Текст книги "Tempting"

Автор книги: Alex Lucian

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Ten

“Get up.”

The voice was a million miles away, pulling me from my nightmare. I cracked my eyelids open a fraction, letting in the tiniest ray of light.

“Mother fuck,” I croaked, throwing an arm over my eyes and reaching for my blankets.

“No, just Leo.”

I groaned, pulling the comforter harder over my face. I felt his hands pulling it, but I wouldn’t let go.

“Leave me alone,” I whined.

“I hope you feel terrible.”

“You have no idea,” I mumbled under the comforter. A thousand elephants ran across my skull. “What the fuck happened last night?”

“You got black-out drunk.”

I sighed, let go of the comforter when Leo gave it another tug. “Was I a mess?” I slowly opened one eye, winced and covered the other eye. Leo stood beside my bed in the clothes he’d worn the night before.

“Um, yeah.” He nodded, pursing his lips, looking up as if in contemplation. “I thought you couldn’t top the time you barfed in their fridge, but I appeared to have underestimated your ambition.” He reached a hand for me. “Come on, I got you coffee and a croissant sandwich from that artery-clogging bakery downstairs.”

Greasy food and coffee = cure for even the worst hangovers.

I tumbled out of the bed, literally, holding onto the wall for support. I looked down, taking in my pants and shirt from the night before and was hit with the overall stench of vomit that permeated my clothing. “Fuck,” I muttered.

“What do you remember?” Leo asked after I’d sat at my tiny counter and sucked down half my coffee.

“I remember Jeremy trying to plant one on me and,” I closed my eyes and touched my forehead, “I think I splashed vodka all over him.”

“Uh yeah, all over both of you. And then you needed me to wash it out of your eyes and then you started talking about how you said yes but not to him and he had no life plan and it wasn’t your fault.”

Groaning, I dropped my head into my hands. “What else?” I knew more was coming.

“Well, you broke his nose. I think on accident, not that he didn’t deserve it.”

I almost smiled, but I knew that wasn’t all. I braced myself, eyes pinched tight. “And then?”

“I got you out of there as fast as I could, but you ended up falling in the yard and that’s when the vomit started. It was almost impressive, Exorcist-style.”

I still held my head in my hands, unable to look Leo in the face. “Did I puke on you?”

“Yeah.” I lifted my head, taking in his clothes. “My shoes,” he said, pointing to the bag hanging on my doorknob.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

Leo shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “Not a big deal. But I need to get going. I wanted to make sure you weren’t comatose before I left.”

“Thanks, Leo.” I stood up as if to give him a hug but he quickly jumped back.

“Sorry babe, but you need a shower. Wicked bad.” His gaze moved up and down my clothes and I winced, taking in the vomit smell again.

“Okay. Thanks for helping me home.” I looked around my nearly-bare apartment, taking in that Leo had tidied up the little mess I knew I’d left.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, halfway out the door.

When he closed the door, I picked up my coffee and finished it in one gulp. Thinking of Jeremy and how he’d nearly kissed me made me want to shower more than the barf that crusted my hair.

After taking the longest, hottest shower of my life, I plopped down at my desk. I told myself I was just going to check the weather for that week.

Yeah, right.

I logged into my email, feeling my heart thunder upon seeing the notification of one new message. Impatiently, I tapped my fingers on the desk as I waited for the actual inbox to load.

I didn’t even have to read who it was from once I saw the subject line. Most definitely not Nathan.

From: Celeste Morello

Date: Sunday, September 20, 2015 11:18 AM

Subject: Dad

To: Adele Morello

Adele,

I know you’re probably too busy being a drunk, irresponsible student to actually acknowledge my email and, more importantly, Dad, but the least you could have done yesterday was call. Mom was very upset. You should not have gotten her hopes up.

Celeste

• • •

The blood roared in my head, the initial dissatisfaction that the email hadn’t been from Nathan being immediately replaced by absolute fury.

My older sister and I had never gotten along, and at the very root of our acrimony was the father we shared. To her, he was Dad. To me, he was a father, someone who donated his DNA to help create me, but that was essentially all he’d ever provided me.

I drafted three different replies before I finally decided on one.

From: Adele Morello

Date: Sunday, September 20, 2015 11:43 AM

Subject: Re: Dad

To: Celeste Morello

You clearly know me so well Celeste, so I’m not sure why you’re surprised I didn’t show up. Especially since I never actually told you I was going. To blame me for Mom’s disappointment is ridiculous.

Besides, I’m sure ‘Dad’ would have preferred my absence.

Adele

• • •

I slammed my laptop closed and stalked away from my desk, not caring if Nathan decided to reply to my email.

I crawled back into my bed, not caring about anything in that particular moment.

After an early morning shift at the cafe, I was regrettably lacking time to run home and wash the French roast scent from my skin before Nathan’s class that morning. I splashed water on my face and let my hair down in the women’s restroom, running my hand furiously over the back, straightening my strands.

Staring at my reflection, I took in my skin—pale and void of color and my eyes—their green drab and lifeless, surrounded by the bruises that colored my skin underneath, the bags especially pronounced. I’d barely slept Sunday night after my prolonged nap, and the effects were wreaking havoc on my looks.

I ran a hand down the black shirt I wore, over my jeans, smoothing the wrinkles and dusting away the grounds of coffee that lingered.

My sister’s email had repeated over and over in my head, bringing with it a visual of my father, stern disapproval permanently etched on his face whenever he looked at me.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I rid myself of the image. I straightened my shoulders, applied red lipstick to my lips and concealer under my eyes. My hair hung limply past my shoulders, there was no fixing it now.

When I made it to Nathan’s class, I was later than usual. My front row spot had been taken up by someone else. I stared daggers into the back of her head as I collapsed into a seat in the third row, dropping my books loudly enough to cause her to turn around, taking me in. I gave her a saccharine smile, but I knew my eyes held derision. I wasn’t in the mood to have Nathan’s attention blocked today, especially after his non-reply over the weekend.

Had he known the email was me? Alice Carroll was my nod to one of my favorite authors, the author who had essentially saved my childhood when I needed an escape from my father’s taciturn presence. But then I remembered the attachment, of my piercing. If the words in the email hadn’t clued him in, the piercing should. I remembered, distinctly, the care he’d taken with my nipple ring when we’d been together.

My arms were above my head, parallel with the wall behind me. In the dark of my apartment, I could barely make out his eyes, glittering as he lifted my shirt above my head, ripping it from the tops of my hands. His hands clutched my ribcage, squeezing, as his thumbs brushed just under my bra. But instead of diving his hands under my bra, he covered my breasts with both hands, squeezing hard.

I yelled out, the sharp squeeze a direct hit between my legs. His lips came to my neck, sucking, biting, licking, as they made a path down my chest. He sucked my left nipple through the fabric of my bra, hard enough that I saw his cheeks hollow. The throbbing between my legs intensified, causing my hands to latch onto his shoulders, nails biting into skin.

“You like that, don’t you?” he asked, still squeezing my right breast as he gave attention to my left. “I bet if I touched you, you’d be soaking wet.”

“Yes,” I whispered, the only word I could manage when he pushed his hips against mine. His erection pressed against me and I found myself grinding on him, needing relief for the pressure building within me.

“No,” he said, abruptly pulling his hips from mine.

I could have whined in protest. But then his attention moved to my right breast, his mouth latching on to my nipple. After a second, he pulled away, meeting my eyes.

“What do we have here?” he asked, his voice a gruff whisper. He yanked the cup over my breast down, revealing the barbell in my nipple. He made a sound in his throat as his mouth descended, lightly licking the bud, flicking his tongue back and forth.

My hands loosened their grip on his shoulders as I watched him, his eyes on mine, his pointed tongue tracing a circle around the tip.

He hummed over my breast, the vibration shuddering into me, and brushed his scruff across the sensitive flesh, back and forth, taking his sweet time with my nipple ring. My legs trembled, the ache in my pussy growing in intensity. “Please…” I whispered.

“Shh,” he said sharply, and then bit down hard on my nipple. My hips thrust into him on their own volition, needing relief to the surge of desire that one bite caused. With my nipple still in his mouth, he rubbed his teeth back and forth. I could have come from the sharp sting of pain that blended into the most delicious pleasure alone. No man had ever made me come from nipple play before.

I tucked the memory into the recesses of my brain as the door opened and Nathan entered. He looked freshly showered, his hair glistening under the lights. Without acknowledging his class, he shrugged out of his black suit coat and pulled items from his bag. It was a ritual he performed every class. The mere act of him preparing for class caused me to cross my legs; the juxtaposition of this orderly professor and the man I’d fucked to be inconceivably sexy. With careful attention, he straightened his pens on his desk. Those same hands had dove into my hair, pulling, winding the tresses around his fist. He popped the lid on his thermos and took a long drink, his head tilted back and his throat pulsing as he swallowed. I could make out the flicks of moisture on his lips, a mirror of the way his lips had look after he’d tasted me, his eyes boring into mine. “Do you want to come?” he’d asked, his fingers spreading my lips apart, his thumbs brushing at my entrance.

Fuck. I was already forgetting that he’d completely ignored my email to him, leaving me lapsing into the memories of how he’d brought me up each time, only to pull back right before I tumbled into an orgasm.

What an asshole.

Nathan launched into this week’s focus, his eyes gliding over his students but not really looking at them. As he moved across the room, to the white board and to his desk as he spoke, I noticed something was missing from the week before.

The tension that had tightened his shoulders was gone, replaced with a relaxation that he wore all over his body. His eyes didn’t move to my direction once, avoiding my gaze like he avoided my email. But he remained completely at ease in his body language.

When he instructed us to read a passage from this week’s required reading, Jane Eyre, he sank back into his seat and focused on his paperwork.

I discretely pulled out my phone and opened up my email application. After darting a glance at him to make sure he wasn’t paying attention, I fired off a quick email.

From: Adele Morello

Date: Monday, September 21, 2015 01:29 PM

Subject: Friday

To: Nathaniel Easton

Did you receive my email I sent late Friday? I didn’t receive a reply, so I’m worried you missed it.

Adele Morello

• • •

Smiling to myself, I tucked my phone away and focused on the chapter.

Several pages in, I felt eyes on me. I looked up, met Nathan’s gaze. His face would have been expressionless were it not for the tightness around his eyes. I eased up from leaning over my book, keeping my eyes on his. His attention didn’t waver for a second, he was so solely focused on me.

I found myself glancing around the room, taking in the students who were completely focused on the book, before I allowed myself to meet his gaze again.

There was some kind of taut line of tension between us, and he communicated that completely with his eyes. They weren’t necessarily unkind, but he wasn’t exactly inviting me in with them either. But once I held them, I couldn’t look away.

His attention broke only when another student finished, and asked him a question on the text.

When class was over, Nathan exited the room like he was in a hurry for something. As I packed up my things, there was a heaviness in me from the look he’d given me, and I wondered what he was trying to tell me when he stared at me like that.

My phone buzzed, and I snatched it up from my bag. Incoming call: Celeste.

My thumb hovered over the screen and I debated opening it. Curiosity won out and I slid my finger across “Answer” with a liquid kind of dread in my veins.

“Celeste.”

There was a pause before she spoke. “Mom and I are shopping and she wanted to talk to you.”

I ground my teeth together, bit out a “Fine,” before my mother’s breathy voice came over the line.

“Adele,” she said.

“Hi, Mom.” I looked around as the students cleared the room, took a deep breath and prepared myself.

“How are you, honey?”

“Fine. What are you shopping for?” I rubbed my temple, not caring what she was shopping for, but waiting for her to say what she needed to say.

“Some winter boots for you. What size are you?”

I let out a breath in a whoosh. Maybe that’s the only reason she was calling. “I’m okay, mom. I have last year’s boots still.”

“Don’t be silly. Let me buy you some boots.”

My mother wasn’t an affectionate person, not in the traditional way at least. She purchased her love for me, in the form of clothing, shoes, or a fat envelope stuffed with cash in the bottom of my purse after a visit with her. It was how she compensated for how completely incompetent she’d been while I was growing up. I wasn’t too proud to accept the cash, which often went toward rent or food, but I felt, in a way, like I was accepting that this was normal. That a mother wouldn’t love her daughter in the way she’d needed her to.

“Mom, it’s fine, really.”

“Well, what do you need?”

The hand rubbing my temple rubbed deeper. What I needed from her couldn’t be purchased. “I’m good.”

“Why don’t you come home this weekend? I’ll give you some cash. How much is your rent? Are you eating okay?”

I sighed, covering the phone so she couldn’t hear. This was what she wanted from me. To come home. No doubt to see dear old dad. “I’m pretty busy with classes and work.”

“Surely you can get someone to cover your shift at the restaurant—”

“Not a restaurant, mom. A coffee shop.” Celeste’s voice came through the line and I rolled my eyes, knowing exactly what Celeste thought of my job. And my major. And my very existence.

“No, mom. We’re short-staffed.” A lie, but there was no reasoning with her unless I made it abundantly clear that I didn’t want to see anyone at home. “I’ll try to get a weekend off to come visit.” Another lie. Because I had no intentions of skipping a weekend’s worth of pay to spend time with people who I’d like to shank.

“Oh, that would be so nice. You know, we missed you on Saturday.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Celeste said you went to another party.”

Tell Celeste to go fuck herself, I thought. “How does Celeste know?”

“Facebook.” Celeste’s voice again. Damn, Leo. He probably tagged me in something from Saturday’s party. “Must have been really important to miss Dad’s birthday for.”

“I thought I was talking to mom?” I said, ignoring her statement.

“I’m here, honey. I have you on speaker phone.”

Of course. “Okay, well I have another class to get to,” I lied again.

“Your dad was really upset you didn’t come, Adele. He wouldn’t talk to anyone about it.” My mom’s voice was strained.

“I know it seems impossible, but you should try to stop thinking about yourself for just five minutes and remember your family.” I wanted to reach through the phone and smack the bullshit out of Celeste. But because I couldn’t, I simply pressed “End” on my phone and turned it off, marching out of the classroom and to the computer lab.

An hour later, armed with a printed piece of paper, I found myself in front of a large cape cod-style home. I didn’t hesitate walking up the driveway to the front steps. Determination made my eyes sharp, my tongue on fire. After the phone call from my mom and Celeste, I was feeling pretty raw, chastised by them both.

But I was a glutton for punishment, especially at Nathan’s hands. Which was why I found myself knocking on his front door in broad daylight.

Chapter Eleven

I wish I could say that when I opened the door and saw Adele that I was immediately angry at her showing up at my house. But that would be a horrific lie. My first gut reaction was a flare of lust so hot and so bright that I thought my skin might melt off the bone. Because the look in her eyes was so full of challenge, practically daring me to slam the door in her face. She’d probably have liked that, actually.

But the dance that we’d been dancing the last couple weeks was so far beyond what I could do right now. Not since I’d spent the last hour staring at an email from Elias, my brother-in-law, if you could call him that. The dick who was my dead wife’s brother who hadn’t shown his face in the good ol’ US of A since she died, now suddenly wanted free reign to go through her stuff. Yeah, that had put me in an awesome mood to begin with, so close to a tipping point of bad decisions.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed, yanking her by the upper arm into the house. The last thing I needed was some nosy, ‘well-meaning’ neighbor noticing the tall, slender blonde who happened to be one of my students standing at my door. Besides, I didn’t put it past Adele to sit on the front porch for hours just to piss me off.

“Can’t a girl swing by to say hello to her favorite professor?”

I released her as soon as the door slammed shut, and without removing my eyes from her face, I saw the way that she rubbed at her arm where I’d gripped her. Only with her, she was probably praying I’d leave a mark.

“No. You can’t. How the fuck did you find my house?”

She clicked her tongue, eyes flitting beyond me to look into the family room that led into the kitchen. “Such a dirty mouth. Though, I suppose I knew that already, didn’t I? In fact, if I had a dollar for every time you said fuck that night we were together—”

I grabbed her arm again, marching her back toward the door, because if she finished that sentence … I didn’t know, but there was no way I was in the frame of mind to be tested.

“Hey,” she said, yanking her arm out of my grip and walking backward, very much away from the door. “No need to get grabby, okay? I’ll be good.”

I almost laughed, the way she batted her eyelashes at me when she said it. Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and gave her a level look. “How do you know where I live?”

Adele dragged a finger along the edge of the entryway table, probably picking up dust along the way, then smiled up at me. It was a real smile, genuine and disconcerting at the same time. “A girl’s gotta have a few secrets, Professor Easton.”

Then I did laugh. I couldn’t help it. The entire situation was so absurd, that I kept laughing harder and harder until I had to brace my hands on my knees. When I finally got ahold of myself, I stood up, only to find Adele so close to me that I could reach out and touch her, had I wanted to.

Though wanting didn’t have much to do with it, I supposed. Wanting was a strange thing, because so much of it was just out of your reach. Either you couldn’t move your hands far enough to grasp what you wanted, you shouldn’t grab it, or it was perpetually moving. Adele was standing stock-still, right in front of me. For a few moments, all we did was stare at each other, me trying to catch my breath.

Finally, she lifted a hand like she was going to lay it on my chest, but I circled her wrist before she could make contact with my shirt, and her hand hovered in the air just a breath away from touching me. Her pulse was frantic and skittish under my fingers, where they wrapped around her skin. The speed of her heart belied the look on her face, which was pure, unadulterated seduction. The fact that I’d touched her at all made her think she’d won, I could see it.

“You need to leave,” I said under my breath, trying to regain control of the situation, because I felt horribly out of control.

“You don’t want me to though. I can see it in your eyes.” Adele moved toward me again, and even though I tightened the grip on her wrist, she laid her hand over my heart, smoothing up over my shirt until she curled her fingers around the back of my neck, digging her fingernails into the skin just below my hairline.

All I could hear was my ragged breaths and my pounding heart, and I didn’t let my eyes leave her emerald gaze, which bored into me like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

She probably did. She probably knew exactly what I was thinking because my cock was about to burst the seams of my pants, it was so damn hard. Adele took a step closer, pressing her breasts up against my chest, and I let out a hard exhale.

“Do you remember how good it felt?” she whispered, leaning up to my ear. “Because I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Me neither. I held those words so deep inside of me, just short of digging my teeth into the soft flesh of my tongue to keep them in. That tiny shred of pride that I was able to grip onto didn’t let me say them out loud. While I struggled not to reply, Adele fitted one toned thigh in between my legs and tilted her hips into me.

“The way your cock felt, so hard and so big,” she continued, undeterred by my silence, “you fit inside me so perfectly.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” I ground out between gritted teeth. But the words fell with a hollow thud in between us, because I pushed back against her as the words came out of my mouth. The feeling of swimming against a riptide overwhelmed me. Adele was the current, and all of my limbs fell in her direction, the hand that wasn’t gripping her wrist came around to clamp on her waist.

“No,” she said resolutely, not the quiet resistance I’d expected, but in a firm tone that brooked no arguments. That wasn’t the worst part though, it was that she moved her face even closer to me, so that only a slight turn of my face would mean that our mouths, our lips, those traitorous little swaths of skin, would touch. I looked forward, refusing to give her the satisfaction of closing the gap.

“Then you need to leave.”

Adele turned her face and I couldn’t help but move my eyes to meet hers head on.

“No.”

What made my face angle toward her wasn’t the stark stubbornness of her earlier refusal, it was the quietly spoken plea, the slightest tinge of defeat that colored her tone. It snapped any thread of defense I had against her, so I shoved her backward, not away from me, but into the wall behind us.

The little slut, she grinned at the same time that her back hit the wall. Then I kissed her, pushed my lips against hers so hard that I hoped they might be branded on hers for everyone to see. Our tongues met instantly, tangling and battling for dominance. When she moaned into my mouth, wrapping a leg around my hip, I ground myself into her, hoping for a bruise.

God, I could smell her; she was so fucking turned on. I ripped my hand from her waist and jammed it up her shirt, underneath her bra and filled my palm with one warm breast. She groaned, using her teeth on my bottom lip, trying to open up my belt buckle with one hand, as the other one was gripping my ass. Not willing to give up the nipple that I was rolling against my thumb, pulling so that the piercing dragged her flesh downwards, I brought my other hand down, pinning her hips against the wall with my own.

Our fingers tangled on my zipper, and I grabbed her hand, using it to palm my aching cock. We both sank when she made contact, the wall catching our bodies before we heaped onto the floor; me because the relief of getting her hands on me was more than my body could take, and her because … honestly, I couldn’t give a shit why she was making that noise. She was touching me; that was all that mattered. All that could possibly matter, and I was not willing to think too deeply as to why.

While she sucked my tongue into her mouth, her fingers wrapped tightly around the base of my cock, I ripped down the zipper of her pants. We both had our eyes open, despite the close proximity making everything else a little blurry. When my hand slid into her opened pants, underneath the scrap of lace and curled into her soaking wet pussy, her eyelids finally fluttered shut. Adele broke her mouth away from mine and let out a long exhale, a restrained and quiet sob, and it made me even harder.

She needed this, as much as I did. Maybe more, judging by the utter relief covering her face when I added a second finger and hooked them, grinding my palm against her clit. Her hips starting moving in slow circles against me, like she was fucking my hand and not the other way around. Adele brought the hand that was behind my neck down to grip a handful of my shirt, her fingers squeezing so tightly that I could feel the seams of the shirt pull at my shoulder.

“Oh, yes, yes, Nathan, yes,” she whispered, tilting her head back against the wall. Only after a few moments, I could feel her pussy start to pulse around my fingers, the heat from inside her climbing.

Leaning forward, I was about to clamp my teeth down on the long, graceful line of her neck when there was a hard knock on the door only three feet from us, causing both Adele and I to freeze. We breathed on each other’s lips when the knocking became more insistent. I yanked my hand out of her pants and couldn’t help but smile a little at the pissed off look on her face. Whoever was on the other side of that door, Adele probably wanted to fucking kill them, as close as she was to getting off.

“Nathaniel, I can see you’re home,” my father’s voice came from the other side of the door. I cursed under my breath, shoving Adele toward the staircase that led upstairs. He’d never go up there, I don’t think he had since the weekend Diana and I moved in.

“Who’s that?” Adele whispered after hurrying up the first couple steps, pulling her pants back into place while she did.

I clenched my jaw and pointed upstairs. “My father. Now just go into the bathroom, first door on the right and stay right there until I tell you to come down.”

The knocking continued and I pulled in a breath and called out, “Coming!”

“No,” Adele said and leaned her head around the top of the stairs to look down at me, despite the incredulous glare I leveled at her, “but I was really, really close.”