by Nikky Kaye
Sunlight streamed through the windows and shone on the polished marble floor and oak trestle tables. Peace and an aura of divine intellect embraced the building, and Max could easily understand why it was so crowded on a Tuesday afternoon. Free computer stations always helped.
He heard a chair scrape across the tile as it was pulled out beside him, and turned to see Sophy settle into it.
“Hi,” she whispered, and plopped her straw bag on the table.
Damn, she was pretty. Too bad she was such a romantic. He couldn’t help but compare her to Trisha, his ex-fiancée. The two couldn’t be more different if they had been raised on different planets.
Trisha, with her long ebony hair and patrician features that only wore expressions of bored disdain and carefully reined satisfaction, believed more in the occasional diamond bracelet and a new German car every three years than eternal love. When he had decided to do his doctorate, she had thrown up her hands in disgust and reminded him that she hadn’t planned on marrying an academic.
If he was going to become a “doctor,” she protested, he should go to medical school. Or just forget the whole thing and join her father’s investment firm—he was good enough with numbers and didn’t need to sleep much. He had disappointed her immensely when he left for Stanford, and she hadn’t let him forget it.
The diamond ring he had given her after a year of surviving on boxed macaroni and cheese had left a sizable chip in the back windshield of his car as he drove away feeling guiltily relieved. When Trisha lost her cool, she really lost it. Though not much of a romantic, she had one hell of a right arm. It probably helped her with her social climbing.
Max watched Sophy as she excavated her tote bag to withdraw a notepad and pen in triumph. Her hair was shot through with streaks of gold from the sunbeams spreading across the table and her eyes sparkled at him, as warm as the rays on her head. He shook his head a little. Maybe he’d read too much of that damn book.
She pointed at the empty legal pad in front of him. “Working hard, I see.” Her voice remained low, and Max suddenly realized that anything over a whisper would sound like a shout in the large room. “Did you finish the book I gave you?” she asked.
He nodded silently and handed it to her.
She flipped through it quickly and glanced up at him, a frown marring her features. “Did you mark these sections?”
Oh no. His habit of dog-earing books was coming back to haunt him. Max’s arm shot out but she twisted away from him and opened the book to the stable scene.
She held the book out of his reach and grinned at him. “What did you think?”
“This is basically porn, you know. And not even good porn,” Max whispered. “I guess clichés are clichés for a reason.”
She frowned. “What did you think of the dialogue, the characterization, the conflict, the plot? And wait, what is good porn, according to you?”
He ignored the latter question. “I don’t read fiction much,” he admitted.
“But?”
“But I found the dialogue hokey, the characters stereotypical, the conflict lacking, and the plot contrived.”
Her eyes flashed hurt and disappointment at him and guilt soured his mouth. It wasn’t that terrible. He just wanted to push her buttons.
“Didn’t you enjoy anything in it?”
He shrugged. “The sex scenes were pretty hot.” It wasn’t what she was hoping for, obviously.
“Love scenes. They’re love scenes.” The disappointment in her gaze hardened and Max backtracked suddenly. It sure seemed like porn to him. At least it had the same effect.
“Maybe I just don’t know enough about romance to tell what’s good and what isn’t,” he added.
“I’ll say,” Sophy muttered.
“Maybe you could tell me why women read this stuff,” he suggested in a low voice.
Sophy scanned the page open in front of her and murmured, “Escapism. Fantasy.” She turned towards him and met his gaze. “Don’t you ever fantasize?”
A vision of a wine-stained nipple flitted through his brain and his face burned under the warm rays of the sun. He squinted and pushed his chair back a little to escape the glare slanting across the table.
“No,” he replied, thankful for the cool shadows. “I don’t.”
Sophy splayed her hands over the pages of the book, flattening them out on the table. “What did you think of this scene?” She bit her lip and began to read out loud. “The throbbing in her loins increased as his rough tongue laved over her aching nipples. The heady aroma of the wine dulled her vision and her desire intensified as he made his way down her body.”
A blush crept across her face, her pitch lowering as she read to him. “Her heart pounded fiercely as he kissed her stomach and drew his tongue across her navel, and further down her body…”
* * *
Sophy’s heart started pounding in tandem with the heroine’s and something mysterious curled low in her belly. She had never read love scenes out loud before; she hadn’t realized how erotic it was. Lost in the book and the melody of the images evoked in her mind, her tongue tumbled over the words.
“She could feel his hot breath on her inner thighs and the stubble on his chin scraped against her skin. Drowning in her own desire, she reached out and tangled her fingers in his soft hair, pulling him closer—”
Suddenly Max reached over and shut the book on her fingers.
“Ow!” She glared at him, forgetting to whisper. “What did you do that for?”
He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head towards the circulation desk.
Sophy glanced over at the shocked expression of the librarian she had known since she was a child. The woman looked pointedly at the “Please Be Quiet” sign on the wall. Sophy felt the heat curl up her cheeks and she slowly turned her head to see almost every patron in the library watching her—some with shock, some with prurient interest.
Her fingers twitched within the closed paperback and her hackles rose defensively. Damn it, this was what she did for a living, sort of, and she shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of it.
“Did everyone catch that last bit?” she asked loudly and clearly, her head turning around to take in the fascinated expressions of the library patrons.
She cleared her throat and opened the book again, projecting her voice to the far corners of the library. “She reached out and tangled her fingers in his soft hair, pulling him closer to her quivering nest of desire.”
Somewhere in the distance Sophy heard a gasp and she blinked at the words swimming on the page in front of her, realizing she had lost her place. She would not be embarrassed.
Her voice rose as she skipped ahead a few sentences to finish the paragraph. “—she melted against the scratchy straw at her back and her body tensed in anticipation.” Sophy drew out the last word clearly.
When she turned back to Max, she saw the strangled expression on his face and the small flush in the hollow of his throat, exposed by his starched white shirt. Even though he looked as though he wanted to crawl under the table and die, he gazed at her with a mixture of fascination and something more dangerous. His dark blue eyes were almost black, and it was hard to tell where his pupil ended and his iris began.
She glanced down at the book again, her mouth suddenly dry. She licked her lips and cleared her throat, determined to continue. The sound of her voice in her ears competed with the violent drumming of her heart as her mouth formed the words.
“When his tongue rasped over her sensitive core—” Sophy swallowed, but couldn’t dislodge the golf ball in her aching throat. “—lightning shot through her, and the straw beneath her felt like a thousand knives stabbing her feverishly. He raised his head after what seemed like hours and his eyes gleamed at her in the flickering light from the kerosene lamp. ‘Now,’ she whispered.”
Sophy swallowed again, refusing to look at Max. Her own anemic history of love or lust aside, she prided herself on her application of research and imagination when writin
g. But now she was discovering rapidly that there was something to be said for a captive audience as well. It was like a kind of focus group. Only she didn’t feel very focused at all.
She clenched the fingers of her right hand into a fist to stop them from shaking, and read on. “Her entire body was trembling with the fire of her submerged passion, and the knowledge that he would soon make her his, in every way.”
Max made a choking kind of sound. His chair screeched on the floor as he pushed away from the table and rocketed up. The paperback skidded along the oak surface and teetered near the edge as Max grabbed Sophy’s arms and hauled her up against him.
What? Oh.
When his mouth covered hers, her mind suddenly went blank and the slamming of her heart in her chest was the only sound she heard.
His mouth moved over hers roughly, as though he could barely contain himself. It was like she was being kissed in revenge, or anger, but his passion wasn’t dulled by the ferocity of the embrace.
She clung to him, momentarily stunned.
He must wear numbing lip balm, she thought. Nothing else could explain her sudden paralysis and the tingling in her body. Her skin burned where his fingers clamped on her shoulders and the thumping of her pulse in her ears grew louder and swifter. When he finally raised his head, she blinked and stepped back.
The room erupted in applause.
The noise was almost deafening in the old building and when Sophy grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, she felt it vibrate under her fingers from the exuberant clapping of several dozen people. Someone whistled sharply in the background, making her wince. Raising the back of her hand to her swollen mouth, she had to raise her voice to be heard over the din.
“What did you do that for?”
Max shrugged it off, but his chest rose and fell pretty quickly under his button-down shirt. “It was the only way I could think of to shut you up. You were creating a scene.”
She didn’t feel so numb anymore. “I was creating a scene? I was?”
He stepped towards her, a glint in his eye.
She backed away and held up a hand. “Fine. Forget it.”
“What?” He blinked at her innocently.
“Excuse me.”
They both turned to the matronly looking woman standing two feet away. “Yes?” they chimed.
Sophy felt the heat crawl up her cheeks again as the woman shifted her weight nervously.
“Is that a library book? I’d like to take it out if you’re done with it.”
3
She could still taste him.
“Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
Right now, she wasn’t sure if she should go anywhere with this man, much less home. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, amazed that the tingle in her lips could transfer so easily to the skin in her hand. It was like touching poison ivy.
“Um, okay,” she replied warily. Research, remember? That’s all it was and all it ever would be. Even if he was the most attractive man she’d ever met, she had no place getting involved with someone who wasn’t in it for the long haul.
“You ready?” Max grabbed his legal pad and headed for the library doors.
“Have a good evening!” the librarian chirped as they passed the desk.
Sophy could feel her face getting hotter and hotter and she turned her head away from the circulation desk, pretending to be utterly fascinated in a large poster announcing upcoming adult literacy classes. The ten seconds it took her to walk from the table to the door were the longest of her life.
Well, except for when he had kissed her—time had stood still for that.
He waited outside on the stone steps, appearing as though he didn’t have a care in the world. She watched him flick a piece of lint from his blazer, then strode up to him and jabbed him in the chest with her index finger.
“You kissed me!”
He glanced up absently. “Should I have grabbed you and slapped my hand over your mouth instead?”
Sophy’s gaze flickered down to his lean brown hand, taking in the long tapered fingers and the dusting of dark hair near his thick wrist. A tendon flexed under the smooth skin and she swallowed. Okay, so maybe the alternative wasn’t so bad either.
“Okay, I’m sorry I kissed you,” he offered.
She stared at him, unsure what to say. Which was worse—being kissed without her permission, or being apologized to for that kiss? That spontaneous, heart-stopping, rollercoaster of a kiss... Really, it bothered her that it bothered her so much.
Heading down the stairs, she bit out between grinding teeth, “Don’t worry about it,” she said again. She got about three steps down when his hand clamped onto her wrist.
“No, wait a second.”
She turned around and looked up at him. He stood a few steps above, towering over her. His hair ruffled slightly in the spring breeze, and a muscle clenched in his jaw.
“Forget my apology, or forget I kissed you?”
She shot a warning glance at his fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Both.”
The expression in his eyes hardened as she forced herself not to look away first, and she shivered. Then he dropped her arm. “Okay,” he said simply, but a twinkle came into his eye. “Not heroic enough, huh?”
“What?”
“My kissing. Not heroic enough.”
Now she was really at a loss for words. The last thing she wanted to do was to inflate his ego, but she couldn’t lie. “It was fine,” she stammered.
Max shoved his hands in his pockets and jumped down a step towards her. The twinkle turned into a gleam. “Not earth-shattering, huh? Damn.” The corners of his mouth turned down into a pout.
“Okay, it was better than fine. Satisfied?”
He moved down to the next step, and another, until he was at eye level with her. “I should be asking you that. What do I need to work on?”
“Excuse me?” This conversation was getting a little weird. She hadn’t met many men who welcomed feedback on their kissing techniques. Then again, she hadn’t kissed a whole lot of men either.
“To be more heroic,” he explained. “That’s what you’re looking for, right?”
Sophy shifted her bag to her other shoulder. “I don’t know. More romance, maybe.” She wasn’t even sure what she meant, but it came out of her mouth automatically.
“Romance?” The gleam in his eye turned to puzzlement. “Isn’t kissing romantic enough by itself?”
Her lips curved at his question. Men. And they wonder why we have ‘headaches’. “Did you feel romantic when you kissed me?” she asked.
“What is a romantic feeling, other than lust?” he challenged.
She shrugged and resisted the urge to smooth the frown from her own forehead.
He shook his head. “No, just hormones.”
“Hormones?” she echoed. This is getting worse by the minute, Sophy thought. She wished they could go back to the part where he just did it to shut her up.
“You know, a secretion by the pituitary gland—”
The left side of her lip curled, and if she weren’t wearing her big girl panties, she would have stamped her foot in frustration. “I know what hormones are!” And if he didn’t start making sense soon, her knee would connect with a delicate part of his anatomy where many of them were active.
“And logistics,” he added. Sophy looked at him blankly. “It was the most logical way to shut you up.”
She gritted her teeth together. One afternoon with the man and her jaw was already aching; her dentist was going to kill her. “You could have asked me to be quiet.”
“I tried that, remember?” He shrugged, as though it wasn’t his fault that he had kissed her. She was collateral damage, a casualty of war.
“All right, fine. Let’s just drop the whole thing, shall we?” She darted to the left and continued down the steps. “You obviously don’t understand romance.”
“But you said that’s what I need your help with!” Max’s voice
rose in the late afternoon air. “You promised!”
Sophy inhaled slowly. The air was heavy with pungent blossoms and freshly cut grass—the smells of spring. Sighing, she turned back. Damn, she had promised. And god knows she needed his help, however unheroic he might be. She was a writer, wasn’t she? She could be creative with his character, right?
The wind picked up and she pushed her hair out of her face. Eyeing him carefully, the proverbial lightbulb went on in her head. What if she really could turn him into a hero?
Not Dr. Max Wright, anal-retentive psychology professor, but Max Wright, sensitive but demanding lover. Wooer of ladies, friend to small animals and children. He looked the part, so why couldn’t he be trained to act the part? This could be a challenge...
She smiled. This could be fun. An evil kind of fun. “Okay. You want romance, we’ll do romance.”
He marched down the last few steps towards her. “In the interest of science, I thank you.” He lifted her hand gently, his lips grazing her knuckles as he blinked owlishly at her.
“Not bad. Better,” she murmured grudgingly and tugged her hand away from his light grasp. That tingling was spreading. She wondered if she was coming down with something. Leprosy, for instance.
He rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets again. “Okay, where do we start?”
* * *
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope.” Sophy beamed. This was going to be interesting. Max’s eyes were nearly bugging out of his head as he surveyed the costume she brandished. “Just be thankful I don’t write pirate romances,” she reminded him.
“At least I’d have a sword,” he muttered. The flash in his eyes didn’t appear to be gratitude, and Sophy took a halting step backwards.
“Don’t worry, this won’t take long,” she promised. “They should be locking everything up soon, so we don’t have much time anyway.”
She glanced around the wardrobe room. The college’s drama department was well stocked with all sorts of period costumes, and she had “borrowed” them once or twice during the last couple of years for research and inspiration. They were beautifully made, with an attention to historical detail that had made Sophy sigh when she first saw them. She sighed now, but not in admiration.
