Page 2 of Misadventures with a Professor
Sex is supposed to be spontaneous, unforced, mutually initiated. I can’t plan my way into someone’s pants…but I can plan the perfect environment to facilitate depantsing. So when Dad surprised me with the research vacation, I knew this night in London was my chance to find the perfect depantsing environment.
Except now it’s raining and I’m lost and barefoot and the plan has quickly unraveled into a wet, chilly disaster.
Okay, Zandy, focus.
There was a tube station marked on my phone’s map before the water made it totally impossible to navigate—maybe it’s just past the next cross street? I’ll duck inside, out of the rain, get my phone working again, and think of my next steps. And check my makeup.
I only have tonight, after all, and I’m not ready to give up, umbrella or not.
I pick up my jog, my head bent down to shield my eyes from the worst of the rain, the sopping-wet hem of my dress slapping and sticking around my thighs, when I collide with a firm chest and wheeze out an oof. Something resembling a grunt comes from the chest.
From him.
Warm hands come up to my elbows to steady me, and I look up into a pale face marked by darkly slashed eyebrows, high cheekbones, and a squared, clean-shaven jaw. His eyes in the rainy night seem like every kind of color, light and dark, brown and blue and green, and they’re framed by the longest, sultriest lashes I’ve ever seen on a man.
But it’s his mouth that fascinates me—slightly too wide and slightly too thin but hauntingly pretty, with perfectly formed peaks at his upper lip and a tantalizing hint of fullness to his lower one. Rain drips from his cheeks and the longish ends of his dark hair to catch along the sharp edges of his lips and gather in the tempting bow of his philtrum.
And with a sudden illicit thrill, I realize I want to lick the rainwater off those lips. I want to kiss them until they’re warm and soft under my own. I want to feel the shape of his mouth under mine, murmuring my name—except…
That perfect, rain-slicked mouth is currently creased in a harsh, unhappy scowl.
Chapter Two
Oliver
She’s shivering.
It takes me a moment to notice, as I’m still processing how someone emerged out of this tempest right in front of me. I’m also still processing how this someone in question is a creature made of pale skin, dark hair, and a sinfully red and lush mouth. Like a vampiress straight from a storybook but with the most incongruously innocent eyes I’ve ever seen.
She’s also young, drenched to the bone, and utterly, utterly inappropriately dressed for a night like this.
“Why aren’t you wearing a coat?” I demand over the roar of the rain, and her gaze blinks up at me—which is when I realize she’s been staring at my mouth. A kick of heat goes straight to my cock.
I ignore it.
“And why are you barefoot?”
Her eyes flick back to my frowning mouth, and her own mouth parts ever so slightly, as if my bad-tempered scowl fascinates her. Her tongue darts over her lower lip, licking away a bead of rainwater that settled over her fire-engine-red lipstick, and I find I want her to do it again. And again. And again.
I could watch her licking rain off her lips for the rest of my life.
“I’m looking for the Goose and Gander,” she finally offers. It’s hard to hear her over the rain, and yet even with the whoosh and churr of the torrent, I can hear her accent. Broad and wide and a little flat, American television style.
I know where the Goose and Gander is. I just came from there, actually, having endured a meal deconstructed into various mason jars and served on a wooden plank for the sake of seeing some old friends. But I’d drawn the line at overpriced cocktails decanted into chemistry beakers and opted to go back to my hotel instead.
Which is where I want to be—in my dry bed, with dry clothes and dry blankets and a dry book—not in the drenching rain with a barefoot little American. No matter how red her lips are. Or how enticingly her wet dress clings to her frame.
I scowl again.
“It’s back that way,” I say, pointing behind me. “Just around the corner.”
“What?” she asks, clearly unable to hear me.
“It’s back that— Oh, fuck it,” I mutter, taking her by the elbow and yanking her into the deep doorway of a closed shop. The absence of the rain is almost as shocking as the presence of it, although it still rushes down next to us in a dull, silver roar.
“It’s just past the corner there,” I say again, and in the sheltered cove of the doorway, she can finally hear my words. “Left at the lights, then just a street down.”
“Oh, good,” she says, looking genuinely pleased. And also genuinely cold. Goosebumps pebble her bare arms and chest, and I make a valiant effort not to notice her nipples bunched tight under her dress.
