Page 44 of Misadventures with a Professor
The idea is beyond tempting. It snakes around my thoughts and my heart until I feel tied up with it.
“Whenever you have time,” Oliver says, not noticing my inner struggle. “I’m already astounded at what you’ve accomplished in just a couple short weeks.”
Despite everything, I allow my gaze to follow his around the study, and I don’t bother to tamp down the bubble of pride I feel at the progress I’ve made. Instead of an unsteady maze made of piles of books and paper, I’ve got the study organized with new shelves and cabinets of glass-topped drawers for the rarer works. Aside from the books stacked under my desk still awaiting cataloguing, the floor in the study is now complet
ely clear—save for the cat bed I bought on a whim for Beatrix—and a person can actually walk around the room without tripping onto centuries-old manuscripts now.
I have done a good job here, and I’ll be able to take that with me no matter what. I look over to the unbearably handsome man already bent over his work, and I can’t help but think that’s possibly all I’ll get to take with me: the memory of well-shelved books and nothing else.
The thought punches through my chest with grief, and I have to turn away, lest I risk Oliver seeing all these wild emotions move across my face. No, it’s best I approach him as controlled and composed as possible. I need to be cold like him.
By the end of the afternoon, I’ve done all the surreptitious research I can. I’ve made a spreadsheet of options, along with their qualitative pros and their quantitative cons. I’ve found a flight home from Birmingham, and I’ve begun preparing a small speech to Oliver, with a few salient bullet points.
Namely, that this is not my fault—if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his, for using old-ass condoms—and also, second bullet point, I’m keeping the baby. I’ve made a spreadsheet and I’ve made a decision, and a spreadsheet decision is a permanent one. Maybe it’s insane—maybe I’m insane—but when I sat there looking at all the different paths I could take, my hand kept drifting to my belly and my mind kept drifting to this fantasy of a baby with Oliver’s multicolored eyes.
Maybe…maybe he won’t be angry? Maybe he won’t be terrified? Maybe he’s healed enough from what happened with Rosie that he can imagine a little squishy baby with his eyes and my dimples and all will be well?
But what if he doesn’t? What if he can’t?
What if I tell him and confess to loving him, and he rejects both me and the baby in one fell swoop? What then?
Then you take the flight out of Birmingham and get started on your baby to-do list.
I curl over my desk, bracing my head against my hands, and try not to cry. I don’t want to be rejected. I don’t want to lose Oliver. And yet, even without the baby, I don’t know that he’d want me. He hasn’t mentioned anything about an us, about this being anything more than a convenient, kinky fling to while away the summer.
I want more than anything to be reasonable, to be logical, but maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones or maybe it’s the fact that Oliver stirs me up beyond reckoning, but suddenly, the tears are right there, ready to fall. Am I so unlovable? So unlikable? That even something longer than a summer with me is a detestable thought?
“Zandy.” A low voice comes from behind me, and I freeze as Oliver’s warm hands slide over my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
In my distress, I completely forgot that he could see and hear me. I hoped he was too absorbed in his work to notice my breakdown, but it appears I was wrong.
Like I’ve been wrong about so much else.
“I’m fine,” I say, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes and swallowing back my emotions. I move my hands and look up at him, giving him my brightest smile. “Just tired.”
He frowns. “I’ve been working you too hard.”
“Not at all,” I say, grateful that no tears have actually spilled and now only wishing the tremble in my chin would settle. “Really, I’m fine. I probably just need a nap.”
And before I can protest—or indeed, even process what’s happening—Oliver’s scooping me up in his arms and carrying me up the stairs.
“Oliver!” I say, tugging pointlessly at the shirt fabric near his neck and kicking my legs weakly. “Put me down!”
“You’re having a nap,” he says firmly, carrying me into his bedroom and laying me on the bed. He stands over me, as if torn. Then he climbs onto the bed as well, not to cradle me in his arms but going lower, lower, until his wide shoulders are tucked between my legs.
“This—this isn’t a nap,” I say breathlessly as he pushes my skirt up to my waist and tugs my panties to the side.
“I’m tucking you in,” he says, a single eyebrow arching in mischief. “Making sure you can fall asleep easily.”
And I could cry as his mouth descends warm and wet on my intimate flesh, not because I was near to tears before but because I love him so much, because he’s made me fall in love with him, because I can hardly stand these rare glimpses of his open, happy soul and I’m terrified I’ll have to leave them behind with everything else. I’m terrified of sending him back into his emotionless, cruel shell once I tell him the truth. My mischievous, smiling professor will be gone, and all that will be left is a bitter husk in his place.
You can’t know that, I assure myself, although the assurance feels hollow. There’s every chance I’ll tell Oliver and things will go well. There’s every chance this has a happy ending.
But I can’t stop the tide of doubt that seeps in along with the tide of pleasure, and as his mouth gently works me toward climax, I find myself clinging on to every single sensation, every single slice of memory. His soft hair under my fingers and his hot mouth and teasing hands pressing and massaging and stroking at all of my most sensitive places, and then finally—sweetest of all—the tender expression on his face as I come undone, pleasure spiraling out from my belly in whorls of ecstasy. I arch and writhe under him, my toes digging at the blankets, my head rolling back, and when I slowly circle back to earth, I see him standing up and getting ready to pull the blankets over me—as if he really means to tuck me in.
“What about you?” I ask, reaching for him.
He pauses, obviously torn. “I don’t need—shit, Zandy. Holy shit…”
