“Malory I said all that because I thought your father had a point and I was trying to be respectful of him. I lied in that email, Malory. I lied when I said that I wanted us to stay apart. That is the last thing I want. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that the night I spent with you was the most magical experience of my life.” They were staring at each other and she felt like she was going to cry. Reading that email from him always teared her up, and now actually hearing him say the words made it even worse. She couldn’t believe she was actually hearing it, that he was telling her how much that night had meant to him too.
“Even though we were a little drunk.” She said with a laugh and Alex laughed too.
“Even so. It brought us together and I’m thankful for that.” He tugged at her arm gently and she allowed herself to fall on to his lap. He gripped her waist tightly as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I don’t want to get hurt again Alex. I don’t want to spend time with you like this again if you’re going to stay away from me.” She said, as their faces remained inches apart. She couldn’t concentrate on her own words, his red lips were distracting her. She could feel his breath on her face and her nostrils. He still smelt of the forest for some reason, pine trees and musk.
“I’m not going to stay away from you ever again Malory. Not when we’re having a child together. I may not know you very long but I know you enough to give us a chance.” He started stroking her hair gently and she couldn’t help but smile. This is all she ever wanted, even when she was a teenager, this is all she really wanted to experience.
“And what about being respectful to my dad?” She looked up at him with widened eyes as he chuckled and pulled her to his chest.
“I don’t care anymore. He’s looking out for his daughter but I’m looking out for my child as well. I’ve never been a father and now that I have the chance to be, I’m not going to simply stand back and let the opportunity pass me by.” He was still stroking her hair. With her face against his chest, she could feel his heartbeat. She didn’t care whether he was already in love with her or not, he probably wasn’t. She didn’t expect him to be. All she knew was that she was in love with him and that he wanted to give their relationship a chance. That her child would grow up knowing their father.
“Can I ask you something, Malory?” His voice interrupted her thoughts and she silently nodded.
“That night in the forest, you told me that you haven’t been in any serious relationship yet because you’re in love with somebody else. Who is this guy?” He asked and she craned back her neck to face him again. She had a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes.
“Who do you think? It’s always been you Alex Temple.” She said and watched as his eyes shied away from her, embarrassed.
“So you’re telling me that all those years, whenever we met, you were falling in love with me silently in the room as I chatted away with your father and other colleagues?” He sounded a little surprised although she could feel the pressure of his hands on her waist increase. She had definitely excited him. She could see it in his eyes that he was already turned on.
“Yes. And while your wife was in the room and you both held hands and smiled at each other. I wanted you that entire time.” Malory licked her lips as he stared at her. He was shaking his head in disbelief.
“That is unbelievable. That you’ve spent so many years loving me when I’ve only just realized that you’re the woman of my dreams. You’ve been there the whole time.” He suddenly kissed her then and she could feel the passion in his kiss. He kissed her like he wanted to devour her. He was breathing her in, using his tongue to explore her mouth. When they finally pulled away, they were both out of breath.
“Well, I wasn’t a woman then.” Malory laughed.
“You are now. And I have you now.” Alex laughed too. His hands gently left her waist and traveled up to her abdomen. A small bump where their child was growing inside her had appeared in the last few weeks and he caressed her there.
“I’m going to be a father.” He said softly, more to himself rather than to her. She nodded her head and they both smiled at each other.
“I love that child already and I want to live with and love their mother.” He was stroking her belly now and Malory had never felt more happy before. She wanted the moment to last forever. She didn’t think she could ever be more close to Alex than she was now, even when they made love.
“How do you think your father’s going to take it?” He asked with a laugh and Malory rolled her eyes.
“He’s going to have to come around to the idea if he wants to have a part in the life of his grandchild.” She was playing with earlobe now and he laughed.
“You’ve always been a feisty one haven’t you?” He asked while smiling.
“If I were in your place, I would have simply taken you in my arms and kissed you in front of him that morning at the camp. Who cares what he thinks of our relationship and how awkward he might feel to see us together. We want to be with each other and that is all that matters.” She tightened her arms around his neck again and planted a long wet kiss on his cheek, near his ears.
“I should have listened to you long ago.” He smiled back at her before trailing her neck with a line of hot kisses.
THE END
Mr Learner
“Alright, who wants to discuss the significance of Hamlet’s soliloquy in Hamlet?”
Swallowing thickly, Alice tried her best to pay attention to the man standing in front of the classroom. A part of her wanted desperately to look anywhere else, but of course, a good student would pay attention. Under normal circumstances, she would have raised her hand almost immediately. She knew Hamlet from front to back – as well she should as a graduate student of British Literature.
But just now, she didn’t dare.
Raising her hand would mean having to speak directly to her Professor, which for Alice, was impossible.
She didn’t think she’d be able to talk to Thomas Learner again for a long time.
What the young woman could do, however, was look. And she certainly looked her fill.
When Thomas Learner joined the staff at Saber College, none of its female students had been able to believe their luck. Almost none of the faculty members were younger than fifty; but at only thirty two, Learner was only a few years older than they themselves.
He was a British Import, hailing from North Eastern London – and quite possibly the most gorgeous thing in the entire cosmos. Close to six and a half feet tall, the statuesque man looked more like a basketball player than an intellectual. His dark brown hair hung haphazardly around his face and it, along with the constant five o’clock shadow he sported, gave him a more relaxed appearance than most of the university’s other professors. A strong jaw, high cheekbones and intense blue eyes that could see right through any excuse his students had were enough to render the female ones breathless.
And watching the way the muscles of his broad shoulders contracted beneath his crisp shirt when he wrote on the board called more attention than many of his lectures.
Alice, for her part, had always loved British Literature. She’d been hooked on Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen almost since she’d learned how to read, and she’d been a talented writer since her early teens.
But nothing could have prepared her for the first time her Professor read aloud from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It had been sometime during the first two weeks of class, and Learner had chosen an excerpt to demonstrate Shakespeare’s particular style.
The way his low, British lilt had all but caressed the syllables made Alice’s knees so weak she was glad that she was sitting down. Her heart had stumbled in her chest and, to her utter embarrassment, she grew instantly damp between the legs.
In all of her twenty six years, Alice had never encountered a man who could make her wet purely with the way he sounded. It was both exhilarating and frightening.
She carried her torch for Professor Le
arner in silence until, one day, he pulled her aside after class to discuss a paper she’d written. Alice was terrified that he would ask her to re-write it. While she wrote she’d been able to think of little more than what she’d rather be doing to her professor instead of her homework. Instead, however, Professor Learner praised her paper and invited her to dinner to talk about her writing technique.
It was the beginning of what the young woman tried to tell herself was a platonic relationship. Not once – at least in the beginning – had Learner put his hands on her. They had lunch once, maybe twice a week, and discussed how he could help his students with their papers. Of course, while the breathtaking man had spoken to her about syllabi and grading curves, Alice memorized the scent of his cologne, the way his dimples made themselves known when he smiled, and the way he liked his burger cooked.
She relished every moment she spent with him – and, one day, her indulgence got the better of her. After one of his classes, the young woman sat next to his desk, reading through her most recent paper. After a night of little sleep, she found herself nodding off – right into Learner’s lap - where she discovered his hard-on.
Her professor acted dreadfully embarrassed, apologizing profusely for the two minutes it had taken for Alice to seize her opportunity.
Very shortly, she discovered that the man who spoke to her of poetry and metaphors had secretly been just as hungry for her as she was for him. The experience culminated with Thomas locking the door of the lecture hall and taking her right there on the desk. As gentle and mild-mannered as he appeared, the man had done nothing less than screw her silly – pound her hips against his desk until they bruised and made her come so many times it was hard for her to see straight.
Even now, as she watched that divine, full mouth of his form the syllables of his lecture, she remembered how divine they’d felt kissing and biting at her nipples, sucking at her neck as long, slender fingers clutched almost desperately at the creamy white skin of her thighs.
She had never known sex could be like…that.
And yet…it had been a mistake.
The thought made her bite down on her lower lip as her gaze darkened. Who the hell slept with their professor? It was like a clichéd porno plot, complete with the naïve girl who all but jumps onto her lover’s cock. Alice had every intention of actually getting her master’s degree, and how was she supposed to do that when the man who played the biggest part in her education wasn’t able to see her objectively?
Once their lust for one another had cooled and they came back to their senses, she and Learner had agreed never to speak of what happened between them again. They would go on as if nothing had changed – that would be the best policy.
Yet, here Alice was, three weeks later, still throbbing between her legs every time the man so much as looked at her. She could avoid him all she wanted, but nothing could burn the memories of how he’d made her feel from her mind.
*****
He missed her.
So much so that he almost regretted what they were together – almost. Thomas didn’t know whether he could ever regret how right it felt to be inside Alice – how divine her body felt against him and how gorgeous her face looked in the throes of orgasm.
Despite all the physical chemistry, however, there was no chance of recapturing the way they’d been before they got their hands on each other. Alice was a brilliant student, and Thomas admired her drive both as a professor and as a man.
That, he supposed, was where all the trouble had started. He’d done everything he could to keep a fair distance from her, but from the beginning Alice stood out in a way too remarkable to ignore. She had a true passion for her subject and her papers were publishable even though she had yet to finish her graduate degree.
And, of course, she was gorgeous enough that he had to fight his body’s reaction every time he saw her.
Long, dark hair that she liked to keep pinned up in a no-nonsense way at the base of her neck; wide blue eyes that gleamed with curiosity; a full, utterly kissable mouth – and that body of hers? Bloody hell, it was a crime that she kept it so goddamned covered. Alice liked to wear modestly cut tops and demure skirts – clothes that didn’t do her a bit of justice.
For weeks, Thomas had imagined the figure she was hiding beneath her dour wardrobe, but the reality had been beyond his wildest dreams. Lush, ample breasts, wide hips and a miniscule waist. God, how many times had he lie awake at night, remembering the silky feel of her thighs as he gripped them? As he pressed deep inside her delicious warmth?
He knew he was being an idiotic cad. Thomas had only just acquired his position at the college, and he’d already put it in jeopardy by becoming involved with one of his students. Of course, his graduate students were more than of age, but it was the principal of the thing that mattered. He’d always considered himself a morally competent man – and sleeping with his students had never been on his agenda.
Lord knew there were plenty of willing women in the States who all but threw their knickers at him once they learned where he was from and what his profession was. It was like some kind of fetish to them…
But not so with Alice. He’d always felt comfortable with her – at least, intellectually. Physically, it had been a struggle from the very first.
A struggle that had culminated in him giving into his basic instincts and taking her right on the main desk in a classroom.
He both revered and regretted the memory. In the heat of the moment, nothing could have felt more right than the way she moaned his name and clutched at his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises later.
But in hindsight, he wished he’d at least had the willpower to get her to his office. At least things might have been a little more leisurely there. He could have worshipped her body, spread her wide open on the couch and buried his head between those gorgeous legs of hers…bent her over his desk and…
Christ.
Thank God he’d been teaching long enough that he only needed to keep half of his mind on the lecture. The other half was firmly in the realm of reviewing what he hadn’t had a chance to do to Alice Cantor – and that, he knew, would never do.
He’d already put his job in jeopardy.
“Alright, thank you all for seeing your way to come to one of the last lectures of the semester. I’ll post notes within the next few hours and feel free to e-mail me with any questions that you may have. I’ll see you next week.”
The twenty or so students set about to gathering their things as they spoke of their end-of-semester papers. He’d been looking over the few drafts that had been submitted to him and they were, for the most part, readable. Thomas found himself worried, however, that Alice had yet to turn in her paper.
While she was still doing perfectly good in the assignments they’d been given, ever since the incident between them, she had stopped consulting him as she worked on her project. Though Thomas would never attempt to profess that the physical chemistry between them was mind-blowing, he found that he missed her quiet brilliance just as much, if not more, than the way she gasped his name when he touched her.
As he gathered his papers near the edge of his desk, he watched her from the corner of his eye. These days, she was in a rush to be one of the first people out of the classroom. She all but shoved her papers into her bag and gazed around fearfully before fleeing the lecture hall.
Except, today, something was different. As she attempted to beat her colleagues out of the classroom, she collided with another student who was entering.
It was a spectacular event. Her bag ripped open completely, spilling books and papers all over the floor and Alice herself stumbled and landed hard on her pert behind with a yelp.
Thomas was up like a shot – almost before he had time to think.
“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” Even as the other man apologized, bending down to pick up the papers that had slid almost halfway across the room. “I wasn’t watching where I was going…”
“Are you alright,
Alice?”
Thomas cut him off, reaching for Alice’s slender hand as she grimaced in pain. She reached out instinctively, her eyes only widening when she realized it was he who was helping her up. The young woman only maintained contact with him for long enough to make it to her feet. Then, she withdrew, almost as if she’d been burned.
“I’m fine, Professor! Thanks!” Immediately, she turned from him to kneel and began gathering her things.
“Christ, I’m a klutz. I broke your bag.”
“It’s ok. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, really…I’m an idiot.”
Standing at them, Thomas tried not to watch as the young man all but fell over himself to apologize. Though Alice liked to wear her reading glasses in class and cared more about identifying different literary periods than attracting men, you’d have to be blind not to realize what a beauty she was – and this student – Ryan something-or-other, if Thomas’ mind served him correctly – was no different. Under the disguise of helping Alice gather her things, he was trying to look down the front of her sweater, and the Professor found himself seething.
It was none of his affair, he knew. So far as they’d agreed, nothing had happened between him and Alice. She wasn’t his and she will never be.
So...why did watching her interact with another man make his blood boil?
He watched Ryan’s half-hearted attempts to flirt with his best student until he was forced to pick up his lesson plans and leave the room. Once he reached the solitude of his office, he sank down in his chair and exhaled slowly, trying to clear his head.
Alice was a perfectly attractive young woman. Of course men would try to hit on her – of course they would try to stake their claim.
Even if he himself had already staked it quite thoroughly.
It was odd, Thomas knew, but ever since the first day she had smiled at him, he’d begun to think of Alice as his own. She was both delicate and strong – fiercely independent, intelligent and alluring while also being demure and withdrawn. Had it not been for their little mishap, he might have asked if she’d like to intern with him, or even have him be her mentor for a possible PhD.
Sucker for the Boss Page 9
