In the Midnight Hour (5 page)

“You’ll never know until you try.”

“I know this much. I’m not her type. She goes for all brawn and no brain.”

“You’ve got brawn,” Ronnie said when they hit a crosswalk and stopped. As they stood waiting for the light to change, she eyed him. “Okay, so you’re more brain, but you’re not bad in the bod department. You’re a little slim, but you’re really well built, and you take care of what you’ve got with all those vitamins you’re always taking. Wanda could do a lot worse.”

“Too bad she hasn’t realized that yet.”

“She will, especially if you give her a little encouragement. Let her know you’re interested.”

“Look who’s giving love advice. When’s the last time you had a date?”

She fought back a wave of heat at the memory of last night. That had been anything but a date. Just a dream. A harmless dream.

A
wet dream
, a deep, sultry, man’s voice in her head corrected.

Ronnie wiped at the bead of sweat that slid down her temple, grateful when the walk sign flashed on. She started across the intersection. Her gaze snagged on a young man heading toward them. He was as big and muscular as a football player. A black T-shirt emblazoned with a pink silhouette of Elvis and the words
Hunk-a-hunk-a-burnin’-love
in matching script stretched across his massive chest.

Ronnie was not accustomed to attracting anyone’s attention. With her baggy clothes and blah appearance, most men glanced past her. Mr. Hunk-a-hunk looked at her face.

“… Ronnie?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“The date,” he prodded. “When’s the last time you had one?”

Ronnie turned her attention back to her friend. “Three years ago, I think, but I’m not the one complaining.”

“Three
years
,” he said with a shake of his head. “And I thought I was hard up.”

“I’m not hard up, thank you very much.” Not after last night.

“Face reality, Ron. I could give you pickup lessons, and my sex life is just this side of nonexistent.”

She sighed and stopped for another crosswalk. “I don’t have the time or the energy for love.”

“I’m not talking love. I’m talking sex. A little one-on-one tackle.”

“With my schedule, it’s hard enough to find time to sleep.” The light changed and she darted across the intersection.

Danny’s long legs ate up the distance behind her. “It only takes fifteen minutes.”

She shot him a sideways glance. Fifteen
minutes
? Her dream had lasted longer than that.

“Okay, so maybe twenty, twenty-five, depending.”

“On what?” she asked.

He shot her a sideways grin. “You tell me. You’re the one taking Guidry’s class.”

She frowned. “You know I only took his class because I needed another elective to graduate, and it was the only one offered this early in the morning.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“I’m serious, Danny. Besides, the last thing Guidry teaches is ‘a little one-on-one tackle.”

“Sure. So tell me,” he went on, “what cataclysmic event caused the always punctual Ronnie Parrish to sleep late. Your alarm clock explode?”

A smile played at her lips. “I slept in my new bed for the first time since the store delivered it.”

His eyebrows raised expectantly. “That comfortable, huh?”

She cleared her suddenly dry throat. “Comfortable isn’t exactly the word I would use.”
Earth-shattering. Mind-boggling. Spectacular
. “But I guess you could say that.”

“Wow,” he said, a dreamy look on his face. “There must be nothing like a new mattress. I’ve been sleeping on the same old lumpy one I’ve had since I was five years old.”

Mattresses were the last thing on Ronnie’s mind. Her scalp tingled as she felt the gentle tug of fingers on her hair. And in her mind, she heard the sultry voice, the deep baritone rumbling through her head as it had followed her into oblivion.

“
Sleep well
, Rouquin.
Sleep well.”

Rouquin
. She’d heard the term so many times. A girl didn’t grow up with bright red hair in southern Louisiana and not get called Red a time or two. But no one had ever said the name quite the way her dream man had. Maybe it was the deep tone of his voice, or the way he growled the R just enough to send a shiver through her that rocked her control as much as his touch did.

Mmm … His touch.

Her breasts suddenly throbbed, her thighs tingled, and a yearning for something she couldn’t name filled her.

She took a deep breath, ordered her body to behave itself, and shot another glance at her watch. Waving goodbye to Danny, she launched into a full-blown run across campus.

Guidry was just going to the chalkboard when Ronnie slinked into his class a good thirty minutes late. Thankfully, his back was turned and he was preoccupied with a very detailed drawing of the female ovaries.

“Kind of you to join us, Miss Parrish.”

Ronnie stalled halfway into her seat. Her book bag hit the floor with a solid
thunk
that seemed to echo like a cannon blast.

“Uh, yes, sir.”

He speared her with a beady, black glare, pulled a pen from his coat pocket, and reached for his grade book. The scratch of pen on paper grated across Ronnie’s nerves and she winced. A demerit. She knew it even though she couldn’t see the big red check mark by her name.

“How many times do I have to stress that this class, though an elective for the majority of you, is just as important as any other science course. I would wager that none of you would dare be late to Laramie’s quantum physics or Bechnell’s mechanical engineering.” He placed the pen back in the pocket of his immaculate white lab coat. “I expect each one of you to treat this course with the same respect and appreciation that you give your other classes. Understood?” Four dozen heads nodded in unison and Ronnie sank into her seat.

A group reprimand wasn’t so bad—

“And as for you, Miss Parrish…”

Ronnie braced herself. So much for the worst being over.

“Since you hold this class in such little esteem that you can’t find your way out of bed in time to join us at eight sharp, then I assume it’s because you are so knowledgeable in our area of study. In that case, I ask your expert direction in labeling the specifics of today’s subject.” He gestured toward the model sitting on the podium and motioned her forward. “Front and center, Miss Parrish, or I’ll add another demerit to your already growing résumé.”

Eight years of college and she’d never been late to a class. Where was the justice in the world? Surely she’d gained a few brownie points. She helped old people cross the street. She loved animals and cried during long-distance commercials. She was a good person. Fair. Considerate.

“We’re waiting, Miss Parrish.”

She took a deep breath, pushing aside her self-pity, and walked to the front of the classroom. Okay, so Guidry was overreacting a little. But she had come late to his class, and so he had a right. She would simply do what he asked, as payback for disrupting him, and then she could get on with her day.

No problem.

Every eye riveted on her as she picked up the plastic model, mentally reciting the specifics. This was easy. She knew the required anatomy better than the forty-something ice cream flavors in the campus sweets shop. So Guidry thought she took his class for granted? Well, she would show him she didn’t take any course for granted. She studied and prepared her buns off for each of them—

The thought stalled as she glanced down at the full-scale likeness of a man’s penis, and every anatomical fact she new flew south for the winter.

She didn’t see well-shaped, industrial-designed plastic. She saw strong, throbbing flesh jutting from a thatch of sand-colored hair as a vision from last night blazed in her mind.

“Don’t be shy.” Guidry’s voice pushed past the sudden ringing in her ears. He stood off to the side of the room, clipboard in hand, pen poised ready to mark a dozen demerits at the slightest mistake. “Please project your answers so we can all benefit from your expertise.”

“I…” She swallowed, her fingers trailing down the cold plastic that felt more like warm, pulsing flesh with each stroke.

What was happening to her? She’d stared at models before and never felt any reaction.

Not now, she vowed.
Just get a grip
.

“Um, the penis,” she tried to swallow the apple-sized lump in her throat, “consists of two parallel cylindrical bodies. They are the, uh,
corpora cavernosa
and the …” The answer stalled on the tip of her tongue as her fingers swept down the model in a directive motion that she felt along the length of her spine.

Impossible!

Even as her mind fought against the sensation, her body flushed hot, then cold. Her knees started to tremble and her nipples tightened.

“We’re waiting, Miss Parrish.”

Concentrate
. She took a deep, calming breath.

A bad move. Very bad.

She didn’t smell the usual chalk and disinfectant. Instead, her senses reeled under the intoxicating mingling of leather and aroused male, tinged with apples and a faint crispness. The same scent she’d whiffed the night before.

As if!

She was losing it. She was finally cracking up under all the pressure of school and making ends meet. It was bound to happen. No one, even someone as determined as she, could give one hundred percent all the time and not risk their mental health.

Now she was having a full-blown breakdown. Right here, right now, in front of a classroom of her peers and the critical Professor Mark Guidry.

No. She wouldn’t go down without a fight. She’d worked too long, too hard …

Long
and
hard
weren’t exactly the adjectives she should be thinking of right now, she decided, her gaze going to the object in her hands.

Plastic
, she told herself. It wasn’t a real man’s penis. Certainly not
his
penis …

Concentrate
. She took another deep breath and cleared her throat.

“The parallel body is the
corpus spongiosum
. The urethra passes here.” She pointed to a specific area, but she didn’t see the anatomically correct model of manhood. No, in her mind she was back in her bed, staring at the six feet plus of hunky naked male standing not two feet away.

Her gaze traveled from his jutting strength, upward over a funnel of sandy hair, then a rippled belly, to a broad chest. Her attention fingered on one dark male nipple peeking trough the forest of silky hair. She drank in the sight of strong shoulders, a tanned throat, her study halting when she reached the most sensual pair of lips she’d ever seen.

Lips that had closed greedily over her own nipple.

She swatted away a trickle of sweat.

“And the root area here,” she said with a shaky voice, continuing her description, “is attached to the pubic bone by the, um … that would be the … the
crura
, I think….”

The words died, her left brain completely giving up as her mind’s eye riveted on a pair of deep Caribbean eyes. They glittered a vivid aqua, like the sea on a hot summer day. Mesmerizing. Inviting. Promising relief from the heat burning her up from the inside out.

Sweat beaded on her upper lip and she gasped for a breath of air. It was so hot in the lecture hall. Stifling. She couldn’t breathe, much less remember whatever it was she was supposed to be doing.

Labeling
. That was it. Wasn’t it?

“This,” she trailed her finger along the head of the plastic model, and felt the touch on the insides of her own thighs. His touch, his fingertips sweeping upward, toward the part of her that ached and burned and … “This is the …” The correct scientific name dissolved on her tongue and she did the unthinkable in Guidry’s class. She blushed, from the tips of her toes to the end of each and every hair on her head.

“I know what it is.” She searched for the right answer, her grip tightening. “It’s the—I mean, well, I think it’s the—”

“Enough!” The loud command startled her from her erotic memories of last night and yanked her back to the present. She jumped. The model slipped from her hand and crashed to the table. Pieces scattered and sailed over the edge.

“Unbelievable!” Professor Guidry rushed toward her, scooping up parts of the model while gesturing wildly for her to return to her seat. “You have managed to turn a scientific lesson into a peep show!”

He blew out a disgusted breath and began fitting pieces back together as if it were his own penis Ronnie had just demolished.

“I realize not everyone is comfortable with the human body, but it is perfectly natural for us to examine it.” He bit out the words to a host of snickers and giggles. “To study it just as we would any other scientific phenomenon.” He ducked behind the podium to retrieve the head, which had rolled beneath a nearby projector.

Ronnie took the opportunity to hightail it back to her desk while he tried to fish the piece out from under the metal projector cart.