Page 19 of Among the Screaming Trees

The circling pressure is mind-altering. The pinecone weighs heavily on my tongue, my lips forced around it to seal it inside. My quickening pulse has nowhere to go. I shatter with the force of a tsunami, soaking his fingers as my climax crashes to shore. Elijah continues to stimulate me, easing up on the pressure now that I’m riding the wave of a delicious orgasm, or am I chasing another? Before either of us can determine where the first one faded, or the next one built, there is a knock at the door.

I bolt upright, just as Wyldan holds out a hand. I spit the cone into his palm and right my underwear, smoothing down the skirt and sucking in some overdue breaths.

“I’m coming,” Elijah says, making for the door. His enormous erection is clear in his tight-fitting trousers.

“Elijah? Eli, it’s Dean Grundy,” says the voice on the other side of the door.

FUCK!

Chapter Nine

Elijah

LODGEPOLE PINE (PINUS CONTORTA)

“Dean Grundy. Welcome.”

He shuffles through the door, his oily fingers leaving oval smears on the door varnish. If his knowledge weren’t superior, and his name revered far and wide, he’d still be languishing in Colorado. Before I coaxed him up here, dangling the offer of Dean as a carrot his beady little eyes fixed on, he was lecturing at Boulder at CSU. Close enough for Aspen to know of him by reputation, but not enough that she would cross paths with him. No, that meeting had to take place under my careful supervision, and for that to occur with limited questions, his promotion to Dean of WU had to happen.

“Thank you, Eli. Ah, Ms. Aldereyne. I have been looking for you; it is you I want to discuss something with. I never thought to search in here.”

Aspen smiles up at him from her perch on a wingback conversational chair. Grundy slides into the adjacent one, leaving him next to her on one side of my heavy desk. No, this won’t do. I can’t be separated from her by a timber barrier while Grundy’s hand is almost at her knee. I deftly flick the lock on the interoffice door, and to my shock, Jack slides it open and marches through. He barely acknowledges my existence.

What the fuck? Is this a scheduled meeting?

“Jackson, come join us, won’t you?” Grundy says, and he plops down into my chair. His hands grip the desk, and as he drags himself and the chair forward, he lowers his head toward the desk and inhales.

“Mmm. Don’t you just love the smell of that.” He grins, his head angled toward the edge of the desk where I must have gripped while Aspen’s cum was on my fingers. I licked it off, but her scent remains. Grundy, oblivious to Jack’s suggestion, begins a ramble about the scent of paper. It’s not paper we’re inhaling, and Aspen’s cheeks burn a brilliant crimson. Well, well, well. Seems she possesses a shy side.

“You were looking for me, Dean? Professor Wyldan requested a meeting with me at the end of classes.”

Grundy waves a hand, dismissing her gossamer-thin reasoning why she was in my office. If only he’d knocked a minute earlier when my fingers were deep in her hot, little cunt.

“Now is as good a time as any,” he continues, looking up at me as I lean on a display case. I would be sitting at my desk if another professor hadn’t claimed it first.

“Aspen. I wanted to check in on you, how you were finding things up here in Wyldan. See if there were any issues with your first week of classes.”

Aspen shifts uncomfortably under his attention. The question is innocuous, even caring. I wonder how she plans to answer the Dean.

“No issues.”

“Good, good. Because you shoulder a heavy burden with that surname of yours, child. Arthur Aldereyne’s mind was brilliant, but his methods ruffled quite a few feathers.”

“Fredrick,” I snap, shocked that he’d bring up her father so callously after easing into his line of questioning with the verbal equivalent of a pillow. “Where are you going with this?”

“I’m simply inquiring whether Aspen has found the Aldereyne connection to be more bain than boon. The once mighty name suffered quite an unhealthy amount of ridicule in the last decade.”

“That’s on Arthur’s shoulders, not Aspen’s,” Jack clarifies. “Leave the girl be.”

Dean Grundy collects his thoughts. Once Aspen accepted the scholarship, he blew up my email for days. Now that I command my office here, he can chew me out in person, with an audience. Fine line, old man. Do your worst.

“Aspen. Has anybody treated you—how shall I phrase this—peculiarly, based on your connection to Arthur?”

Here we fucking go. Why use peculiarly? Pick a more in-depth descriptor. Jesus fucking Christ. Would that cover a professor spanking and finger banging a student over his desk? Or only if said professor understood the symbolism of her being an Aldereyne?

“Peculiar how?” she asks.

The Dean turns to face her, his head bobbing from side to side. Old fool. “I don’t know. Any hostility, perhaps?”