Page 121 of The Professor's Wife

Tristan’s eyes softened. He sat beside me, his arm brushing mine. The silence between us was thick, and it was charged. Intimate. I could hardly focus.

I looked down at my bandaged hand, then up at him. “You didn’t even ask what happened. You just… lunged at him.”

“I saw your face,” he said. “That was enough.”

I turned to him fully, my voice barely a whisper. “You were terrifying.”

He smiled faintly. “Good.”

I laughed, breathless. “I liked it.”

His gaze darkened. “You did?”

I nodded. “It made me feel… safe.”

He leaned in slowly, his voice low and rough. “I’ll always make you feel safe, Daze. No matter what. I’d take a fucking bullet for you.”

I believed him.

And that scared me more than anything.

Because if I let myself fall into that promise—into him—I didn’t know if I’d ever want to climb back out.

But after being watched without my knowledge, I needed this next moment to belong to me.

I took his hand into my own and looked down at it. I studied the lines, the long fingers. There was still blood on his knuckles. My body heated. Hunger unlike anything I’d ever felt for a man surged through me. With my other hand, I undid my towel and let it fall around my hips. Then I brought his hand to my breast and looked up at him.

He watched me, eyes glazing, his breathing slowing as I made him knead my breast. It felt full in his hand. I whispered, “I want it hard, Tristan. Harder than ever before.”

For the second time that day, Tristan didn’t hesitate.

When he took me to bed, he dropped me down and took me hard and fast. There wasn’t an inch of me that escaped his ravenous attention. He fucked me face down, his cock buried so deep, I let out a scream every time he pushed in. His unapologetic thrusts were met with my needy whimpers. I found myself begging for him to never stop. To fuck me until I couldn’t move anymore. I wanted to be used. To be coated in his release. To be covered head to toe by his licks and kisses. To be seared both inside and out by this protective man that had done nothing but want me every step of the way.

I felt it in him as he ravaged me. The intent behind his touch. The raw, unmasked statement in his brutal thrusts.

I was his.

I wasonly his.

There would be no one else.

Time ebbed away. Disappeared from our existence. It wasn’t welcome here. In this very moment, we were forever tangled as one, marked and owned and possessed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE PAST

“It will be alright,” Oliver said softly, running a hand down my spine.

I swallowed back tears, but my sight was blurry, and I couldn’t read the letter anymore. Not that I wanted to. Dejected, I folded up my rejection letter and placed it on the kitchen counter. I didn’t speak for some time as I tried to get rid of the lump in my throat.

Oliver sat on the stool next to me, his hand warm and doting on my back. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

A tear slipped out, and I quickly caught it, shaking my head. “It’s okay. It was stupid to hope.”

“Don’t say that.”

I shrugged. “Hundreds of people applied. They were only accepting a handful of us. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”