Carry Me Home (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “And this bra’s pink,” he said, looking down her shirt. “You’re killing me here.”

  His other hand had her hips tight against him again, and she could feel every inch of hard urgency. But he didn’t rush, because he was still teasing.

  “Of course,” he said, “there’s a whole lot more to this fantasy. Put your hands on that white board right there.”

  “What?’

  “You heard me.”

  She swallowed. And did it.

  He had her skirt pulled up with one hand, had settled his other hand over her cheek where he could hold her, stroke her, and his touch was igniting her.

  “Aw, sweetheart,” he sighed, “you shouldn’t have worn the pink lacy underwear, too. That’s just cruel and unusual.”

  “You don’t . . . like them?” she managed to ask.

  “I like them so much, I’m having some blood pressure issues here.” One hand was on a breast now, he had her skirt pulled all the way up, and he was still pressed into her from behind, but his other hand was wandering up the inside of her bare thigh.

  She wriggled back, needing to get closer, needing to feel him.

  “What do you want?” His breath was warm in her ear, his big hand hard on her thigh.

  “I want . . . you,” she said. “To touch me. Please.”

  “And, see,” he said, his hand still on its lazy journey, not in one bit of a hurry, “that’s the kind of request a take-charge guy likes to hear.”

  She was sighing, her hands pressed against the board, her legs shifting farther apart, because his hand was stroking over the lace trim now, sliding inside the silky material. When he got all the way there at last, she jumped, then pressed back into him even more tightly.

  He chuckled, low and soft. “Oh, that’s real good, sweetheart. You’re doing so good. You just stay right there and hold still.” He yanked the skirt down over her hips, the stretchy knit material making his job easy. “Don’t you move, now,” he cautioned. “Step out, but leave your hands right there.”

  His fingers were probing, and she shifted her legs a little more to give him access, breathing hard. When his hand began to move at last, she moaned.

  “Yes,” she said, leaning her forehead against the cool white surface of the board, between her hands. “Please.”

  “Need to get fucked hard on your desk?” he asked her, his hand working.

  The jolt went straight through her, and she was spiraling up. “Yes.” It was almost a sob.

  “That’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get it so hard. So, come on now. Show me how you want it.”

  She was over the edge, crying out, her hands fisting on the board, jerking back against him, and he took her all the way, let her ride out every last delicious spasm. It didn’t matter that she was in her office. It didn’t matter that they needed to be quiet. She couldn’t be quiet, because it felt too good.

  He didn’t let her rest. As soon as she finished, he was pulling the underwear down her legs, unfastening the remaining buttons on the blouse, reaching around between her breasts to unhook her bra, dropping everything on the floor. And then he had her around the waist, was shoving everything on her desk aside, laying her down along it lengthwise, and pulling her hips to the edge.

  She lay there, looked up at the high ceiling, and trembled. A few seconds, and he had his hands under her, raising her to him, his thumbs digging into her hips, and was inside her.

  Fast and urgent, hard and strong, again and again, until she was moaning, trying to squirm toward him, because she needed more, and he had his hand there, helping her out. It was all she needed.

  “Now,” she managed to say. “Now. I’m . . . Cal. Come on. Now. Harder. Please.”

  He groaned, paused for just a moment, on the brink, his hand finishing the job, and she was calling out, over the top, and he plunged, dove, and they went under the wave together, again and again.

  She lay there afterward and tried to get her breath back, then finally struggled to her feet with the help of a strong hand around her own. He grinned at her, collected her clothes and dumped them on her desk, then went around the desk and sat in her guest chair again. He was looking nothing but cool, while her knees were still wobbling.

  “You know, Professor,” he told her as she wriggled into the pink panties and pulled on the black tights, “I’ve got to say, that was some pretty fair fantasy fulfillment. Especially having you buck-naked on your desk. Although I do love watching you get dressed, too. Almost as much as I love undressing you.”

  “Huh,” she said. “I still think it was a little cheesy of you to make me act out a fantasy you had about somebody else.”

  “Well . . .” He rubbed his nose, grimaced. “I may have been, ah . . . embellishing a little.”

  She stopped in the act of picking up her bra. “What?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding a little abstracted, looking at her dressed only in her black tights. “Wait, what?”

  She shrugged into the pink lace, arched her back a little more than was strictly necessary, then pulled it closed around her and snapped the clasp, and he sighed.

  “Your fantasy,” she reminded him.

  “Like I said. Embellished. I didn’t actually take French. Too hard.”

  “Too . . . hard.” She put her hands on her hips, ignored the fact that she was wearing her underwear, and gave him her best basilisk stare. “So you never had this fantasy.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t have it. I just may have had it a bit more recently than I gave you reason to believe.”

  “You had it about . . .”

  “Well, yeah. If you’re going to get all technical about it, I may have had it today. Not that your talk about volcanoes wasn’t real riveting and all. I can’t help it if you’re distracting.”

  “You made up the whole thing?” she demanded. “I should be so mad at you right now. You dirty liar.”

  “Seems I’ll do just about anything to get you where I want you. And, man . . .” He sighed. “I really, really wanted you right there.”

  “You got me, too,” she said, pulling on her skirt. “Guess it worked. You are one sneaky . . .”

  “Bastard,” he finished. “I sure did. I got you real good. We’re going to do it again, too. Because I’ve got a couple more teacher fantasies you could help me out with.”

  “As long as they don’t involve rulers,” she said, trying for severity.

  “Well . . . not rulers.”

  She was staring at him again, and that flame had come right back to life. “Do not tell me,” she said slowly, “that you’ve got a fantasy about spanking me in my office.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I won’t. I won’t tell you that I’ve got this real dirty little fantasy about sitting right here in this chair, putting you over my knee, flipping up that pretty blue sweater dress of yours, and giving you the spanking of your life while you wriggle under my hand. I’ll just keep that one right off the table. So to speak. Because the desk might figure into it again, too. I’d have to look at what I did, wouldn’t I? While I did . . . everything else.”

  The flame licked harder, and he saw her shudder, because he never missed a thing, and he gave her that slow, lazy grin that weakened her knees every time and was weakening her now.

  “Oh, Professor,” he said, his voice liquid sin that made all the blood rush right back where he had meant to send it, “if you tell me that I’m going to be able to count on that one, too, I might just have a heart attack.”

  “Well . . .” She swallowed. “You know how I like a take-charge guy.”

  “Yeah,” he said, blue eyes alight with mischief and lust and everything that made him Cal. “I do, don’t I? Darlin’, you just made my day. Twice. But for right now, why don’t you come on over here, sit in my lap, and let me button up that proper little blouse of yours for
you, kiss you a little bit, and feel you up while I’m doing it? Because I just realized that I never did kiss you, and that’d be real good, too. For now.”

  THE MINOR LEAGUES

  They left her office fifteen minutes later. She’d decided she could finish her work at his house, with a little extra persuasion that he’d been more than happy to provide. She pulled the door closed and gave it a quick test before heading down the corridor, and he had to smile, because she might not be walking quite as steadily as she had been going in there.

  “Feeling a little shaky?” he murmured in her ear. “I get you a little bit weak in the knees there? Never mind. We’ve got a treatment for that.”

  “I don’t think I can take any more of your treatments,” she said, keeping her voice down, out of the hearing of two of her colleagues standing outside an office at the far end of the hallway.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I think you can take it. You’re made of some pretty tough stuff. I think we can test you a whole lot more before you break.” He saw the shiver and smiled again. Look what kind of woman had been hiding under that black suit. Exactly the woman for him.

  She slowed, and he thought it was reluctantly, as they approached the two men still standing near the stairway. “See you guys tomorrow,” she said.

  They looked up, and Cal saw the recognition on both faces, resigned himself.

  “Well, hello, hotshot,” one of them said. Not to him. To her. A lean man in his early forties with a sardonic mouth, he was wearing baggy khakis and a button-down shirt. All he needed was a tweed jacket with leather patches to shout “professor” a little more loudly. “Who do you have there? It wouldn’t be the university’s favorite son, would it?”

  She stopped. “If you mean this is Cal Jackson, then yes, your eyes don’t deceive you. You know I’m on his committee. Cal, the rude guy here is Roy Blake, and this is Aaron Mortenson, my department chair.”

  “Pleasure,” the older man said, shaking hands. “Well, I’m out of here. My daughter’s got a volleyball game this evening, and I promised I’d go. See you all tomorrow.”

  Roy was still looking from Zoe to Cal. “You know,” he said, “the last time I was forced to attend a university function—kicking and screaming, I might add—all I got were a couple of stale crackers, some discount American cheese, and not enough glasses of very cheap wine. You go to one—one—so-called cocktail party, and here you are, on about the highest-profile committee you could possibly swing, and . . . everything. You could fall into a septic tank and come out smelling like roses. This girl’s going no place but straight to the top,” he told Cal. “And I called it. How I love being right.”

  Zoe was flushing a little, standing up straighter, the way she did when she was under the gun. Hardening under pressure, just like one of her rocks. “Thanks so much for offering us your astute observations, Roy. Remind me tomorrow to let you know how much I appreciated them.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I don’t think Cal minds,” he said, and Cal wondered just how soundproof those walls actually were. “All good things,” he told Cal. “Nothing to say but good things. Stars have to rise. That’s how it works.”

  “Actually,” Cal said, “I thought stars mostly tended to fall.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Roy said. “What can I say, astronomy’s not my subject. I don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot of falling here. For the hotshots like our Dr. Santangelo, it’s a couple years in the trenches, and hello Stanford. Got your cushy graduate seminars, got all those doctoral students doing your scut work for you, and bye-bye, gatekeeper classes. So long, hormonal eighteen-year-olds who haven’t figured out that you actually have to study in college. They’ll be some other unlucky slob’s problem. Some doctoral student’s problem.”

  The skin on Cal’s arms was prickling. He looked at Zoe, could see that she was uncomfortable, and this wasn’t looking good at all. “Is that the plan?” he asked her. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “Well,” she said, and laughed, although he couldn’t see what was funny. “This is a teaching university.”

  “I thought they were all teaching universities,” he said. “I thought that was kind of the point.”

  “This is the minor leagues,” Roy said. “Our Zoe here is headed for the majors. There’s a sports metaphor for you.”

  “Thanks,” Cal said. “I sure appreciate you putting it in terms I can understand.”

  “A research institution,” Zoe hurried to explain, her color even higher, “is a university that’s focused on—well, research. Which means professors do more research and less teaching, especially undergraduate teaching.”

  “And let me guess,” Cal said. “Being at a teaching university is low-rent. Means you’ll never make the big time.”

  “That’s right,” Roy said cheerfully. “Which for some of us is just fine. But for somebody like Zoe, we’re nothing but a way station on that bright road.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cal said. “And this way station is, what? A couple years? Three?”

  “Unless she gets stuck here,” Roy said. “Gets lazy like me, decides it’s all too hard and she might as well settle for second-rate. If you want to hit the big time, you’ve got to go where it’s happening.”

  “And that’s not here,” Cal said.

  “Nope,” Roy said. “That’s a couple of mountain states and about a thousand miles away from here.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cal said again. He looked down at Zoe, tried not to let his feelings show. Tried not to let the anger take over, and failed completely. “Ready to go? Because I am.”

  “Uh . . .” She glanced between him and Roy. “Sure. See you, Roy.”

  “Sure thing. Nice to meet you, Cal.”

  “Yeah.”

  He knew Zoe was looking at him, but too bad. His boots rang in the hallway, as out of place as a sheep at the symphony, and they were both silent until they’d made it to the stairway and were headed down. And then she finally talked. And said nothing he wanted to hear.

  THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

  Zoe felt sick. The look on Cal’s face . . .

  Maybe it was just Roy. Or maybe she’d screwed up. Maybe, and this was the bad thing, the worst thing—maybe she’d hurt Cal.

  “I’m sorry,” she ventured. “He’s . . . not bitter, exactly. He thinks he’s funny.”

  He turned halfway down the steps and looked at her. “You think I’m upset about that? Garden-variety envy? Think I’ve never seen that?”

  “But you seem so annoyed,” she said cautiously. “Is it that I’m friends with Roy? Please tell me that’s not it, that you’re not jealous.”

  “Oh, because it’s all about what you want?” He was walking again.

  “What?”

  They’d reached the bottom of the stairs, and he stopped and turned to face her, his face harder than she’d ever seen it. The sickness was worse now, was actually making her feel a little faint.

  “It wouldn’t occur to you,” he said, “that I might be upset to find out that I’m, what was it? A way station?”

  “Um . . .” She didn’t know what to do with her hands. “Well, eventually, yes, that’ll probably happen. This is a step, just like . . .” She cast around for an example. “College football for you,” she said with relief. “A starting place. And then you guys move around, try to find the place where you fit, where you can star. It’s like that.”

  “You know,” he said, “I can understand regular grown-up topics without people putting them into sports terms. I’ve worked real hard to raise my IQ past double digits.”

  “I was just trying to find an applicable example,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah, thanks. I got it. And that’s what you want. To be a star.”

  “Well, isn’t it what you wanted, too?” He knew how much her work mattered to her. At least she’d thought he did. “I want to do resear
ch. I want to be somebody.”

  “I thought people here did research. I kind of thought that was the idea of the money I gave. To make us more competitive.”

  “But it’s still not—”

  “Not the big time,” he finished for her. “Not the biggest time, anyway, and it never will be, and that’s all you care about. So where does the rest of your life come into this?”

  “What rest of my life?”

  He gestured impatiently. “You know, that thing most women start thinking about at some point here. Marriage. Family. The rest of your life.”

  She tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out right. “Are you asking me to declare my intentions?”

  He went rigid. “Don’t be trying to make this funny,” he warned her. “Don’t you dare try to make me look stupid for caring about you.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m not.” She was trembling a little now. She needed to sit down, and she couldn’t, so she straightened up instead. She had to face this. She had to face him. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . not what I’d have expected you to say. I didn’t think you were really . . . serious. That you really cared.” Not as much as I did.

  “Why not?” he asked. “For a person who’s supposed to be a scientist, you make a lot of assumptions, don’t you? And they don’t even seem to me to fit the evidence.”

  “What . . .” She swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Why would you assume I’m just messing around here? What evidence do you have?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. He didn’t get it? Really? “Maybe that you’re Cal Jackson, and I’m . . . me? So I thought I should guard my heart? That doesn’t make any sense to you?”

  “When did I make you feel that way?” he demanded. “When? All right, I wanted to sleep with you. Of course I did. I’m a guy. It’s how we’re made. That doesn’t mean I wanted to sleep with you and dump you, or that I was going to dump you if I couldn’t sleep with you fast enough. I didn’t do either thing. Even though I’m a guy, and a jock, too. I didn’t, and I would’ve thought that was obvious.”