Page 16 of Broken Beauty (Beauty 3)
His smile was almost boyish. She had a hard time even seeing the scarring as some specific impediment. It was just the way he looked—a part of him. The only reason she regretted it was because she knew it gave him pain.
He would occasionally turn away and grit his teeth. It came and went, he said, like being burned all over again, echoes of the past. She would have done anything to take that away if she could. She loved, loved, loved him. And he loved her back, she was sure of it. So this insecurity business could die an ugly death, as far as she was concerned. No reason to hold him accountable just because some guy had been a jerk her sophomore year.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. He raised an eyebrow, and she continued. “I heard the tail end of your conversation with Professor Jenkins. The first day of class.”
“Shit.” He shut his eyes. “I’m sorry. I hoped you wouldn’t see her there. Erin, I swear I didn’t—”
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I trust you, and I understand that she might come speak to you once in a while. You guys do share an employer, at least for the semester. So I didn’t want you to have to worry that I’m going to freak out if you have a conversation. I wouldn’t even have said anything, except I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide from me.”
He pulled her to the couch. “I appreciate your progressive views on the matter, but as our fellow classmate would say, bullshit.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You have every right to be upset about finding me like that or at the very least to know what we talked about. And even if you don’t insist on it, I want to tell you. I made it clear to her that we were over. I told her if she came to my house again, that I’d call the cops on her.”
“You actually said that?”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth. What she did was beyond inappropriate, and I needed to nip it in the bud. For my relationship with you but also for myself. I can’t promise she’ll never do anything again, but I have no interest in her. None. And I’m pretty sure I pissed her off enough where she’ll want nothing to do with me.”
She arched a brow. “Setting a precedent, are we?”
He chuckled. “You’re going to throw all my lectures back at me, aren’t you?”
“Most likely. Why, you going to get fed up with me?”
“Never.” Another kiss, softer this time. “Stay with me.” A press of his lips to hers. “Wrapped up so tight I never have to worry that I’ll wake up and you won’t be there.”
As if to obey him, her limbs moved without thought, her arms twining around his neck, her legs hitching around his thighs. Her back arched up from the wall, seeking the hard length and hot pulse of him, trying to connect them everywhere.
“I’ll never leave you,” she whispered.
She felt him through her jeans, felt his cock jump in response to her words. They were connected, the emotions and the sex. They tangled together like their bodies and hearts, not elegant but instead grasping, pleading, begging. Needing.
She shuddered, silently beseeching, but when her tongue found the heavy beat at his neck, she moaned. He tasted like musk and man, like faith and irreverence all at once. His skin here was unmarred, uninjured, and yet still rough. The uneven rasp of a healthy, vibrant man who had worked and fought and weathered the world before finding refuge in her arms.
He reacted to the wet slide of her tongue violently. He bucked against her, slamming her into the wall.
“Wait,” he muttered. “One minute…just.”
She didn’t want to wait. Didn’t want him to bring himself under control, burying the passion somewhere deep and unreachable. She grazed his collarbone with her teeth, an animal instinct to incite and distract him. To draw out the beast inside him—not the wounded skin he thought made him so, but the hard, angry part of him. The part he kept carefully away from her, treating her instead like fragile glass. As if she wouldn’t be able to handle him—or as if she wouldn’t want to. She couldn’t blame him after the way Professor Jenkins had left him at his most vulnerable. He’d learned to hide his pain and frustration. He’d learned to doubt Erin too. But she was stronger than that. She wasn’t delicate nor easily bruised. And she was greedy. Nothing but the whole of him would be good enough.
She slid her hand down the plane of his chest and abs, down to the cloth-covered cock below. It strained against his pants, restricted by clothes and by him. However she wants it, don’t push too far. That was fine at the beginning, but not now. She had something to prove and maybe so did he.
She squeezed gently, luxuriating in the stuttered breaths bellowing from his chest, the low, pained grunt emanating from his throat, and, God, his hands—the way they pushed like beams against the wall on either side of her head, straining with the force of his lust and yet holding steady to allow her to explore. So much strength, so much restraint. He was a lashing storm clasped tightly in a steel box, and she held the key.
With her fingers flying, she unbuckled his belt and took out his cock. It fell heavily into her palm, burning up against her skin. She fell to her knees and tongued him, kissed him with all the force and passion that she had given his mouth just seconds earlier. She had sucked a man before, had even done this to him before, but never quite like this. Like making out with his cock, like making love to him with her mouth. He was smooth and slippery on her tongue, the faint salt barely registering beneath the passion that drove her. And to her delight, he was too caught up in the moment to censor himself. He dropped one hand and clasped her head, thrusting deep in beautiful rhythm. This was no care
ful role-play like they had done in his office that day, this was unruly and wild, a deluge of sex and sensation.
He pulled away—jerked himself back from her, panting. “God, Erin. God.”
She sank back to the wall, the slab cool against her fevered skin. The air felt thick and sumptuous, hard to breathe but nourishing too.
“How do you want me?” she asked, her voice low.
“I’m too far gone after… I’m on the edge, Erin. Let me step back and then I’ll make this good for you.”
“I don’t want you to make it good for me. I want you to jump.”
