“I'm in his class next semester, too. He's the only professor that teaches the advanced literature classes.”
“So you have to hold out for the end of the school year?”
“We failed at that a few times already. It’s been very up and down.”
“He’s who you were expecting a text from the week before Thanksgiving, isn't he?” No wonder she’d been so distracted. Luna couldn't blame her.
“Yeah.”
“So you're both prepared to break the rules?”
“It's so hard not to. I don't even know if I would like him as a person. We’ve only had sex, we've never really talked. He's been an asshole, he's been sweet. It’s clear he wants me as much as I want him.” Reagan frowned. She wasn’t even sure that was true.
“What did he do to you?”
Reagan frowned. What hadn't he done? “When?”
“The third time that you said was so amazing.”
“I swear to God, if Davis is eavesdropping. . .”
“He wouldn't do that.”
“It was just . . . he was behind me while we were in the bed, and he just . . . you know my ass is huge, so how he managed . . . he arched my back so far, closed his hand around my throat, and pulled my arms behind my back. I’d never felt so dominated. It was almost too much, but he seemed to know exactly how much pressure he could use. From that angle, with my arms trapped behind me . . .” She looked up into Luna’s eyes. “I highly recommend it.”
Luna threw a pillow. “Asshole. I’m not getting any of any nature, and now you've turned up the heat with that description.”
“It's not my fault you aren't getting any. Ask. He’d give.”
Now Luna groaned. “I know. We weren't talking about me, though, were we?”
“No, but turnabout's fair play.”
“Ladies, is it safe?” Davis called from the hallway.
“It is now.”
They ate pizza and Reagan tried to put that third time out of her head. She’d done things with Hudson that she hadn't ever planned on doing with anyone. She’d let him do things to her body . . . He’d used her until she was sore, bruised, and slightly burned all over by his beard. Her skin was red and raw in some places. Her nipples hurt for a week. He’d whispered in her ear how he wanted to put clamps on them and watch them engorge. He wanted to fuck her mouth, he wanted her on her knees before him. He told her of a lot of things that night. She’d managed to fulfill one of the things he’d quasi-promised. She hadn't really thought he'd meant any of it at the time, more that he enjoyed the dirty talk, but she had known when she broke into his office that she could show him a thing or two he’d talked about that night. That was the key to keeping him interested in her, or so she’d thought.
She didn't expect to have any time to be worrying about him for the rest of the month. Between their last few classes of the term and then final exams, they would both be too busy. After that, she would be home for two weeks before the new term in January. And after that, he had to wait for an entire four months again before he was technically allowed to be anywhere near her. She didn't think she could wait that long, and hoped he wasn't expecting that, either.
Davis was nice enough to distract them with tales of his time at home for the b
reak. He talked about his parents and the friends they invited over. Reagan couldn't blame Luna for not wanting to ever go with him. The people he described were stuck up, in her opinion. Her mind went back to Hudson, and she wondered what his family was like. Was he doted on as a child? Did he have both parents in his life? Did he have siblings, a girlfriend back home? Was Reagan just a distraction while he was living in Maryland? Maybe he was poor like she and Grant were, or maybe he was as rich as Davis. She wondered what she would do if it turned out that he was a snob. She wasn't sure.
It wasn't long before she had to be back in her own dorm. She was looking forward to the end of the semester due to the simple fact that she was allowed to put in for a transfer request over the winter break. She knew that Lydia would beat her to it, so she wasn’t terribly worried about filling out the paperwork in time. She just hoped whoever they replaced her with was a nicer person, which didn't appear to be too hard to accomplish. Almost anybody would be nicer than Lydia.
Reagan showered before bed, as was her habit. She was tempted to touch herself again after thinking about Hudson for most of the evening, but she didn't feel like it was something she wanted to do often in the shared bathroom. Luna was right about one thing; Reagan was wound too tight.
Chapter Fifteen
The first two weeks of December flew by for Reagan. She was positive that she’d studied more in the past ten days than in her entire previous school years combined. She was ready for the three-day break all the students had before final exams. On Saturday, she wanted to catch up on her sleep. Unfortunately, Lydia had other plans.
“I finally got the housing transfer I wanted,” she shouted into her phone.
Reagan groaned and covered her head with her pillow, but inside she was doing a happy dance. She wouldn't have to put up with insults, snooping, and loud rants at all hours of the day and night anymore. No more being woken by loud phone calls. If her next roommate was just as bad as Lydia, she would most definitely cry. Hopefully, she would get a friendly, quiet roommate.
Reagan sat up when her phone chimed with a text. She didn't recognize the number, and the message was nothing more than an address that she thought was nearby. Her entire body flushed with heat as she pushed her tangled hair out of her face and looked down at the text again. She understood entirely what was going on, but she didn’t like it. She was more than a booty call. Resolved, she deleted the text and the address before texting Luna to ask if she had anything going on. After Luna’s reply, she got up and dressed for the day, ignoring Lydia completely.
If Hudson thought he could stand her up, ignore her for weeks, and she’d still come running the second he thought about her again, he was mistaken. It didn't matter that she wanted to be with him more than almost anything in the world at that moment; he had to at least make an effort or there could never be anything between them.
She went to Luna’s instead. They made cookies and gossiped about Davis and his efforts to try to get Luna to date him. They watched a movie and ate their cookies, and Reagan never once checked the cell phone she purposely left in her purse. The girls made plans for the day before winter break to exchange gifts and have a mini Christmas party. They discussed exams and the upcoming term and Reagan tried not to focus on the fact that she had Professor Clark for another several months. Luna invited Reagan to come over the next day if she had nothing else to do, and Reagan agreed.
She left Luna’s and stopped by the cafeteria on campus to get dinner. Since her scholarship covered meals and she had yet to get a job, it was the most cost-efficient way to go. She knew there were job listings on the school website, and she intended to look through the postings while she ate. She needed something on campus or close to it in order to cut down on fuel costs, something part-time so it wouldn't interfere with her studies, and something that she wouldn't completely hate. After looking at the myriad jobs in food services for half an hour she was about to lose hope when she saw a shadow fall over her table, causing her to look up.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hissed under her breath.
Hudson sat in the empty chair across from her without asking if he could. “You’ve been ignoring my texts.”
She clenched her jaw. He was glowering in a way that somehow turned her on. Irritated that he could cause such conflicting emotions, she shifted in her seat. “Yes, I have.”
He leaned forward so she could hear his lowered voice. “Why? We agreed I would send my address and you’d come over.”
Reagan stared at Hudson in blatant disbelief. The beard was longer, more like it had been the first time. She remembered exactly how it felt rubbing against the inside of her thighs. “That was weeks ago. You have some damn nerve.”
She picked up her purse and the rest of her food and got up. She made it as far as the trash can before he caught her elbow. She glared up at his face as he towered over her, and he immediately let go. He couldn't afford to cause a scene, which she very well knew.
Reagan walked out the doors, appalled when he followed. “Leave me alone, Hudson.” Her voice was very close to a hiss.
“No. I want you to tell me why you changed your mind.”
She stopped walking, looking up at him as he stood several feet away. “I didn't. We had an agreement, you broke it, and now you think I should drop everything and jump at your bidding because you’re bored and horny.”
Hudson looked around to be certain no one was within earshot. “That’s not true. I wanted to see you in order to explain what happened.”
“Sure.”
She turned back and started walking to her dorm where she knew he wouldn't follow. Her face was on fire at his nerve. If he wasn’t willing to give her credit for being smart enough to see through his crap, then she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of responding to him. Darkness was encroaching on the sidewalk and she hurried to reach the other end of the campus so she could just pretend Hudson didn’t exist for a few more days. She hated to admit how much she knew that wasn’t true. He was on her mind all the time. He invaded all of her thoughts, whether she liked it or not.
“Reagan.”
He sounded frustrated and closer than she’d assumed. She honestly hadn't expected him to follow her home, but his long legs ate up the ground until he was right next to her. She moved a little faster and pretended she hadn't heard him.
“For God's sake, stop.” He was tempted to grab her again but they were essentially in public. Though it was dark out, there were plenty of lights and there was no way he wouldn't be recognizable to anyone passing by who knew him. “I just want to explain. Why are you running from me as though you're scared of me?”
That brought her up short. She whirled on him, wished she was tall enough to get in his face, and raised her voice. “Don’t for one second think I’m afraid of anybody!” She jabbed her finger into his chest. “You stood me up. The end.”
He stayed where he was when she walked off again. There was no way to complete their conversation that evening that wouldn’t get him deeper in shit.
He strode in the opposite direction, angry at himself. He ran his long fingers through his hair and growled. Maybe he’d gone about it all wrong, but he’d woken up with morning wood so hard he couldn't relieve it. His cold showers every morning were not only wearing thin, but they also weren't good enough. He couldn't stop picturing her, no matter what he did. He tried magazines, online sites, the bar scene, and all to no avail. He dreamed of her nightly and, God forgive him, his dreams had gone way beyond normal. Between the amazing and mind-blowing sex they had in his dreams, he’d begun to see her as something else. As a permanent fixture in his life, and that just couldn't happen.
Not only because Reagan would continue to be his student for the next five months or so, but because his mother had begun asking him if he’d met a suitable woman yet. To the Clarks, suitable meant polished, well-brought-up, and preferably in the same social circle. She was expected to be a debutante, whoever she wound up being. Cam
illa asked him to make a stronger effort in that department seeing as how her friends were beginning to infer there was something wrong with him.
Hudson climbed into his car and snorted to himself as he made his way home. ‘Wrong’ meant anything from commitment-phobic to homosexual. He rolled his eyes. Not that being so wasn't completely accepted in the circle his parents moved in, so long as one followed an unspoken set of rules. The coming out must be at a suitable age to make it clear it wasn't a cop-out for not finding a suitable female companion, then the partner must also be an important influencer to be considered acceptable. After all, what senator didn't love to say he had gay friends? Since Hudson wasn’t likely to announce this change of plans any time soon, his mother thoroughly expected him to come for Christmas with a female companion. Camilla was very likely salivating at the idea of raking her son’s girlfriend over the coals as she dissected every aspect of the poor girl’s breeding and family tree.
Hudson was almost positive that Reagan would never pass muster with his parents. Not that he’d had the chance to ask about her background. He had no idea if she was related to the Queen of England or Jeffrey Dahmer. He knew he was prone to being a selfish bastard, but when he tried to make amends, he went about it the wrong way and she still wouldn't speak to him.
He let himself into his apartment and thought about what she was doing. It was late enough that she was probably in for the night. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he sat on the couch and turned it over in his hands. He wanted to explain about his father showing up unannounced. He wanted to apologize for not having the nerve to tell her at the time it happened. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for being obtuse. He wanted to ask again for the chance to get to know her.
