Page 4 of Misadventures with a Professor
She’s right. “So what you’re saying is that you have a plan to go to a place you’ve never been, in a city you’ve never visited, to find a man you’ve never met to fuck you?” My voice is frigid, bordering on cruel, and I see her blanch.
“That’s very judgmental,” she scolds, but I’m not to be scolded. Not right now, because I do the scolding, I make the rules, and the sooner she learns that—
Wait, no, what am I thinking? She’s not going to learn anything from me. I’m not going to teach her anything. I’m not even going to spend another ten minutes with this deranged, bedraggled girl.
Even if she has the kind of long, thick hair that begs to be wrapped around a fist. Even if she has a rain-chilled body just crying to be loved warm again.
Even if she has the kind of plush red lips designed to drive men
mad.
But I’ve been down this road before, and I know what lies at the other end of it. Bitter memories and a life left in pieces.
Never again.
“I’m judgmental because it’s an idiotic idea,” I reply in a sharp voice. “Do you have any idea how unsafe that is? How foolish?”
Even in the dark, I see how heat glints in her eyes, and she sticks a finger in my chest as if she’s about to deliver me a scathing lecture. As she does, her arm leaves the warm confines of my jacket and reveals a delicate wrist circled with a thin band of leather.
A watch.
I don’t know why that’s the thing that does it, but something shears off inside my mind, sending my control bumping and careening off the tracks.
“Where’s your hotel?” I ask before she can start in on whatever she was about to say.
Her brows pull together and her mouth closes. Opens again. “Why?” she asks suspiciously.
“Because I’m taking you back there.”
“Why?” she asks, genuinely confused now.
“Because there’s no way in hell I’m letting you prance off to a bar to find some stranger to fuck you,” I say. And I give her a brief once-over, my eyes tracing where the fabric of her dress clings to her breasts and her soft belly and her achingly shaped hips. There are no secrets through that wet fabric, and those shockingly abundant curves are on clear display for anyone with eyes. For the undoubtedly many willing penises back at the pub.
The thought makes my chest tighten with something uncivilized and jealous.
“Especially not looking like that,” I add.
Her cheeks flush dark enough that it’s visible even in the night shadows, and I realize too late she thinks I’m mocking her, not warning her.
Fine. So be it. If that’s what it takes to save her from the greedy arseholes at the Goose and Gander, then I’ll pay the price. “What hotel?” I repeat.
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and that simple act has my erection throbbing against the damp fabric of my trousers, begging to be let free, begging out to play. And oh, how it could play along the soft lines of her mouth and over the wet pink of her tongue. How rude and rough it would look against the overflowing handfuls of her tits…
“The Douglass,” she says finally.
“I’m staying at the Douglass too,” I say before I can stop myself, and then horror curls through my chest.
She’s too close.
Too real.
Too…possible.
Would it be so bad? a tiny voice whispers in my mind. Just one night with a girl you’ll never see again?
Yes, goddammit. Yes, it would.
Meanwhile, the girl seems to be having some sort of insight. Some sort of wild epiphany. “You,” she says slowly.
