by Ivy Collins
It takes me a second to obey, even though he says it in that no-nonsense professor’s voice he has sometimes. I can’t get over how openly furious he looks. Even I’m not this angry on my own behalf. It’s oddly affirming, having an independent observer here, confirming for me that I’m not crazy to feel upset over it all.
I force myself to look away from him, even though I could drink in that sight all night. Elijah, as I have mentioned, is a gorgeous man. And right now, he looks something like a knight in shining armor. Or... maybe not. He doesn’t currently look like a man with chivalrous intentions. Part of me wishes my landlord was here, so I could watch Elijah tear him apart with one of his legendary verbal assaults. Another, greater part of me is glad my landlord isn’t here—because I’m not entirely sure the conflict would stay verbal in nature. I’m not sure if I’d bet against Elijah in that matchup, given the muscles I felt beneath that Oxford shirt, but I certainly don’t want to be responsible for my professor ending up with a bloody nose... or a murder charge.
I focus myself on sorting through the soggy pile of stuff that was once my life. My few paperback books are solidly ruined. Obviously, none of the food is salvageable. I find my phone charger still intact, though I figure it needs to spend some time drying out in rice before I’ll feel safe using it. I find a stash of legal documents in a ziplock bag in my dresser, and breathe another sigh of relief. God only knows what someone could have done with my birth certificate and social security number.
I tuck the small stash into the passenger’s seat, and sit down there in a vague daze. I feel like I ought to be looking through the rest just on principle, but I already know there’s nothing to save. Effectively, my earthly belongings are all in this car with me right now.
By the time Elijah returns from his phone calls, I’m laughing. I don’t really want to be laughing, but I guess it’s better than crying. The sheer absurdity of all this is not lost on me.
He comes around to my side, frowning. He takes my hands in his and squeezes them gently. “That’s all?” he asks quietly. “Could you not find anything else, or do you need help?”
I shake my head, breathless. “That’s all,” I manage. “Jesus. I think I’m done. Like, not even just for the night—in general. This is so over-the-top, it’s officially transitioned from tragedy to comedy.”
Elijah regards me solemnly. “You need a bawdy limerick for this,” he informs me. “Make sure it ends with the part where the head of our legal department sues your landlord until he cries.”
I try to bury my face in my hands, but they’re otherwise occupied with his hands. It ought to be awkward, but it’s comforting instead. He doesn’t flinch or try to pull away.
“I’ll... compose one in the morning,” I tell him. Every part of me suddenly feels raw and vulnerable. “I think... I need to get some sleep. I don’t know if I can drive right now, but... if you don’t mind taking me to a motel?” My voice comes out smaller than I’d like.
Elijah sighs, and leans down to brush his lips across the top of my head. I feel his warm breath ghost across my cheek as he pulls back again. I have a weird moment of wondering whether it’s a British thing. Maybe it’s not as intimate a gesture over there, I don’t know.
“I will sort you out a bed,” he promises.
I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders. Maybe, then, I can be forgiven for wondering why Elijah needs a key card to get into this hotel lobby we’re in.
“I don’t know if I can afford a room here,” I mumble. “Probably not necessary. I’m just gonna sleep, after all.”
Elijah pinches at the bridge of his nose, as though I’ve given him a headache. “This is not a hotel,” he says stiffly. “I live here.” He swipes his card at the elevator, and my brain rushes to try and catch up with the implications.
“...uh,” I manage.
He raises that same damned eyebrow, but I notice he’s not able to look me in the eyes as he does it. “As we have already established, your eloquence knows no bounds. Will you be gracing us with any of the other classic weasel words this evening? Perhaps a scattering of er’s and ah’s. A dash of okay, right, you know.”
It’s an attempt to remind us both of our normal relationship. At three in the morning, alone in an elevator with my very hot, very sympathetic professor, I know I need the reminder. But it doesn’t work this time.
I’m literally going home with him.
“This really isn’t necessary,” I mumble. I’m leaned back against the elevator bar, barely clinging to consciousness. I’m still wearing his jacket. It still smells like him. The fantasy world in my head is bleeding out into reality, and I don’t want to make it stop. But I’ve got to. I’m quickly losing my filters, and I just know I’m going to say or do something we’ll both regret any moment now.
“I think it is,” Elijah sighs. “You’re not in a terribly good frame of mind at the moment. You’ve lost your home and all your possessions all at once. Whether you’ll be fine all alone in a motel room or not is almost immaterial. I can’t leave you alone in a motel room. I won’t sleep terribly much worrying about you. So here we are. You can have a proper bed. A shower too, if you have the energy. We can figure out a more permanent solution once we’ve both had a solid night’s rest.”
I’m going to sleep in a proper bed. His bed? My brain stutters to an absolute halt. Of course it’s his bed. By definition, even if he has a guest room, the bed in that room belongs to him. But if he doesn’t have a guest room... if it’s the bed he sleeps in himself... that sends a dangerous tingle down my spine. I’m warm just thinking about it, even as tired as I am. I don’t even know how to feel about that.
All I do know is that there’s absolutely no way we’re going to be able to hammer our professional relationship back to the general shape it’s supposed to be in. We’re both very smart people, I think, and very capable when we set our minds to something. But he’s held me while I cried and kissed me on the head, and now I’m going to sleep in his bed, and I’m pretty sure there’s just no amount of gumption in the world that can undo that sort of thing.
ELIJAH
Most American professors—even famous, tenured ones—do not have the means to buy a condominium in Austin. In fact, the public sector here likes to champion long hours and impoverished wages as though they’re a sort of mark of virtue. You should be so pleased to have the chance to contribute to higher education that you’ll drive yourself even further into the ground for it than the fellow next to you.
Thank god, I say, for the private sector.
I’m not one to turn my nose up at duty to one’s society. I teach because someone once taught me, and I owe it to the next set of programmers on down to teach them. But most of my greatest triumphs came before I accepted an offer to teach and research in Austin’s thriving technological center. And those triumphs came with a proportional price tag.
The condo isn’t some garish penthouse, mind you. I’m still a firm believer in spending reasonably. But I suppose I do get a slight thrill out of Sophie’s wide-eyed gaze as she walks through the door after me. The windows have a lovely view of the city; the counters are all pristine-looking marble, and the furniture has a tasteful, serious feel to it. And while the place as a whole is a little bit cozy, it’s just enough space to leave me an office in which to shove all my spare side-projects.
The office is why I don’t have a bed for her other than mine, of course. The place where one might normally put a guest bed is instead a full shelving unit full of extra computer parts. Across from that is a whiteboard with an embarrassingly long list of code ideas that I intend to finish writing someday. I doubt she’d be comfortable sleeping on top of a desk with three different monitors—only two of which currently work.
I show Sophie the bedroom and the bathroom—the only other rooms in the place—and search her out a towel. I should be ready to fall asleep on my feet, but when she closes the door and starts running the water, I’m suddenly entirely too awake.
Lord, I think, as I sit down heavily on my couch. Sophie is naked in my shower right now.
The image won’t go away. I have her in my mind’s eye now. It’s my bathroom—every detail is clear and realistic. And there, in the middle of my tiled shower, is naked Sophie, with her black hair plastered to her breasts and her hands running soap all over her body. My soap, my mind adds helpfully. She’ll probably smell like me soon. Or at least, some softer, more feminine version of me.
I think I’m wide awake, but I’m really running on fumes. And that’s dangerous. It’s been an oddly emotional night. And now, my brain can’t tell the difference between degrees of trouble. I really shouldn’t have brought Sophie home with me, no matter how miserable she looked, no matter how worried I was about leaving her alone at a motel at three in the morning. But if I’m already in deeply inappropriate territory, my brain wonders, what difference does it really make how much further I go? If she’s sleeping in my bed, is it really that much worse if I sleep there with her?
(For the record, a more awake and less emotionally compromised me would have the answer to that question: It’s worse. Definitely far worse. But right now, all of this makes sense to me.)
If she wants you to do that, I remind myself forcefully. Maybe she doesn’t want you to touch her. Maybe she doesn’t want you in that shower with her, washing her back, kissing her neck, sliding your hand between her legs...
What was I thinking about again?
Lord, she’s so upset. Some primal part of me just wants to drive that all away with mindless pleasure. But that could just as easily make things worse. And besides which, we’re both tired and out of our minds. It could be taking advantage of her to even suggest such a thing. She has nowhere else to go at this hour, no one else to drive her anywhere. She might feel trapped, if I do something inappropriate she doesn’t want, and I’m not sure I could live with that feeling.
The bathroom door opens, interrupting my thoughts. I look up, and my cock—already hard with the fantasy of Sophie, naked in my shower—jumps to rock-hard attention at the sight of the real thing.
She’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom with that one towel wound around her, barely covering the necessities. Her face is flushed with the heat of the shower, her hair clinging to her naked skin. “I just realized, um, I don’t have any... clothes...” Her voice turns breathy as the situation dawns on us both. She meets my eyes, and I see her breath stop. That flush on her skin deepens, and not just from the heat.
All my carefully-constructed, rational reasons to stay away from her evaporate in a moment. Her eyes are fixed on me, and her breath has quickened, and I’m absolutely certain that she’s thinking all the same things I am.
I’m up from the couch before my brain has a chance to catch up with me again, to remind me what an awful, horrible idea this is. I lean next to her in the doorway, brushing my fingers along the naked skin of her neck. It’s nothing I haven’t already touched, already seen; that skin shows above the neckline of her shirt. But she shivers under my touch this time, and nearly loses her grip on the towel entirely.
Sophie looks up at me with breathless anticipation in those brown eyes. And I know I’m not going to disappoint her.
She sucks in her breath. “Elijah,” she whispers. It’s so incredibly soft that I nearly miss it. As though she’s testing out my name, trying it carefully on her tongue.
I curl my fingers behind her neck, and bring my lips down to hers.
It’s everything I thought it would be. It’s glorious, heated, necessary. She gasps, throwing an arm around my neck to steady herself, and I slide my tongue inside her mouth to taste her. She still has a tinge of coffee to her—not unpleasant. The rest is all Sophie: sweet, fiery, and utterly unstoppable. Her other hand barely keeps the towel steady as she leans up against me, desperate for more. My fingers dig into her hair, and she whimpers approvingly. How far is this? I think dimly. Is this further than we meant to go? Is this too far?
But it doesn’t matter. Because Sophie is kissing me back with a crazed urgency, running her fingers back through my hair in return. The fingers of her other hand are unbuttoning my shirt, which means that she’s not holding the towel anymore. It’s slipped away from her body, pooling on the floor beneath us. I can see her gorgeous, perky breasts in the lamplight, their tips rosy and erect with desire. I can see that dark nest of curls between her legs, already damp with need.
I can’t stop myself. I slide my hand between us and dip one fingertip inside her. She gasps into me, and I pause to look down into her eyes. There’s a look of shocked pleasure there—as though she can’t quite believe I’ve crossed that line. She closes her eyes and kisses me again, with a soft whimper of need. I slide my finger deeper, slower than she’d like. She’s already so dripping wet, so slick and ready for my cock. It crosses my mind that she might have touched herself in the shower thinking about this.
She’s gotten my shirt off now; her palms burn across my chest, eagerly exploring. But she’s impatient, and I can’t blame her; we’re both wired and desperate. She soon slips the button of my slacks and tugs them downward, freeing my very obvious erection. That gives her pause for a moment. Her eyes widen, and I’m forced to assume that not everything is bigger in America.
I kiss her again—harder, more demanding—guiding her hand onto my shaft, desperate to feel her touch. She closes her fingers around me, moaning into my mouth. I stroke inside her in turn, and those moans become a higher-pitched mewl against me. She’s getting close to coming. I drag my mouth back from hers so I can watch her face. I want to see that face, the first time I make her come.
She sees me looking down at her, and as she meets my eyes, I feel her muscles clench around my finger abruptly. She lets out a soft, shocked oh. Her walls flutter around my finger. I hold her eyes as she comes, and she flushes even more deeply.
I wait until she’s come back to herself, and slowly tug my finger away. There’s a sexy, languid look in her eyes now that only hardens my cock more. It’s a painful delay, searching my wallet from my discarded pants and pulling out the condom I keep at the back of it—but I slide it onto my cock, and push her back against the wall, kissing her hard.
“Say my name again,” I breathe into her mouth, as I press my tip against her opening.
Sophie smiles beautifully at that for some reason, and I feel a hard tug at my heart. “Elijah,” she murmurs against me shyly. The sound of my name on her tongue hits some tightly-wired nerve inside me. I shove inside her all at once, burying my face in her shoulder. We both cry out at once. It’s an incredible, indescribable feeling. All night, I’ve felt helpless to fix anything, to make her feel any better. But being inside her makes me feel like I’ve finally grasped at something meaningful. The way she leans back her head in pleasure and sighs is nearly as gratifying as the way she tightens around me, drawing me in. I know for a fact she’s not thinking about anything but me right now.
She lifts her leg around me to let me in deeper. I grab her other leg and haul her up against me, with a hard, satisfying stroke that makes her cry out in surprised pleasure. She winds her arms around me fully now, trying to arch against me as I pound into her. It just drives me crazier. I need more of her, faster, harder, deeper—
Sophie tears her mouth away from mine for the space of a single moan. In the moment, close to my ear, she breathes: Please fuck me, Elijah.
I know she does it on purpose. There’s a wicked little smile on her lips as she says it. I come inside her almost instantly, gasping as the thrill of that little phrase hits my nerves in an overwhelming shock.
And god do I come. I’ve been wired-up all evening, just from being near her, from trying to be professional, from dealing with the intensity of her emotions and mine. All of that tension releases at once, in a shuddering burst of pleasure. “Sophie,” I moan in her ear, and she shivers in return at the sound of it.
Slowly, we both come back down to earth. The sheer desperation of our desire has b
een dulled, and it’s far past time for those reasonable misgivings to reassert themselves. And for a moment, they do.
I’ve just fucked one of my students against the wall of my condo. And yes, I’m quite sure we both enjoyed it immensely—but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s definitely a poor decision.
Sophie sighs against me a second later, and a little of that worry bleeds away. There’s a blissful smile on her face that makes me feel absurdly pleased, no matter how much trouble it’s going to cause us both. “This is crazy,” she mumbles. “Am I going to wake up from this, or is it really happening?”
I let out a long breath. “Ah,” I manage. “Well.” My brain still hasn’t recovered its necessary supply of oxygen, I can tell.
She chokes on a laugh. “Who’s weasel-wording now?”
I haul her up into my arms, and she squeaks in surprise. It’s a short distance to the bedroom, and thank god—I don’t know if I could stay on my feet a moment longer.
I dispose of the condom and tug the covers up over us both, pulling her into my arms. “Tomorrow,” I tell her. “We’ll definitely sort this out tomorrow.”
Sophie snuggles back against me with another one of those blissful sighs. “Tomorrow sounds good,” she agrees.
4
Sophie
I wake up in a strange bed, with a pair of strong, warm arms wrapped around me from behind. I can’t remember the last time I felt so good.
I’ve got the dim feeling that I should be upset about yesterday. I had a nervous breakdown, lost my home, lost my things, and—yes—it seems that I definitely slept with my professor.
