B0161IZ63U (A) (11 page)

His smile wavered.   “I know the feeling.”

A clinking sound startled both of them, and they looked down into the sink just in time to see a flash of gold go down the drain.

Lila gasped, and her eyes flew to him.

He was holding the back of his neck, where his necklace had come unlatched, looking just as stunned as her.  Too stunned to move.  It was the necklace his late mother had given him, and it meant the world to him.

Snapping out of it, Lila pushed her body in front of his, filling the space between him and the sink.  She bent down and shoved her hand into the drain, knowing his hand was too big to do it.

“I got it,” she said, feeling the delicate chain between her fingers.

He sighed in relief from behind her.

Lila held her breath when he took her waist in his hands, just above the waistband of her jeans.

“Thank you, Lila,” he breathed.  “Thank you,
Professor
.”

His voice was too close.  It warmed her ear when he spoke.  She nearly told him to take two steps back, but then realized she couldn’t move her hand.

“It’s kind of…” She tried to pull her hand out.  “It’s kind of stuck, though.”

He chortled.

The weight of the situation quickly dawned on her, and her eyes widened.  “Holy shit, I’m
stuck.
I’m really stuck.  This isn’t funny!” She gave her hand a good yank, and her eyes grew wider when it didn’t budge.

“Okay, relax, don’t take your arm off.”  He pressed against her from where he still had a hold on her waist from behind.  He flanked her body with his, surrounded her with his warmth, including the warmth of his breath as it fluttered against the back of her hair, her ear, down the side of her neck.

Lila’s breathing came up short when he tucked his chin in the crook of her neck, reached into the sink, and took her trapped arm in one of his hands, wrapping the other around her waist.  Being engulfed by his body, feeling its hardness, and the subsequent rush that accompanied it, had Lila terrified.  She thought being stuck in that sink was scary.  No.

This was scary.  Chase was scary.

“Actually, I think I can get it out myself, just…” She was a second from telling him to back away, but some part of her body, the part she’d lost control of, pushed her hips backward, pressing her ass into him.

He pressed back.

“I can do it myself.”  Her voice plummeted to an indiscernible level. Warmth surged through her stomach, and she was unable to stop it from rushing straight to her center, like the butterflies had relocated from her gut to her pussy, flapping their wings delicately against the lips of her heat, making them swell with need. The monster that had exorcized every ounce of sense from her mind and body drove her to push her hips back again, and a tiny moan escaped her lips when he was right there waiting, making contact and driving back.

Chase’s lips fell open as the soft globes of her ass moved against his hardness for the second time, stealing the last inch of control he had left.

He went blind, laying on her back and shoving his hips into hers, his dick crying out in desperation for more.  The power of his thrust sent her body flying forward, her hips hitting the counter hard as he kept propelling, pushing, desperate to lay his dick squarely between the soft curves of her ass, clutching each side of the counter as he prayed for a control that didn’t exist.  His breathing came hard and heavy as he covered every inch of her body with his.  If he could climb under her skin, just to get inside, he would.

He moaned into her ear, moving his hips in time with the lust filled noises escaping his mouth before he could even think to stop them.  His body felt like it was tearing itself limb from limb with need for her.  The dream of sinking inside her wet pussy, touching it, tasting it, took over his senses.  He dug his fingers into the granite, cursing when her hips ground in the opposite direction of his own, working with him.

“Tell me you don’t feel that, Lila,” he begged.

“We can’t.” Lila clutched the sink.  “We can’t, Chase.”

Even as she admonished him, her body worked on orders outside her jurisdiction, and she leaned over the sink and raised her hips higher, desperate to get that bulge against her pounding clit, desperate to feel him on every inch of her.

“Fuck.” She lost her voice when he swirled his hips, causing a friction that sent fireworks blasting to life behind her eyes.  As she bent forward, he went with her, keeping every inch of his body flush with hers.

Lila’s head fell, and she jammed her eyes shut before looking over her shoulder and meeting his eyes.

His trembling fingers snuck under her blouse, setting her skin ablaze as they seared a path towards her heaving breasts.

“
Chase?”

At the sound of Chase’s name being screamed from the backyard, Lila elbowed him right in the gut, but he didn’t budge. Feeling like she’d been pulled out of a deep sleep, like someone had thrown a bucket of ice over her head, she gave herself a shocking reminder of how outrageous it was for her to be bent over her kitchen sink.

Even after taking a blow to the gut, Chase still held her flush, tight.  He was in a different world.

She cursed herself when her body hummed.  “That little girl you brought is right outside my backdoor, Chase. Let me go.” 

The pretty brunette Chase had brought to the party had arrived drunk as a skunk, promptly passing out on Lila’s hammock the moment she’d rolled into it. Both Chase and Lila had forgotten all about the little lush, until that startling moment.

He held her against him for a few moments longer, collecting his breath and himself.  Without a word, he straightened up, albeit on shaky legs, but not before he took her wrist in his hand and, with one well-timed flick, released her from the sink. 

Lila stared at her hand, both shocked an annoyed that he’d waited until now to do whatever he’d just done to free her.  Breathing deep, she lifted her wrist and rotated it, staring at the gold chain that dangled down from her fingers.

She remembered the day he’d started wearing it well. 

He’d been sixteen at the time.  She’d been twenty-six.

She was free, but even as she studied her freed hand, she couldn’t make herself fly away.  Not even when he burned the skin under her top with his fingertips, or when his breath warmed her ear.

“I couldn’t fight for you back then,” he whispered.  “But I’m not a kid anymore, Lila, and he can’t have you this time.”

Lila jammed her eyes shut.

“I’ll kill him first.”

7

Lila looked at her bedside clock, saw the time, and scoffed.

It was the middle of the night, and she was fighting a war she’d already lost.  The covers on her bed were too hot, but when she kicked them off, the air in the room was too cold.

Her body was speaking to her in a way she was familiar with, but she didn’t have the courage to address it in the way she knew it needed.

It terrified her what it would mean if she did.

She tossed and turned for what felt like hours, but when she looked at the clock, she saw it had only been three minutes.

Apparently, her body wasn’t going to allow her to get any rest until she gave in to everything that was plaguing her, regardless of what it meant.

Writhing under her sheets, she kicked them, and the blanket, off the bed completely, with an animalistic growl.

She knew what she needed.  The only thing in the world that would get her to sleep.

So she looked at the clock one more time, saw that it was nearly 3am, and finally succumbed, letting her fingers slip past the waistband of her panties.

The moment they dove into her slick, velvety walls, her eyes fluttered shut, and they didn’t open again until her alarm went off the next morning.

Not even as an orgasm stronger than any she’d ever had rocked every bone in her body.

Not even as his face infiltrated her mind and stayed there for good.

--

“It’s come to my attention that you hosted a party at your place of residence last night.”

Lila shifted in the large leather seat, noting that it was surprisingly comfortable, not to mention breathtakingly beautiful and expensive.  As she took in the vaulted ceilings, endless bookshelves, and beautiful bay windows of the dean’s office, however, she noted that
everything
in that room was beautiful.

Including the woman sitting on the other side of the desk.

Lila tucked a piece of hair behind her ear as she nodded to Dr. Halle Perkins, Dean of Students.  Dean Perkins was in her fifties, and her skin was the darkest brown, downplayed only by her jet-black hair, which she kept in a sharp bob.  Her brown eyes were serious, the perfect compliment to her borderline stoic personality.

“I did,” Lila said.  “It was small.  I’m not usually one for parties, but I recently purchased a beautiful house in Davis Square, and I just had to show it off.”

Dean Perkins sat forward.

Lila felt uneasy by the look in her eyes.

“Lila, I’m short on time today, so I’ll get straight to the point.  Fraternizing with students isn’t forbidden at Harvard, but it can be frowned upon. It has too much potential to create conflicts of interest, and can open a lot of negative doors that you might find hard to close.  I’m aware you’ve only been working here for a little under a year.  Seeing as your performance review is coming up soon, I thought it only fair to give you the heads up I wish someone had given me when I started as a lecturer here twenty years ago.”

“I had no idea. I--” Lila was stunned.  “There were students
and
faculty at the party.  There wasn’t even any alcohol.  Anyone who was drunk at my party was only drunk because they arrived that way.”  She thought of the sorority girl who’d stumbled in on Chase’s arm and stumbled out in quite the same fashion.  As far as Lila could remember, she was the only person at the party who’d been visibly drunk.  “We played Kenny G all night for goodness sake.” 

“I have no doubt nothing unsavory occurred.  I’m sure it was a lovely party.  Even so. You are young, beautiful, brilliant, and
black
.  People will hate you for it. You’re up for assistant professor very soon…”

Lila’s eyes searched Dean Perkins’, and it hit her what this was really about.  The Dean hadn’t brought Lila in to chide her.  As a fellow black woman in academia, she’d brought Lila in to warn her.

“They’ll be gunning for you.”  Dean Perkins gave her the first smile of the morning.  “Try not to give them too much ammo.”

--

“Do you have a question, Mr. Almeida?”

Chase hesitated a few feet away from Lila’s desk, a smirk touching his lips as the last of the class filed out of the auditorium.  A frozen moment passed as if he were giving himself a silent chant, before he began moving toward her again.  By the time he made it to her desk, tapping his fingers against the wood, the classroom was empty.

“No,
Professor James
.”  He still said those two words,
Professor James
, like he was telling an inside joke that she wasn’t in on, with a teasing tone of voice that annoyed her.  “I just wanted to say good morning.”

“Good morning,” Lila said.  “Is that all?”

His eyebrows jumped.

“Because I have a very busy day today.  I don’t have much time.”

He exhaled.  “So that’s how it’s going to be,
Professor?”
His eyes bore into hers.  “Really?”

“Yes.  Really.”  Lila crossed her arms.  “Anything else?”

He stepped away from the desk, eyes wounded.  “Nah. That’s all.  Just wanted to say hi.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow in class.” Lila shifted. 

She hated being so cold to him, but the talk with the dean that morning was stuck in her mind.  She’d warned Lila that inviting her students to an innocent party might put her assistant professor promotion at risk.  Lila could only
imagine
the kind of colorful warnings Dean Perkins would have for her if she knew that, by the end of the night, one of those students had bent Lila over her kitchen sink.

Some part of her wanted to hop over that desk and give him a hug.  The hurt he tried to hide from his eyes nearly made it so.  Another part of her, the darker, more monstrous part, wanted to hop over that desk and continue exploring what they’d started in her kitchen.  Thankfully, she was able to fight back the urge to protect him, the vivid memory of his hard dick pressed against her, and the immediate response her body had to both.

Her victory was short-lived, because the lurid thoughts didn’t stay gone for long.  Just like it had been while she’d tossed and turned in bed the night before, the feeling of his body flush with hers was back in her head like a drug. It had yet to leave her mind for more than a few seconds at a time.

The memory clearly hadn’t left Chase’s mind, either. Something had shifted with him, with both of them, and now they were treading the kind of rocky ground they’d never tread with each other. A week ago he would’ve had a smile, a pun, or some smart remark in response to Lila’s short attitude.

Today, he ran a hand down the back of his head, and slowly backed away from her desk.  “All right.  Have a good day, then.”

“You too, Chase.”

She waited for him to leave the room, shooting her one last look from the top of the auditorium before he stepped out for good.  Only then did she allow herself to fall into her chair and slam her forehead against the desk.

Last night had been a mistake.  For more reasons than she had fingers to count.

He was her student.

He was ten years her junior.

He was her ex-boyfriend’s baby brother.

Last night had certainly been a mistake. Not just the party, but everything after.

It was a mistake Lila vowed never to make again.

Her career was on the line.  It was the job of her dreams. If she wanted to insure it remained safely in her grasp, she had to let go of the one thing in the world she’d never learned to let go of.

She had to let go of Chase Almeida.