Except while I’m smiling against her lips, I realize that Zandy’s gone completely rigid in my arms, and when I pull back with a concerned gaze to look at her, I see nothing but pure panic in her face.
Dread sends my stomach plummeting to my feet, and suddenly a horrible thought wedges its way into my mind. What if she doesn’t love me? What if she doesn’t care for me at all? What if—oh God—all the sighs and the distant looks have been because she wants to be free of me? What if she wants to be free of my deviance? My perversions?
My kink, as she so innocently calls it?
It’s Rosie all over again, except worse, a thousand times worse, because I didn’t love Rosie like I love Zandy. Not even close, not even a little bit. If Zandy doesn’t love me, I’m not sure I’ll survive it.
But before I can complete my own terror spiral, I see that Zandy’s sapphire eyes are brimming with tears, and I reach up to brush them away. She catches my hand with my fingertips on her cheek, nuzzling against my palm like a distressed kitten, and it breaks my heart to see her so upset. And it breaks my heart again to think that she might be upset because she’s going to refuse me. Because I confessed to loving her and now she’s trying to find the words to tell me that she doesn’t love me back.
“Zandy,” I say in a choked voice. “You don’t have to—I mean, I shouldn’t have—please don’t—”
She presses her own fingers to my lips now, meeting my eyes with the shining blue of her own.
“I love you too, Oliver,” she whispers, but she doesn’t sound happy. She sounds anything but happy, and her words are like twin swords of joy and pain right to my heart.
Doesn’t she feel it? How good and right we are? Doesn’t she understand how huge this is for me, how fucking rare and perfect?
“Then why are you crying?” I ask, searching her face. “I don’t understand.”
She just shakes her head, crying even harder now, and she curls into the tiniest possible ball in my arms, until she’s completely nestled into me and the scent of her hair fills my nose. Her legs are pulled up to her chest, which hikes her skirt past her ass, and even though my mind is mostly on soothing her, my body reacts to the rounded flesh now sitting bare on my leg.
And then her lips are on my neck, open and imploring, working their way up to my jaw and my earlobe, her tear-wet face slicking against mine, but I don’t deny her. I can’t deny her anything, I think, least of all the comfort I’m the most qualified to give.
I meet her mouth with an ardent kiss, tugging her against me so she has no choice but to straddle me, so her hard nipples press through her shirt and drag against my chest, so I can cup her backside in my hands and grind her against my cock for the friction we both crave. Her tongue, when I find it, is eager and needy, chasing mine with a desperation that’s underscored by her hands flying everywhere—at my shirt buttons, at the bunched muscles of my arms, at the tensed lines of my neck.
“Oh, Oliver,” she mumbles. “Please, please, please.”
“Anything, darling,” I say, the endearment slipping out of me faster than I can catch it back. But why would I want to catch it back? I love her. She deserves for me to be more than a tight-lipped miser about it.
She’s already fumbling with my pants, her small, slender fingers on my cock, and before I can even register how good it feels to have her stroking the hot, thin skin, she’s wedging me at her most private place and pushing herself down in wild, frantic thrusts.
It’s messy and rough, her skirt bunched around her waist and tears still dripping from her face, but her eyes are completely open and raw on mine and something between us tightens closer than ever, like a knot being cinched shut. I should stop her. I should wipe her tears away. But how can I when the first edge of a smile pulls at her lips and she’s chanting, “Yes, Oliver, oh God, yes”?
When she feels like pure fucking ecstasy on my cock, wet and slick and soft, like a tight heaven? It’s never felt this good, ever. It’s never been me clenching every muscle in my belly and ass and thighs so I don’t blow too early. It’s never been—
I’ve never been bare with her.
Holy shit.
Holy shit, I’m raw and naked inside her. I’m naked inside her, and it feels better than anything I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Ever. If I come like this, I don’t even know how I’ll survive, because I’m barely holding on as it is, and…
But I can’t come like this. I can’t. I’ve fucked that up before, and I refuse to fuck it up with Zandy. My bold little librarian with her entire life ahead of her; she’s far too precious for me to make this mistake a second time.
My hands find her hips, and I try to still the frenzied roll of her body over mine. “Let me get a condom,” I say to her. “This isn’t safe.”
She peers down at me, and for a moment, I treasure just how beautiful she is like this, even with tear tracks shining on her face. Her hair is like the silkiest, sweetest curtain around us, her cheeks are flushed and pink, and her mouth is a study in feminine glory.
“Oliver,” she says. Just that. Just my name, and there’s an undercurrent of pain in it, like it’s the last time she’ll ever say it like this, which is ridiculous, of course. If I have it my way, she can say it every day for the rest of her life.
I try to ease her off me. “Let me get prepared, Zandy. It will only take a second, and then you can ride me as long as you want.”
She doesn’t move yet, her lower lip trembling a little. “It feels so good,” she says. “I didn’t know it would feel different for me too, but it feels so good.”
I give a taut, rough laugh. “Yes, it feels good. Too good, and if we don’t fix it, I’m going to be coming inside you.”
Her lower lip trembles even more. “What if it didn’t matter?”
I stare up at her, my mind spinning even as my cock flexes in happiness at the thought. “But it does matter,” I point out. My chest tightens in irritated confusion, because how can she even joke about it not mattering? With her future? With my past?
She closes her eyes. “It doesn’t have to. Not now.”
“Because we’ve said I love you?” There’s a spiked cynicism to my tone that I don’t like, but I can’t help it. “I’ve said those words before, Zandy. They have nothing to do with what will happen if I come inside you.”
Her eyes flutter open, and suddenly I know I’ve said something wrong, something deeply wrong. “Right,” she says faintly. “Of course.” She tries to climb off my lap, but despite it being what I wanted, it feels wrong now, like if I let her un-join us, something else, something more crucial, will come un-joined as well. I hold her tight to me, catching her eye.
“Zandy?”
“No, it’s fine,” she says, still trying to move off me, and I have a flash where I realize I’m forcing her to stay on my lap. I let go of her as if I’ve been burned, horrified at the thought of forcing a woman, but I’m just as horrified at the look on her face when she gets to her feet in front of me. She looks like I’ve slapped her, and I don’t know if it’s because I let her go or because of what I said.
She pulls down her skirt, and I have the distinct impression that she’s trying to make herself look more dignified, more adult, as if that matters when my cock is still naked and wet between us.
“Do you mean that? What you said about love having nothing to do with fucking bare?”
She’s twisted my words, but as much as I work with words for a living, I can’t figure out how. It’s in the tone, in her giant blue eyes so wounded and the way she wraps her arms around herself, as if to shield her body from me.
“I meant,” I say slowly, “that just because I love you doesn’t give me permission to be reckless. In fact, because I love you, I don’t want to be reckless. Not with your future.”
Something softens in her face, and her lip quivers again. “What if my future’s already changed?” she asks.
“You don’t understand what I mean, sweetheart. I mean—”
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out. “I just found out yesterday. I’m pregnant.”
There’s a kind of static buzzing in my ears, like the air itself has come to life to hiss the truth at me, but it doesn’t matter because I find myself groping clumsily for both thoughts and words.
It doesn’t make any sense is the first real thought that surfaces, coupled with, but I was so careful.
So careful to use protection every single time, so careful to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. So careful not to ever put myself in that hideous situation again.
I hope it isn’t yours.
Pervert.
My silence hasn’t gone unnoticed by Zandy, and her face and voice are just on the edge of crumpling when she says, “It must have been in London. I’m not on birth control, and if your condom broke…”
Didn’t I think it was all too wet that night when I went to take it off? But who could blame me for not thinking about it when I was still reeling with the fact that she’d been a virgin? Yes, the condom was old, but it wasn’t so old that I thought twice as I rolled it on, and holy fuck, what were the damn odds? That the night she lost her virginity was also the night she got pregnant?
And it’s that more than anything that makes the blood drain from my face, that makes my body cool and grow rigid with self-loathing.
I’m no better than the pervert Rosie thought I was, impregnating some innocent like a fucking caveman, no matter how accidental it was. I pull my pants closed, fumbling for an apology, for anything to convey the sheer fucking horror I feel about what I’ve done to her, but I’m coming up with nothing, and it’s only as I look up at her again that I realize the damage my lack of response has caused.
My silence has cost me something important, although I’m not yet sure what it is.
Because the trembling lip is gone. The tears have dried up. In their place is an expression of blazing determination—not unlike her face the night we met, but there’s something heartbreakingly grim in her look now, like she’s resigned herself to a future so cold that it’s already making her numb.
I sit up, about to say something, anything, just to forestall whatever is about to come out of her mouth, but she speaks first.
“I’ve already found a flight home,” she says clearly, “so I don’t want you to worry about me lingering here when I’m unwanted.”
Unwanted?
But her reasoning slips by me as I face the reality of what she just said.
She’s leaving me.
Not only is she leaving me, but she’s already made the plans, which means she’s been thinking about leaving me for…bloody Nora, maybe since she found out. Maybe since the moment she realized she was pregnant.
The thought chills me down to my core.
Just like Rosie. She can’t stand the idea of carrying my child.
“…a spreadsheet,” Zandy is saying, still standing in front of me like she’s delivering the bleakest presentation of all time. “And I’m keeping the pregnancy. I’ve thought about it within both rational and emotional parameters, and it’s the decision I feel the happiest with. I know, obviously, you aren’t happy and that you won’t want anything to do with me or the child, and I promise I won’t bother you for anything—”
“You don’t know anything,” I say, and the cold words cut through her presentation like a sword. It’s the first thing I’ve said since she’s revealed this to me, and I’m vaguely aware that my first words should have been kinder, more understanding—but how can she just stand there and announce that she’s leaving like it means nothing? Like it’s not going to kill me?
Like I don’t love her?
And how can she think I wouldn’t care that she’d be taking my baby with her?
“I know enough,” she says, lifting her chin in that brash assertiveness that I love and that also drives me crazy. “I know you don’t want this. I know you don’t want us.”
Us.
She doesn’t mean me and her. She means her and the baby. My baby.
My blood pounds hot again, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Anger, hurt, confusion—all of those—but there’s something else, something dangerous.
Possession.
“You have no idea what I want,” I say, getting to my feet. She takes a step back and then another as I step forward. “You weren’t even going to talk to me about this? Before you just up and left?”
Her heel hits the wall behind her and she’s trapped, but she refuses to cower. “I won’t ask you for anything you’re not willing to give,” she says proudly. “I didn’t do this to trap you. I didn’t do this to hurt you.”
I know. It’s what I should say, what I should tell her, but I’m still thrumming with this need, with this fear, that she’s leaving me and I can’t hold on to her, and all I want to do is hold on to her. Her and this baby.
“We can end this healthily, like adults,” she says as my arms go to her waist, effectively pinning her against the wall, and her body ripples with response—goose bumps, hard nipples, parted lips.
“No,” I say.
“It ended the night we met,” she continues but more weakly this time.
“No,” I say again, my hands dropping to her pert bottom and lifting her against me. Her legs go to my waist automatically, and she can’t help the way she rubs herself against my renewed erection, just as I can’t help the way I rub against her still wet and swollen pussy.
“Oliver,” she tries, but my mouth is already on hers, kissing her as if I can brand my soul onto her soul, as if I can force her to stay with the heat of my lips alone.
“Red means stop,” I say, and when I meet her eyes, I know the word will never leave her lips. And when I reach beneath us to aim my cock at her opening, I’m rewarded with a deep moan. This time, as I thrust into her completely naked, I savor every fucking second of it. Every tight, wet second, every inch of nothing between us.
“You were going to leave me,” I grunt, pumping into her. “You were going to leave.”
“It’s for the best,” she gasps, her arms wrapping as tight around my neck as her legs are around my waist.
I don’t answer her with words, letting my mouth’s actions speak for me instead, blazing hot nips and kisses down her jaw and to her neck, where I keep my face buried as I fuck her. She’s so impossibly soft like this, pinned hard against a wall, not just her soft cunt but her breasts pillowing against my chest, her round bottom in my hands, and her velvet thighs around my hips. The orgasm is like a fist at the base of my spine, angry and hot, and I can feel its claws everywhere in my body, tightening in my belly and drawing up my balls and clenching the breath in my chest—but she has to go first, dammit. She’s got to come first.
I drop her weight just enough so the friction catches against her clit. I feel it the moment it takes hold in her—the straining, squirming tension of her building climax—and I work it desperately, fan it into flames until she’s falling into the fire of her pleasure, fluttering over the edge into release.
“Professor,” she gasps, and I freeze, but she doesn’t notice. She’s still riding out the waves of her orgasm on my cock, and then it doesn’t matter how much the word affects me. There’s no way any man can hold back now, and I am no exception. With this curvy, dark-haired goddess wet and whimpering and impaled on me, I come like a rubber band snapping, sharp and sudden and nearly painful, grunting into it like a beast.
Spurt after spurt of heat erupts into her, and it’s like I can feel it everywhere, from my scalp to my toes, and I never want it to end—the feeling of pouring into her, the feeling of her still coming around me and on me and against me. And she is so perfect.
So perfect.
She deserves better than a twisted man like me.
The world slowly unwinds, slowly brings us back to normal. Normal breath, normal pulse, normal heartbeat—although my heart is still slamming wildly against my chest because I haven’t just fucked Zandy the innocent little temptress. I’ve fucked the moth
er of my child.
And the responsibility of that is uncomfortably acute.
I carefully set her down and tilt her chin up to meet my face. “How are you?” I ask, abruptly worried that I fucked her too rough, that I was too much and that I’ve hurt her.
“I’m good,” she says, a bit dazed, and then she offers me the first real smile I’ve seen all day. “Professor.”
I flinch, just as I did when she said it a moment ago.
“What?” she asks, her forehead creasing. “What is it?”
“You can’t call me that. Not—not anymore.”
She keeps her eyes on me as she covers herself. “Why not?”
I’m not as brave as her, not as strong. I look away, using the fastening of my pants and shirt buttons as an excuse not to meet her eyes. “We can’t play that game now.”
“But I like that game.” Her voice is so honest, so clear, and how does she do that? How can she make it all seem so simple? “Not just like it, Oliver, but I think I have to play it too. I need it.”
“We can’t do it,” I repeat, sitting back down at the desk and reaching for a piece of paper. My mind is whirling, spinning, circling faster than I can keep up, as if fucking Zandy has done the opposite of settling me, it’s wound me up. “That was all before, don’t you see? Everything has to change now.”
She goes completely still. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re pregnant. I can’t do the dirty professor routine with you, and we certainly can’t keep living like this.” I gesture around us to the cottage, with its gentle river noises and ordered bookshelves and sleeping cat. “I have to find a different job—a suitable one for being a father, which isn’t whatever the hell I’m doing now—and we need to figure out prenatal care, first and foremost, for you, along with your visa. Ah,” I say, my thoughts finally catching up to me. “We’ll marry. I think we can get it done as fast as next week. That will solve a few problems fairly easily.” I’m already scribbling a list of things to do, things that need to be done to keep Zandy with me, and it takes me a moment to notice that she’s put her hand over the top of my paper.
Misadventures with a Professor Page 13
