Not until tomorrow.
And she wasn’t afraid.
By the darkness in his eyes and grooves in his face, he knew it. He relished the control, her helplessness, her trust in this moment of utter vulnerability that he wouldn’t hurt her. This was his ultimate fantasy, to take her mouth, testing his control and her trust that he wouldn’t go too far.
He tasted like soap, so clean, and just a hint of salty musk at the tip. She couldn’t move her arms, but she could damned well move her tongue. Watching his face, she swirled her tongue against him, tracing the slit, sliding underneath the crown. He paused to let her torment him, his face darkening, his eyes blazing sapphire.
She felt a wicked spark through the haze of pleasure he’d fogged through her mind.
Boundaries, he always talked of boundaries. This was his boundary, his test, his trigger point.
If it was his job to test her limits, shouldn’t she test his, too?
Could she make him lose that fierce control?
Tightening her lips around him, she sucked and licked until a muscle in his cheek ticked.
Pressing deeper, slowly, he breathed out heavily as she sucked him down, tightening her mouth until her jaws ached. She scraped her teeth lightly as he drew back, and his breath exploded out, his fingers digging into her face. He quickened the pace, his chest heaving, mouth parted on each breath.
Rock-hard satin in her mouth, she tried to tell him with her eyes what she wanted.
Make me. Make me go all the way. Don’t pull me back. Make me.
His arms corded, tendons standing out in his neck and shoulders. He groaned her name and thrust deeper, arching his hips. Almost too much, too deep, closing her throat off one second, two, and then he pulled back enough to let her breathe. Even in his release, he kept his eyes open, watching her face, making sure she was okay. He never violated that boundary.
She took him, drank him down, shuddering with every pulse of his body.
Drawing away, he pulled her up into his arms. “Damn, Rae, that was the hottest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
She nuzzled deeper into his neck, but her arms were still too lazy and limp to wrap around him. Flipping the lights off, he settled into bed with her tucked against him, pulled a blanket up over her, and pressed soft, gentle kisses across her face.
“Were you thinking what I think you were?”
Sleep sucked her down, but she managed to whisper, “Make me.”
Dear Dr. Connagher:
I’ve never been one to share my darkest secrets with anybody, yet I can’t stop writing
you these letters. I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone.
Maybe it’s because you saw me like nobody’s ever seen me before. Without removing a
single item of my clothing, you tore me down to bare naked emotions. You saw me, really saw
me, didn’t you? I couldn’t hide anything from you.
I certainly couldn’t hide how much I needed you.
When I lost you, I felt broken inside. I mourned for you. I thought I’d never be whole
again. I forced myself to date Richard in a stupid vain hope to fill that emptiness. I needed to
not feel alone, even if he wasn’t you. I thought we could make it work.
Yet that was my greatest mistake of all. I never needed him like I still need you.
After all these years, this need gnaws in the back of my mind, every day, swallowing me
like a great black hole. It’s a monstrous, consuming need. Here I am, years after that day in
your office, still writing you. Still needing you.
I’m messed up, Conn, I know it. I’m terrified of losing these dreams, because it’s all I
have left.
I think about contacting you. I even pick up the phone and begin to dial your office
number (yes, I still remember it by heart), and alarm bells start going off in my mind. What if
I’ve simply built up my memory of you to impossible heights? What if it was all in my head,
embellished and fabricated over the years? Surely I couldn’t have felt so much that day on
your desk. Surely I didn’t need you so badly.
What if you don’t even remember me? What if you’ve moved on, as I tried to do?
What if…you never needed me at all?
It would destroy me to see you again and learn that all these letters, all these years of
missing you, had been a complete and utter waste. If you thought that day in your office was a
mistake. If you looked at me with those incredible blue eyes, saw how much I ache to be
consumed by you, and turned away.
I don’t want to be nothing but a needy, weak burden for you to bear.
And so I hang up the phone.
~ Rae
Two warriors were trying to beat each other to death with swords, and Rae couldn’t tear her gaze away.
All right, so the “two warriors” were actually Conn and his friend Mason, tricked out in leather pants and white linen shirts hanging open with laces at the collar, but the swords were real. The incredibly loud clang of metal on metal was real, too. She didn’t know how sharp the blades were, but Conn’s sword was so heavy she’d barely been able to lift it. She couldn’t imagine how much they must have practiced in order to be able to swing the swords around so long and hard.
Despite the hint of fall color in the leaves, the day had warmed to a lovely Indian Summer golden haze, so both men dripped sweat. When they finally stopped the demonstration and bowed to the crowd, the watchers clapped enthusiastically. Even the Queen of the Fair inclined her head with approval.
Beer and wine flowed freely, and some of the people were rather unsteady on their feet.
Not good when one rather large woman in a tightly laced—bulging—corset nearly toppled onto the Queen’s Joker. Snickering, Rae turned away. She couldn’t believe some of the costumes these people dared to wear. Maybe she could talk Conn into those extremely tight tights and cod-piece next time.
Nah. He looked too good as the barbarian warrior on the rampage.
He and Mason made their way over to Rae, grateful for the cold water bottles she’d picked up at the concession stand.
Swiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Conn asked, “What’d you think?”
“Impressive, Dr. Connagher. Very impressive.”
“You should see him with the katana instead of the claymore.” Mason slapped him on the back grinning ear to ear. “He’s poetry in motion.”
Conn snorted. “Dr. Poetry in Motion is sweating like a pig in these leather pants. Excuse me a moment while I change.”
Leaning closer, she inhaled his scent, all dark sweaty warrior. She made a low sound of approval in his ear. “Need some help?”
He winked at her and slung the duffel bag strap over his shoulder. “I don’t want to get kicked out of the fair for tossing innocent bystanders over my shoulder. Try to keep Mason out of trouble for a few minutes.”
Conn walked off to find an empty restroom stall, leaving Rae standing rather awkwardly with his best friend. Mason cleared his throat, apparently just as uncomfortable. With a little smile, she moved over to the nearby stall of goods. Most of the crafts were nice, but not really her thing, although she’d already spent a nice chunk of cash on an incredible hand-made leather purse she’d seen earlier. As roomy and large as a saddle bag, maybe she’d stop forgetting it.
This vendor was selling stained glass, everything from butterfly plant-pokes to incredible window inserts grand enough for a cathedral.
Or a front door at Beulah Land? “Do you accept commissions?”
Smiling, the man nodded. “Sure do. We also have classes here in Joplin and in Springfield. We have a beginners’ class starting up in two weeks.”
A class in stained glass. She never would have considered it, but now…it seemed right.
She’d love making something to fix Miss Belle’s front door. In fact, she knew exactly what elements to include in the design. She picked up a class schedule and dropped it into her new purse.
She’d ask Miss Belle first, but she couldn’t wait to start.
Mason had trailed after her rather sheepishly. Trying to put him at ease, Rae asked, “How many students do you have at Drury?”
His mouth turned down morosely. “They gave me four sessions of Calculus I this year, so over two hundred.”
Inwardly, Rae shuddered. She’d only taken college algebra and that had been hard enough. “Is that bad?”
“It means I have a great many freshmen this year, very young and very foolish.” He nodded his head in the direction of a group of rowdy drinkers. “The most important things on their minds are beer and laws of attraction with the other sex.”
“I thought calculus was rather advanced.”
“It depends on the major. We have a lot of architecture students at Drury, and calculus is required very early in their program. In some ways, we use it to weed them out. Sad but true.”
He looked at her a moment, cocking his head slightly. “I must admit, when Conn told me years ago that he was interested in a student, I could hardly comprehend it. Most semesters he has as many Freshmen Composition classes as my calculus sessions, which means young and immature students. I didn’t think a first or second-year student would be able to hold his interest, but I was wrong.”
Rae felt a blush creeping over her cheeks, and her stomach knotted uncomfortably. She’d always felt like a shy, naïve idiot in his class, especially when she’d learned she’d stumbled into a senior-level English class, although she could certainly use the credits. “I didn’t mean to cause him any problems on campus.”
“Oh, no, no problems. I teased him unmercifully about being Dr. Perfect, so a little temptation to walk on the dark side was good for him. I’d never seen him fall for any woman, let alone a student. I thought he was a mess five years ago, but when he called me yesterday morning because you were gone…”
Mason gave her a hard look that oddly made her like him more. He’d been Conn’s friend much longer than she’d known him, and Mason obviously cared for him a great deal. “I didn’t run out on him again.”
Mason nodded. “He said it was a misunderstanding, but I realized something, Rae. I realized he loved you as much as I loved Julie. Losing you would destroy him.”
Unsure what to say, Rae moved slowly to the next stall of jewelry. Neither Conn nor Mason had commented about that night they’d picked him up from the bar and Miss Belle had played medium. The memory of that otherworldly feeling in the car still gave Rae chills.
“Actually, I’m very glad you’re back in his life, Rae. It’s too easy to get bogged down in exams and office hours, grading endlessly, preparing lectures, spending all our time with students. Every year it seems we must do more, teaching just one more class to help the college meet its needs. It’s easy for even caring deans like Strobel to take advantage of dedicated teachers like Conn. He needs a life away from campus and the constant demands of teaching.
You’ll be good for him.”
She tried to smile, but a nagging doubt bothered her. In many ways, Conn was still the teacher and she was his student, his teacher’s pet as that hateful Miss Barrak had accused.
What if their entire relationship was skewed because she’d started as his student? Would she have ever considered letting him spank her if he hadn’t been her teacher first, or vice versa?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine him any other way. She couldn’t imagine feeling any other way about him, ever needing him less. As much as she’d struggled to deny it, she needed his dominance, his control and strength of will. Her ass was still tender from his attentions and she’d felt an odd sort of pride walking about today, the tight denim a constant reminder of what he’d done last night.
How much she’d enjoyed it.
But what if he tired of playing that teacher role with her? Dread tightened her throat and her stomach churned. No matter what Mason said, she was suddenly very afraid she’d never be more than Dr. Connagher’s pet.
“You even got him on the internet, an impossible feat to be sure.” Mason laughed and leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “If you really want to tease him, ask him to set up a poetry blog. I can’t wait to see his reaction.”
Rae forced a smile for Conn as he joined them, but she couldn’t push the seed of fear away. In fact, that seed sprouted and grew with each passing moment. From the very beginning five years ago, she’d feared needing him too much. She’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to tell him no. She’d killed herself studying for his class, desperate to please him. A bad grade from him would have devastated her. Failing his class hadn’t been an option, no matter how much she had to study.
Now, though, she faced a test for which there was no study guide. What if he graded
her
and found her lacking?
***
“You’re awfully quiet,” Conn said, glancing at her quickly and turning his attention back to the road. “Did you have a good time?”
“It was a blast,” she replied softly, her throat constricted with worry. The grooves in his face deepened and he shot another look at her, this one sharper. “I have something I need to ask you. Something serious.”
“Okay.”
“Are you…sure? About me?”
He laughed. “Every time I think about last night, I’m sure.” He glanced at her, and he wiped the amusement off his face. Grimly, he pulled over to the side of the freeway, slammed the Mustang into park, turned his hazards on, and then turned fully to face her. “What happened, Rae? Did someone say something to upset you? Why on God’s green earth would you doubt us now? So soon?”
She forced a laugh, fighting not to cry, and twisted the strap of her new hand-sewn leather purse in her hands, tracing the laces. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about last night, and wondering…” She shrugged, tightening her grip on the leather. “I mean, that was pretty extreme. You’re not going to want to…to…every night.”