There’s no date on the note, although it is the tiniest bit yellowed in one corner, which is to be expected if it’s been stuck in a decaying book for any length of time. There’s also no real way of telling which book the note fell out of, although I do notice that all the books from this pile deal with the subculture of Victorian erotica.
I flip through one of them and find my breath tangling around the twists in my stomach.
Lots of spanking in here. Lots of it. Drawings and photographs of women bent over, their petticoats all rucked up in heaps around their waists. Stories of wives and debutantes and schoolgirls getting disciplined, sometimes in very erotic circumstances and sometimes in simple morality tales.
What had Oliver told this Rosie in bed that prompted her to buy these things for him? Had he been talking about research as they nodded off toward sleep? Or had it been something more intimate? Did he play the same bedroom games with Rosie that he played with me?
Of course he did, that voice says. You think he just decided to spank a stranger without ever having done it before?
The whole thing—the professor and his good-girl game—is obviously Oliver’s kink, and I might have been a virgin until just a week ago, but I was a very well-read virgin, and even I know that kinks don’t just pop up overnight. Oliver must have done it with other women, which somehow nettles me more than thinking of him merely fucking another woman.
A bitter envy poisons my blood, and I walk over to his desk and drop the note onto the page he’s reading.
“I found this,” I say. “Looks important.”
It’s almost worth my own pain to see the flash of anguish in his eyes.
“Can I expect to find more things from Rosie?” I ask, too upset to care that I’ve finally succeeded in sounding very aloof and reserved right now. “Would you like me to set them aside or save them for you to look through?”
Oliver picks up the note, his jaw working to the side, his hands so still that he might be a statue of himself. Then he gives the note a vicious crumble and drops it in the small trash can by his desk. “Don’t bother,” he says shortly. “I don’t want to see them.”
And then he goes back to pretending I don’t exist.
Perverse satisfaction buoys me for a moment or two. Whoever this Rosie is, she’s not a lover of Oliver’s any longer, it seems. But soon I’m weighed down with razor-sharp anguish again. At least he talked to Rosie in bed. I was only ravished within an inch of my life—not that I’m complaining—and then summarily scorned the next day…and I am complaining about that. He won’t even look at me now, as if I’m beneath his attention, and yet I never feel like he’s not aware of me. Of where I move and when I move, of how I sit and how I write. I just can’t tell if his awareness is one of cold annoyance or of burning dislike. It can’t be anything else.
It’s the slowest afternoon of my life, and as it drones on, too warm and narrated by the drone of a bee that gets stuck inside the study and bumbles about while Beatrix watches, I begin to wonder if I can really do this for the rest of the summer. Can I sit in a room with a man I want, a man I gave my body to, and have him treat me like this?
No.
I’d rather be spanked every day, because an entire summer of Oliver treating me the way he’s treated me today—that would be the real masochism.
After six o’clock rolls over, I close my laptop, coming to a decision. Dinner with Oliver would be an exercise in heartache and misery, and I can’t bear it. I won’t do it to myself.
If he wants to ignore me, fine. I’ll make myself very easy to ignore.
“May I sit here?” a warm voice asks, and I look up to see a very good-looking man in a button-down shirt and trousers standing next to me at the bar inside the Slaughtered Lamb pub.
“Of course,” I say with a smile, and his face opens up with an answering grin.
“You’re American.”
I give a sheepish smile as I pat the stool next to me. “Take a seat, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“That’s an invitation no man can refuse.” He chuckles, and there’s a little bit of heat to his gaze as his eyes make a surreptitious flick over my body.
We both order drinks, and we start chatting—he does some type of accounting for a local quarrying company, and I explain why I’m spending my summer before grad school helping a scholar with research.
He seems charmed by me, and I can’t help but wonder if this is how it would have happened if I’d made it to the Goose and Gander that night. If I’d met any other handsome Englishman, anyone other than Oliver. If it would’ve been as easy as I’d planned on it being—just two adults sharing a night together and then going their separate ways. Not whatever it is that Oliver and I have going on.
But at least I scored a point for my dignity tonight. I stood up and left the study as if I were simply going to get another mug of tea, and then I got my wallet and left the house, walking the short, pleasant route up to Bakewell and indulging in some Indian food before I decided to stop by the Slaughtered Lamb for a much-needed drink.
I hope Oliver enjoyed his dinner alone.
I hope he enjoys the rest of his summer alone, because I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to stay. It stings and it rankles, having to give this up just because he’s a colossal dick, but nothing’s worth being this miserable. I’ll go back tonight, announce that I’m leaving, and then tomorrow I’ll be on my way home, away from him and his perfect eyes and his perfect mouth and his perfect everything that even now sets my body on fire just thinking about it.
“Have you been enjoying your stay?” Matthew the Quarry Guy says, and I feel a stab of guilt when I realize this isn’t the first time Matthew’s asked the question.
“I have been.” I give him my renewed focus and another smile, which he seems to enjoy very much. “It’s so beautiful here, so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.”
“I’d be happy to show you around sometime,” Matthew says, his voice going lower. “I’d hate for you to miss anything.”
I’m about to tell him I appreciate it but I can’t because an arrogant professor broke my heart and now I have to go home early, but I’m stopped by the sudden appearance of a man right behind Matthew.
A man with blue-green-brown eyes who’s practically vibrating with rage.
“Oliver?” I ask as he takes my elbow.
“We’re going home, Miss Lynch,” Oliver says through clenched teeth, and oh, it’s terrible, but hearing him call me Miss Lynch again makes me want to squirm in the best kind of way.
“May I help you?” Matthew asks, looking a bit alarmed for my sake, but Oliver cuts him a glare so ferocious that Matthew withers immediately, and I can’t blame him.
“Only Miss Lynch can help me by coming home, which she’s doing now, so any help from you is quite unnecessary,” Oliver pronounces stonily. “If you’ll excuse us.”
I don’t have to go with him. Not only could I struggle free if I wanted, but I think if I said red, he’d relinquish me right away. He’d let me go.
But I do go with him, flashing an apologetic smile at Matthew and letting Oliver guide me out the door of the pub, grateful that I’ve already paid my tab.
“What were you doing in there?” he demands the minute we’re in the open air.
“Getting a drink.”
“No. What were you doing with that man?”
I roll my eyes and start to pull away, but Oliver pins me against the outside wall of the pub, one hand on either side of my head and his body a shield of angry male in front of me.
“Were you going to let him kiss you?” he asks in a dangerous voice. “Were you going to let him fuck you?”
I want to say yes. I want to make Oliver angry and miserable, just as he’s made me. I want to prove that I am sophisticated, that I do have dignity, and that I’m just as good at ignoring him as he is at ignoring me.
But like earlier today, I find I can only be Zandy. Honest, embarrassing Zandy.
“No,” I admit, looking away.
“Fuck right, you weren’t,” Oliver growls. “He’s not allowed to touch you.”
“Why do you care?” I ask, searching his face. It’s near-dusk, still light enough to be warm but dark enough for shadows to dance in his eyes. “You made it very clear today how you feel about me.”
“That’s what you think?”
“Yes,” I shoot back hotly. “Yes, that’s what I think. What else?”
“What else?” he breathes. “Not that you drive me mad? Not that I can’t work, I can’t focus, I can’t even think when you’re around me?”
We stare at each other, chests rising and falling with jagged breaths, our mouths nearly close enough to touch. To kiss.
My lips part and my eyes hood low, ready for him to lay waste to me with his skilled mouth and tongue. Ready for those hard, greedy kisses he delivered with such furious conviction for a man normally so cold.
He doesn’t kiss me.
When I open my eyes all the way in confused disappointment, he’s glaring at me like I’ve taken a match to his rare books. “We’re going home now, Miss Lynch,” he seethes, and I don’t argue, because the minute I get back to his house, I’m packing my suitcase and leaving. I don’t care if I sleep in some open-air train station. I am not staying.
I’m fuming as I climb into Oliver’s car for the short ride to his house. Fuming and rehearsing my grand speech about leaving and how Oliver can go fuck himself. But when we pull up to the cottage and I get out of the car, Oliver meets me at my side, crowding me against the car door.
I expect more of his anger, or maybe that we’d go back to the cutting chill of earlier, but the man in front of me is neither angry nor cold. He’s breathing hard, and there’s something in his eyes that looks bruised and tender and young.
“I want you, Zandy, and I can’t tell you how much that terrifies me.”
Terrifies him? It’s so hard to imagine this marble-cut man being terrified of anything, much less me.
“I don’t understand.”
He gives a bleak kind of laugh at that. “No. You wouldn’t, because you’re still happy and ready for the world. You’re still unhurt. And I— I woke up this morning horrified at the thought that I may have stolen that from you.”
I stare at him, beyond baffled. “What? By sleeping with me?”
He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “By sleeping with you and…all the other things.”
The front garden is a dark haven of flowers and rich grass, lit only by the faint kitchen light coming out of the cottage, so it’s hard to be sure—but I think I see color in Oliver’s cheeks.
He’s ashamed, I realize, and the thought is so bizarre to me, so foreign, that it takes a minute to absorb it. He’s ashamed of what he likes in bed.
And abruptly, everything else—his behavior today, my leaving—is set aside. Or, rather, filtered through the light of this new information.
“Oliver,” I say, catching his eyes. “I liked what we did. Both times. It’s sexy to me, and…” I search for the right word. “It’s not any more complicated than that. I like it. Who cares if I like it because I was raised by professors or because I’ve worked for professors before or because I’m an incurable teacher’s pet? It’s fun, and I consented wholeheartedly. What more can there be to it than that?”
It’s Oliver’s turn to stare, and he’s staring at me like he can’t believe I’m real.
“What?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“You,” he says, like he said yesterday afternoon, except this time it’s not dark or tortured. It’s wondering.
Possessive.
The way he says you might as well be mine.
“Me?” I ask, and it’s ridiculous, but I think I’ve been waiting to hear that word my entire life.
You.
“You,” he repeats, and then his mouth slants over mine, hot and greedy, just like I’ve come to crave, and within an instant, I’m against the car, my legs around his waist and his arms crushing me tight to him. I have so much more to ask him, so much more to wonder about, but it’s like everything shrinks to the points of contact between us: his mouth so searingly thorough and his lean hips between my thighs and his wide hands splayed over my ass. And where his erection pushes, thick and heavy, between my legs.
“Professor,” I whimper into his mouth, and he shudders underneath my touch.
“You don’t…you don’t have to,” he says. “I want you any way you’ll let me have you. Even without the games.”
“I’ll call you whatever I like,” I shoot back stubbornly, biting at his lip. “It’s my game too. My fun too, whether I want you as Oliver or as my professor.”
And again he shudders, but this time it’s not only with lust. The wonder is back in his eyes, the awe. “How are you real?” he says, biting at my neck. “How can you possibly be real?”
Suddenly, I’m being carried, and I think it’s inside, I think it’s to his bed, but we end up tumbling over right in the lush grass below a cottage window, blown summer flowers bobbing all around us. His strong arms and hands protect me as we collapse onto the lawn, and above me is only the shape of a beautiful man outlined by stars.
“I want you,” he manages in between searing kisses. “Now.”
“Yes,” I say eagerly, tugging at his clothes. “You won’t hear any reds from me.”
And it’s the first time I hear a laugh from him that’s real and open, not bleak at all.
“And please tell me you have a condom,” I say, biting at his earlobe. “I can’t wait a moment longer.”
“You won’t,” he vows, pulling up. “You’re mine now.”
There are no houses around, and even if there were, we’d be completely surrounded by flowers and shrubs, but it’s still insanely exhilarating to be like this, tumbled and tousled onto the lawn with my skirt bunched up around my thighs and Oliver on his knees between my legs, rolling on a condom. The feeling of being exposed, of being filthy, is enough to have me ready before Oliver even touches me.
“Oh, good girl,” he murmurs when he tests my pussy to see if I’m wet and finds out exactly how wet I am. “Such a good girl.”
I squirm under his touch. “Oliver…”
“I know, girl. Hold still.” With a thick, urgent stretch, he fills me, and together we fuck under the stars until I cry out and he joins me in long, jerking pulses, and we roll giggling and grass-stained off the lawn and into the house.
Chapter Ten
Oliver
I’m insatiable again, but I don’t care. Maybe I’m making up for lost time, or maybe it’s the heady pleasure of finding a woman who loves the way I am in bed.
Or maybe it’s her.
Maybe it’s this enthusiastic and boldly vulnerable girl who disarms me at every turn. This girl who warms my chest just with her smiles and with the way she holds her pen and her fucking adorable watch, who approaches dusty books with a zeal usually reserved for sex and religion. She gets under my skin, and I hate it and I love it all at once. And for a man who makes his living from words—studying them, analyzing them, writing them—I can’t find the right words now to explain all this to her. That I want her, that she’s mine, and that if she wanted, she could pluck out what’s left of my heart and eat it, and I’d let her.
So I settle for telling her with my body. With my face between her legs, with my lips running along her thighs and stomach, with my mouth on her sweet tits. She begs to be spanked again, and this time I do it with her on all fours and my cock in her mouth, arranging her so that I can easily swat her ass from the side as she pleasures me.
Then we fuck again.
And again.
The early hours of the morning find us showered and sated, with her in my arms as I toy idly with her hair. I don’t pretend it’s only the oxytocin this time, and she doesn’t ask, but I ask myself anyway.
What are you doing with her, Oliver?
What exactly are you doing?
And the answer is that I don’t know, and it bothers me.
“Why are you ashamed of what you like?” Zandy asks softly, dreamily, like someone on the cusp of sleep.
I tense around her, the question taking me by surprise. Once again I’m struck by how easy this is for her, by how she can just ask and talk about these things like they’re not…like they’re not taboo. Like they’re not twisted.
She senses my reticence and turns toward me, tilting her head up so she can see my face. “Oliver?”
I open my mouth and close it, the words just as elusive as they were earlier tonight.
“Was it Rosie?” Zandy asks, and she’s so fearless, so brave, and it suddenly seems important to tell her so.
“You have so much courage,” I murmur, stroking her cheek. “In your shoes, I’d never be able to ask about a lover’s former flame.”
Zandy blinks up at me in a very endearing manner. “I’m very plucky.”
“I was going to say pugnacious. Or perhaps pesky.”
She laughs, as always, at my surliness, and I melt a little. I want to be brave and happy like her; I want to—I don’t know—reward her, I suppose. Not like a professor rewards a student but how a lover rewards his lover. Vulnerability for vulnerability. Strength for strength.
Honesty for honesty.
“We met at the university I work for,” I say finally. “We met, and it seemed like, oh, I don’t know, all those stereotypes about falling in love. Like the world grew a thousand times bigger.” I successfully keep most of the old bitterness from my voice, but there’s enough that Zandy still notices, a little line appearing between her eyebrows. I reach over and smooth it with my thumb.
“Was she the first person you ever got kinky with?” Zandy asks, and again that word kinky, like it’s just a word and not a rebuke. Not something I’ve tortured myself with in the years since Rosie left me.
“She was.”
Zandy runs her hand in lazy circles over the muscles of my chest, playing slowly over the lean ridges of my abs. It feels impossibly nice. “Did she like it? The kinky stuff?”
Misadventures with a Professor Page 9
