CRABBYPANTS
By
Colleen Charles
Table of Contents
CRABBYPANTS
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM EDUCATED!
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
CRABBYPANTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
FREE EXCERPT FROM BUYER BEWARE
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM EDUCATED!
I’ve always wanted to write a naughty May-December romance. What can I say, I’m a fan of older men. Out of my inspiration, Educated was born. It’s an exclusive I only offer to my fans. If you enjoy the excerpt, and you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll get Educated, Reasons Why, and my #1 Paranormal Boxed Set - Fur Magic. The only way you can receive these three complimentary books is by joining me inside the Colleen Charles Community. I never spam and only e-mail weekly, unless I have something REALLY important. We have a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see you there!
I hope you enjoy reading Educated as much as I loved writing it!
Prologue
Devon
A few years earlier…
Just as I looked up at Judge’s familiar face, something hit me straight out of the blue. So hard the breath almost left my body. How could I not have seen it? The way his thick, wavy hair fell over his strong brow. His full, lush lips pursed in concentration. Tapered fingers pushing his glasses back onto his nose. And the scruff lining his strong cheekbones. My heart flipped over in my chest, and I wasn’t quite sure why, so I inhaled a ragged breath. I wanted to reach up and touch him all of a sudden. I had to sit on my twitching hands to keep them still, even though I should probably have turned the page. I didn’t want to study. I wanted to stare.
“Devon?” His gritty voice cut through my puppy love infused girlish crush, and my head snapped from his face back to the open book in front of us. He’d just asked me a question about Treasure Island, and I didn’t hear it.
“Huh?” My voice sounded distant, tinny. It’s just a silly infatuation that will soon pass, Devon. You can do this. “Can you repeat that, please? I wasn’t paying attention.”
He released a little chuckle and scrubbed a hand down his face, clueless to my runaway thought train. I couldn’t help but stare again at how his long fingers ran along the little bits of chestnut hair on his chiseled jawline. What would it feel like to kiss him? All I’d have to do is close the tiny gap, lean in and… No, Devon! Those thoughts are wrong. Wicked. My heart pounded against my chest wall as I struggled to inhale.
“Droll, I know. But it’s an important piece of literature, which is why it’s always selected sometimes as required reading. I asked you about your thoughts around the central theme in this book?”
In a split second, all rational thought evaporated from my mind and all that remained was feeling. Raw emotion. At the top of my class, I rarely struggled for an intelligent answer but the oxygen had been sucked from the room and as a result, from my brain. “Umm… it’s a classic hero’s journey?”
Judge shook his head, causing a lock of hair to fall over his forehead. I wanted to reach up and tuck it behind his ear. How could my dad’s college roommate cause such turmoil in my young body? Jesus, the man was almost twenty years older than me. My mom and dad had gotten married right out of high school at seventeen because she was pregnant with me, but still. Yuck. My thought patterns were wrong. Inappropriate. I needed to eradicate them before they galloped any further out of control.
“That’s right,” he said with an encouraging smile. My heart raced even faster at the sign of approval. “And which part do you think starts the call to adventure?”
I sucked in a staccato breath and clamped my eyes shut. I hoped he didn’t notice or interpreted my actions as a need to concentrate on the book. “When they find the treasure map after Billy dies.”
“You’ve got it!” He reached out and touched my shoulder. Tingles spiderwebbed throughout my body. I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. My eyes cast downward to stare at his hand, the evidence of our physical connection. I think I’ll always remember it as the first time I felt that Judge Copeland owned me. Body and soul. It started as an innocent schoolgirl crush but continued to gather steam as I got older and continued to develop a traitorous woman’s body. But he didn’t notice. He never had, and he never would. To Judge, I was just John Malone’s little girl. “I told your dad that you wouldn’t need any help with this but he insisted. He’s really proud of you, you know. It’s really tough to get in to our alma mater, Diamond University, but if you keep up the great work, you’ll have an excellent chance.”
“Do they have a good music program?” I asked, in a voice sounding shaky to my ears.
Judge reared back and tented his hands. “Music? I know you like to sing but I thought that was just a hobby? You’re not really thinking of making that your college major, are you? I’d highly recommend that you pick something more general and desirable to prospective employers as your major. A lot of companies won’t even look at a graduate with a music degree.”
“But…”
He held up a hand. “Forget it, Devon. You’re a good girl and still way too young to even be thinking about it. I’m sorry I said anything. You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
Chapter 1
Judge
I will conquer this.
“Professor Copeland, you’re really distracted today.”
“I’m sorry, Jason,” I said, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I promise to pay more attention.”
With a shameful shudder, I realized I’d been ignoring my graduate student, Jason Crawford. Good thing he didn’t understand the turn my thoughts had taken.
Turbulent images floated across my brain again, and I couldn’t eradicate them. Full breasts and a lush, round ass. A wicked obsession with a woman I shouldn’t want but couldn’t stop. Some twisted addiction to dark illicit fantasies and raging lust that had settled so deep in my bones it could put me away for life. I yearned. I craved. I masturbated. I hadn’t made love to a woman since the first ping of desire had hit my groin the day I’d seen her poolside in her string bikini at her sweet sixteen. And that had been years ago. I remember going home that night and willing myself to sweep away any and all images of her until I’d fallen into a fitful sleep of regret and shame. But her face had been the first thing filling my mind the next morning and every dawn thereafter. And then she’d been taken from me, ripped away by what felt like a vicious Universe when in fact, a benevolent Universe was just protecting her from the likes of a degenerate like me.
It felt like forever since I’d even had a glimpse of her. And I wanted to see her again. Just a taste. With my eyes only.
I clamped those orbs shut in an irrational burst of defiance, and her image flashed into the blackness. Innocence. Sweetness. Light. I felt like just the thought of her unzipped my sou
l, opening the tortured part of my deepest being and exposing it to the light.
I imagined running my fingers over the silk of her long, auburn waves. The upturn of her pert nose. The curve of her luscious hip. She’d put her hand there once while giving me sass but her words had floated over me, unheard. All I could think of in that moment was kissing her. Shoving my tongue straight down her throat so at least one part of me got to be inside her body.
Would her striking green eyes register shock or desire? I could imagine my hands traveling up and down her torso, memorizing every curve as my cock strained against my pants. And after I’d discovered every inch of her with my touch, my mouth would follow, tasting her. Worshiping her with my lips and tongue. After so many years of craving a woman without any chance of assuaging the fierce yearning, my future looked bleak. I wanted a family. A wife and children who adored me, who I could protect and cherish. And I couldn’t have that yet. I couldn’t have it until I eradicated the woman who currently lived in my mind and, more importantly, in my dark heart.
She was so much younger than me. My mind cared but my sensitized body hadn’t received the message. I’d dated. I’d fucked. I’d pretended I wanted a commitment. But none of those other women could satisfy my urge for what I really wanted. Her. She was perfection. Smart, talented, gorgeous, humble. I could go on and on. Devon excelled at anything and everything she put her mind to. If she wanted it, she went after it. I wished that what she wanted was me.
Devon was John’s daughter. My best friend since I’d gotten my green card back in college. We’d been roommates. He’d made fun of my UK accent and I’d made fun of his ready-made family. In actuality, I admired John. Not a lot of men who knocked up their high school sweetheart would stand up and do the right thing. John and Rebecca had made it. A true inspirational success story of love, commitment, and family right out of a fabled fairytale.
And that love had created Devon, their only child. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray John in that foolish and despicable way. He’d been there for me throughout my entire time in the United States. Now, I needed to be there for him by erasing all my impure thoughts of his twenty-year-old baby girl. But wanting to do it and actually doing it were two different things. My mind and body had been firing on all cylinders for Devon for so long, it was hard to think of much else.
It had been four long years since I’d even been intimate with a woman. I just couldn’t bring myself to go there with them, and I’d ghost after a few dates. Even if the dates were spectacular. Even if the woman stimulated my mind and heart. Ever since that very first day when my cock had first twitched for Devon over birthday cake and an innocuous touch, I’d only been able to maintain a commitment with my right hand. The sex between Stevenson’s literary masterpiece and Victoria Secret’s lingerie swimwear had done something so sinister to my libido I feared it might never return to ignite for woman closer to my own age.
And now Devon’s here. Within a whisper of my itching fingers.
After all this time, I knew she was something to me. Something I’d never experienced before and probably never would again. Something worth exploring, worth fighting for, worth dying for. And if John ever got wind of it, that’s where I’d find myself. Six feet under with shovels of dirt covering my murdered corpse.
I ran a hand over my day’s worth of scruff and hissed out a breath. I hadn’t even mustered the strength to shave this morning after another sleepless night haunted by erotic dreams starring Devon.
“It wasn’t that important. I just wondered if you would like a cup of coffee from the cafeteria, Professor Copeland?”
My head snapped up at my graduate student’s words. Jason Crawford was a fellow brit and helped me with all of my large lecture classes. I was lucky to have such a brilliant writer as I taught this large class of freshman English students at Diamond. Since English was a required course for their liberal arts degree, most of them didn’t want to be here. And those were the kind of students I loathed. Thanks to Jason, I didn’t have to engage more than necessary.
“No. I can’t ingest that swill but I thank you for the offer. I’ll get a Starbucks at lunch to sustain me through the afternoon.”
If anything could sustain me. Every young woman who traipsed over the threshold of the lecture hall with auburn hair set my heart to racing and my cock to twitching. Until I scanned my hungry eyes down the length of the young woman’s body only to realize it wasn’t her.
None of them would be Devon because John had told me she’d taken AP lit in high school so she’d tested out of most English courses. Maybe I’d have her in one of my higher level courses. But for now, a reprieve. It had been a couple of weeks since the start of the semester and I hadn’t even had a glimpse of her. Not that I’d been looking.
I’ve been looking in every fucking nook, cranny, and cubbyhole in this university. If Devon had been within a few yards of me, my body would respond.
I hadn’t seen her since that sweet sixteen four years ago. Out of deliberate and selfish care for my own raging lust and fragile ego. As soon as Rebecca had sent out the save-the-date graduation cards, I’d booked a trip back home to London to visit my sister. Could I have seen Lynn any other time that summer? Hell, yes, I could have. But I wanted to be willful. And so I’d let my best friend in the world down by not attending his only child’s graduation because I was afraid my inappropriate feelings would be written all over my lecherous face. My desire for Devon had been building the past four years, chugging down the track of downfall like a runaway lustamotive. Instead of being the bigger man, I’d sent her a thousand dollar check. The Judge Copeland ‘please don’t fucking come near me ever again’ scholarship award.
I should have been there. The guilt. And the shame. I’d felt it when I made my cowardly decision and I’d felt it even more acutely when John had admitted over a casual lunch how much the family had missed my presence. Especially Devon.
I’d disappointed my lifelong friend, myself, and her.
And the thought of hurting her feelings stabbed through my body like a knight’s jousting lance.
I reached onto my desk to peer into my planner. One more lecture to go until I could escape the campus for an off-site lunch. I didn’t have anything else until two. Caffeine, here I come. Too bad it couldn’t be a liquid lunch. The blessed burn of a dry Merlot stealing down my throat might numb the bodily sensations that had become as usual to me as a steady heartbeat or breath in my lungs.
I sucked in a ragged inhale and wondered if I could stop the guttural reaction that happened each time I gazed upon her angelic face. Probably not. I just hoped it would happen in a public place. She wouldn’t dare come and visit me during office hours, would she? Only one thing I knew for certain.
I still wanted her. Now more than ever.
Chapter 2
Devon
I glanced around the beautiful and historic campus of Diamond University. Why had I allowed my dad to push me into attending? Because it has one of the best music programs in the country, you dolt. And it has him.
All I’d wanted to do was flee Minnesota and get as far away from the snow and cold as I possibly could. It seemed the chilly air turned my blood to ice. And I had. For two blissful years, I’d studied at Berkeley but my mom had gotten into a bad car accident and I’d come home for the summer to help out. With her struggling to walk on her pinned leg, guilt had consumed me, so I’d signed up for Diamond’s music program to be closer to home.
It’s only one semester, Devon. You can do it.
Maybe it was that thoughts of him turned my body temp so high I feared spontaneous combustion. I’d welcomed the cold and that’s why I’d decided to make my father’s face light up by going to the same school he’d gone to. I’d accepted a full ride scholarship to finish my undergrad at Diamond as a music major and stay within a couple of hours of my family home.
It had been four years since I’d seen him in the flesh. Oh, but I cyberstalked him. And then I masturbated t
o the soulful expression on his face. I’d learned my own body to illicit thoughts of Judge Copeland. My hands knew every curve of his face and every plane of his muscles. Except they only knew them in the confines of my dark fantasies.
Four years of me wanting a man I knew I could never have. And never having anyone else because of it. Yup. A virgin college junior at twenty and a music geek to boot. But only my best friend, Annie, knew the sordid truth. She even knew about Judge because I’d had to finally break down and admit why I didn’t date when she’d accused me of being a closet lesbian. Now, we commiserated over bootlegged white wine and guacamole every Friday night in our dorm. Annie had been a virtuoso on the piano since she wowed the crowd at Miss Eveline’s School of Music’s annual recital at the Orpheum Theater.
Annie loved to wax philosophical and tell me in her best therapist voice that I needed to snap out of it and realize I could never have a man almost twice my age who was my father’s lifelong friend. I tried to throw her off with the distinguished gray temples and the British accent that made him sound like a fucking genius but she wouldn’t be deterred. Then she’d pulled out a copy of the New York Times and showed me an article he’d written that had been picked up nationwide.
“He is a fucking genius,” Annie had said, playing with my long hair to soothe me. “At least you didn’t just pick someone with a rock hard body to spark your May/December fantasies. I approve of your crush, Devon. You could have done far worse. I just wish you wouldn’t waste your college years being celibate because of it. You need to start making up for lost time, girlfriend.”
But telling myself that was a lot harder to accomplish when what I wanted was unattainable, yet still within my reach. Because the object of my affection taught Freshman English in the same building that contained the song-writing room that Geoff Standish and I had booked to work on our original music together.
I’d met Geoff at music camp the summer between junior and senior year back in high school. We’d become fast friends. I’d listened to him moan and groan about his crush on the very straight Eddison Moranis, and he’d listened to me whine and bitch about the man who shall remain nameless to everyone but Annie Kruger. Annie and Geoff were thrilled I’d enrolled at Diamond. I still wasn’t so sure.
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