Getting Dirty Page 6

  “Yeah. I think I’ve worked out the inconsistencies I was finding in the French literature. There are a few different translations that are all era appropriate.”

  He combs a hand through his hair, capturing the stray stands and forcing them into compliance. “You could make the argument that the most widely circulated is the translation of record and use regression to determine how much of the data you’ve collected can be contributed to the other.”

  The entire time he’s speaking, my eyes are glued to Blaire.

  “Yeah, that would be easiest,” I answer, only half knowing what I’m agreeing to.

  “And probably most accurate.”

  “I’ll get to these this weekend,” I say, waving the folder in the air.

  He reaches over the counter and claps me on the shoulder. “Rumor has it there might be an adjunct position opening in the Literature Department next year. Since you’ll have your terminal degree by summer, I could write you a recommendation, if you’d be interested. It’s not a guarantee, but at least you know you’d get the interview.”

  My attention snaps back to him. “Yes. I’d definitely be interested. Thank you, sir.”

  I’d pictured myself in the trenches, fighting for guest lecture spots at community colleges. Table scraps. But this…an adjunct position at a state university. I wouldn’t have to relocate and I’d have a steady paycheck.

  “Righty-oh, then.” He turns for the elevators. “I’ll look for those essays next week.”

  Once he’s gone, I cross to Blaire. “What did he hear?”

  “Nothing. I saw him step off the elevator and I came over here.”

  I breathe out a relieved sigh. “Listen, Blaire. You know I find you fascinating, but I really can’t do what we’re doing. We’ve started something that I can’t finish.”

  I don’t drop my gaze as she scrutinizes it, looking for the lie. Instead, I set my resolve and let it shine through my eyes.

  After a long moment, she nods. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I wish things were different.”

  I leave it at that. I’m not going to go all “maybe someday” on her. There’s no denying we have an electric attraction, but I know from experience that sort of thing flickers out over time. By the end of the semester in three and a half months, we’ll both have moved on. No sense making promises now that neither of us will be interested in keeping when the time comes.

  A smile ticks at one corner of her mouth. “Me too.”

  She gathers her things and I watch after her as she turns and walks toward the stairs. When she disappears at the landing, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Bullet dodged.

  Chapter 5

  Blaire

  Nate rolls off me, breathing hard. There’s a farting sound as our sweat-slick chests unsuction. It’s only the middle of March, so it’s still pretty cold out, especially after dark. Nate left the engine running and the heater blowing full blast when we climbed into the backseat of his Jeep. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t necessary.

  “Did you come, baby girl?” he pants.

  “Yeah,” I lie.

  He settles onto his back and I roll on my side, wedging myself between his bulk and the backrest.

  He hooks his arm around my neck and presses his face to the crown of my head. “I couldn’t wait to get home to you.”

  He texted yesterday telling me he was coming home for his Mom’s fiftieth birthday party, which is tomorrow, I guess. Said he’d be in town by eight and I should meet him at the high school. It was the first time I’d heard from him since he left my bed two months ago at the end of winter break.

  I guess since Marcus isn’t home he didn’t want to come to my house and fuck me there.

  “I fucking missed you,” he breathes into my hair.

  I look up at him. “Don’t you mean you missed fucking me?”

  He gives me that full-dimple smile. “All of the above.” I settle into his side and his fingers brush over my back. “Marcus said you got into Stanford.”

  “And Berkeley,” I say. “I’m going there.”

  “Damn, girl.” I can tell he’s grinning even though I’m not looking at his face. “Maybe some of those brains will rub off on me.”

  “Probably not,” I say.

  He chuckles and gropes my ass.

  As I lay here, it hits me how achingly empty I feel. This isn’t how it was the first two times we had sex. I guess that’s because I didn’t have any expectations other than being wanted for a few minutes. But now I want Caiden. I want the all-consuming aching need that being near him makes me feel. I want the palpable connection that crackles between us when we’re together—how it feels like we’re touching sometimes even when we’re feet apart.

  Or maybe it’s passion I want.

  All I know is, whatever it is I need now, Nate isn’t giving it to me.

  Nate’s hand combs through my hair and I try to convince myself this is enough. I try to be happy with what I’ve got. He’s still a hundred times better than any of the trolls at school. I close my eyes and sink into his warmth.

  But just as I’m starting to get comfortable, he sits up. “I gotta get home. Told Mom I’d be there tonight.” He shucks off the condom and drags his jeans over his hips and buttons them, then pulls his phone out of the pocket. “She’s been blowing up my phone the whole time we were fucking.”

  I sit next to him and grab my underwear and leggings off the floorboards. “You should have gone home first.”

  His smile is cocky when he turns it on me and slips a hand between my legs. “No way you weren’t going to be my first stop, baby girl.”

  We tug our clothes on and I push out the back door as he slips over the back of the driver’s seat. We’re parked behind the high school, in the faculty lot, which is empty this time of night. I don’t bother to ask if I’ll see him again before he goes back to school. I don’t think I want to. I don’t even know why I’m doing this except that I’ve spent the last five weeks and four days trying to honor Caiden’s wishes to stay the hell away from him. I thought seeing Nate might distract me from counting days…hours. I thought it might kill the burning ache in my chest every time I force my feet to carry me to the student parking lot after class instead of the library. I’ve got to stop wishing for Caiden’s hands on me, because he made it pretty clear it’s not going to happen again. I guess I hoped someone else’s hands on me might quell the need.

  Nate’s backing out of his spot before I’m even in my car. He honks as he peals out onto the road.

  I drop into my seat and head home.

  Chapter 6

  Caiden

  Blaire has stopped tormenting me. There were six weeks that I didn’t see her at all after our talk at the end of January. About five weeks ago, she started coming into to the library again when she needed me to help interpret something she’d read. We sit and work it out at the resource desk. But she’s stopped flinging sexual innuendo at me with every other breath. When she’s here, I keep my hands splayed on the counter as to avoid any accidental brushes or any hint of impropriety.

  I start the interview process for the adjunct faculty position next week and my moral character cannot be in question. I need to be above reproach.

  But in private, all bets are off. I don’t even want to know how many hundreds of millions of my potential future children I’ve washed down the shower drain or scrubbed out of my boxers and sheets.

  I’m just bundling them into a pillow case to wash in the dorm laundry for the third time this week when I realize Chris is on the foldout in the family room. Technically he still lives with me, but he has a girlfriend at school he crashes with most nights.

  No one drew the shades so the late morning sun is beating in on him. I drop my sheets near the door and go to the kitchen for my morning caffeine.

  It’s halfway through percolating when Chris’s head lifts from under his pillow. “I’m fucking begging you, Bro,” he says, his voice coa
rse with sleep. He holds out his arm. “Hook the IV up and just mainline it.”

  I pull the carafe and pour two mugs, then bring one over to him. The fact that he looks much more like Mom than I do—dishwater blonde hair and eyes bluer than mine, with her thin face and fair skin—didn’t save him. As far as Mom’s concerned, he still bears the cross of the dreaded Y chromosome.

  “Didn’t hear you come in,” I say, handing him the mug.

  He pulls himself up and leans against the back of the couch before taking it. “It was late. Taryn got a little pissed at me last night.”

  I rub a hand down my face and look at him. “What happened?”

  He downs most of the contents of his mug in two huge swallows, then balances it on the arm of the couch. “That’s the thing I don’t really get. We were…you know.” He gives me a meaningful look. “She started crying in the middle and everything I said just made it worse until she was screaming at me to get out.”

  I lower myself onto the arm of the couch, wondering why I asked. I’m about the last person who should be giving relationship advice. “Just tell me there’s no chance she’s pregnant or anything.”

  He holds up his hands. “No glove no love, man. I’m a firm believer in suiting up.”

  I know Chris lost his virginity way younger than I did. I had “the talk” with him when he was fourteen. Glad to hear he got my message, which was basically: Be safe. The first time I found a used condom in the trash when I got home from school he was only sixteen.

  “Things have been good between you?” I ask after a long swallow. The coffee burns on its way down, just the way I like it.

  “Yeah.” He looks down at his mug as he swirls the contents. “I really think there’s something happening, you know? She’s…” He shakes his head. “She’s fucking amazing.” His face screws into a grimace. “Except when she’s screaming at me to get out of her apartment.”

  “Then maybe that’s what you should tell her…the part about her being amazing.”

  “I did,” he says, meeting my gaze. “I told her I loved her.”

  “Last night?”

  He nods.

  “For the first time?”

  He nods again.

  “So, maybe that’s the conversation you need to have with her. I don’t know what to tell you, but sounds like Taryn does.”

  “You think I freaked her out?”

  “It’s possible.” I push off the arm of the sofa, downing the last of my coffee. I drop the mug next to the sink. “You don’t have class this morning?”

  He swings around and sits on the edge of the bed, rubbing a hand over his short hair. “Not until eleven.”

  “Any laundry you need done?” I ask with a nod at my pile.

  He shakes his head. “Taryn took care of me.”

  I grab my sheets and tug open the door. “Let me know how it goes.”

  “You’ll know it ain’t good if I’m back here tonight.” He arches his back and rubs the small of it. “Forgot how bad this fold-out blows.”

  “Later,” I say, closing the door behind me.

  My little brother’s in love. I’m seriously happy for him, but I’m also jealous as hell. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve known from the minute I met her that it would be easier to fall in love with Blaire than not to.

  But falling in love isn’t an option.

  ∞

  No one else is in the resource area at eight o’clock on a Friday. I’ve got my laptop open, pecking out the next chapter of my dissertation on my faulty keyboard when, out of the blue, it feels like a nuclear bomb goes off in my brain. I lose my train of thought mid-sentence, and no matter how many times I read what I started, I can’t figure out where I was going with it. I stare at my computer screen, all circuits scrambled, and when I can’t even begin to remember what I was trying to say, I swivel my chair toward the room.

  And find Blaire on the other side of the counter.

  Time freezes and my mangled thoughts focus on one thing. That flawless face. And now I recognize that it was her scent—something warm with the barest hint of sweet, like vanilla—that fried my brain. Spring break was last week and now that we’re well into April, the weather is starting to warm. Her long sleeves and leggings are gone, replaced by soft cotton tank tops and tiny skirts.

  “Do you have a minute?” she asks, holding up her copy of Don Juan.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, recovering enough of my composure to speak reasonably coherently. I push up from my chair and move to the counter. “What’s up?”

  “I’m a little stuck.”

  “On…?”

  She sets the book between us. “In canto five, Don Juan won’t sleep with the sultana Gulbeyaz because he’s still hung up on Haidee, but in canto nine, he fucks Catherine II. They were both essentially queens and Gulbeyaz was only twenty-six and gorgeous, right? So why the conflict there, and not with the fifty-year-old Catherine?”

  “It’s your interpretation Dr. Duncan is interested in hearing, not mine, but by the time Juan meets Catherine, you have to remember he’s a little older and has been through a war. His perspective on life has changed.”

  “So, no big deal, screwing an empress,” she says with a flip of her hand.

  I shrug. “I guess not.”

  She grabs a handful of hair and tugs in frustration. “It’s hard to analyze Don Juan’s sexual conflict when it’s so damn inconsistent.”

  I push out of my chair and lean on the counter. “His conflict is going to evolve with time and experience, just like everything else.”

  She looks at me, all frustration.

  “Come here,” I say. “There’s a really good biography on Byron that might help.”

  She stands and follows me into the stacks, but we’re only a few steps in when she slips in front of me, blocking my path.

  “What about your sexual conflict, Caiden?” She trails a finger down my bicep. “Any chance that’s evolved with time?”

  I close my eyes and breathe, but it’s no use. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I justify it by telling myself we only have to hide our relationship for a few weeks. After she graduates in a month, there’s nothing holding us back.

  When she takes my face in both hands and brings it to hers, my last shred of resolve snaps. I yank her to me, one hand on that perfect round ass and the other behind her neck. I destroy her mouth with mine, our teeth grinding and lips tearing. I’m halfway down her throat, trying desperately to claw my way right inside her.

  I slide a hand under her top and find the warm mound of her breast. She moans into my mouth when I flick the nipple with my finger before rolling it under the pad of my thumb. Her hands glide over the skin at the waistband of my jeans and I feel my cock lengthen out from underneath it to find her hand. I want to feel those fingers wrapped around me, stroking and pulling.

  When she realizes what’s happened, that I’m right there trying to force my way under the waistband, she hooks her fingers underneath the layers of my clothing and gives a tug, and I spring out from under my boxer briefs. I groan as she rubs her palm over the exposed inches of my growing cock.

  I have to know what she feels like. The impulse is sudden and strong. Base and necessary to my survival, like my need for oxygen. I slip my hand under her skirt, over baby soft skin, and cup her bare ass in my palm.

  She grinds herself against me.

  I hook my thumb under the cord of the thong between her ass cheeks and glide my hand between her legs from behind. She lifts her leg and rests her foot on the lower shelf of the stacks she’s got me pinned against, giving my fingers more room to explore. I push my hand deeper between her legs and find all the wet heat there. I drive my fingers into her core and she drops her head back and moans.

  I capture her mouth with mine to swallow the sound. She rocks her hips as I finger her, never letting up on my cock. I draw out and press her away just enough to get my hand between us. I find her clit and stroke it with slick fingers. She shudders hard in my ar
ms, so I stroke again, then press in a circle.

  Despite the arousal I see taking over her expression, her gasps and moans, she doesn’t forget about me. Her fingers flick open the button of my jeans and our mouths grind as her hand slips down the front of my pants, wriggling under the waistband of my boxer briefs.

  And then she has all of me. As her fingers curl around me and she strokes my length, it’s like an out-of-body experience. I feel her so intensely that the enormity of the sensation fills the room.

  Our tongues continue to do battle and a line of spittle trickles from our chins down my neck. I suck her tongue deep when she strokes me, tip to root, then back.

  She rolls her palm over the tip of my cock, catching the pre-cum there, and goes back to work, stroking me right to the edge. When her hand glides lower and cups my balls, they pull tight. I roll her clit harder under my fingers as she drives me over the edge. With one last stroke, she has me coming in my pants like some pubescent boy.

  She cries out with her climax and I smother the sound with a slow, deep kiss.

  I was a fucking fool to think I could stop this. She’s crack and I’m totally addicted.

  I pull my hand out and press my forehead to hers. “Well, that was interesting.”

  “You feeling less sexually conflicted?” she breathes.

  I can’t stop the smile. “Actually, no. But definitely much less sexually frustrated.”

  She smiles back, letting go of my cock, and bringing her hand to her mouth. She licks the smear of cum off her palm. “You taste good.”

  And fuck me, I’m swelling for her again. I lift my hand to my mouth and suck her juices off my fingers. “You taste better.”

  She kisses me, and I taste the heady mix of our arousal on each other’s tongues. I want so much more from this woman than stolen moments in the library.

  But I’ve already stolen too many tonight. I look down at myself and zip and button my jeans. “You have to stop doing this to me while I’m working. Cum stains aren’t easy to hide.”

  “So, let me see you when you’re not working.”

  I kiss her. “That’s probably a very bad idea.”