To Professor, With Love(47)

 

From that point on, I was pretty much screwed. “Where’s your room?” I gasped, moving my fingers until she was squirming against me, her body demanding more.

 

“Hall.” She pointed sloppily over my shoulder. “First door. Right side.”

 

Fusing our mouths back together, I peeled her off the wall and carried her through the dim front room, only tripping once when I ran into a chair.

 

She laughed and buried her face in my neck, which afforded me a few moments to focus on where we were going and delight in how warm and soft and perfect she felt wrapped around me.

 

When I entered her bedroom, she reached past me to flip on another light. Her sanctuary was brightly colored and a lot less neat than the front room. The sheets were barely thrown over the mattress and clothes were strewn across the floor as books lay piled in every nook and cranny they could fit.

 

This was her. The real her, not some stuffy, uptight teacher in front of a classroom. This room represented the woman in my arms, and I had a feeling not a lot of people saw the real Aspen Kavanagh.

 

I carried her to the bed. Once she’d been placed gently on her back, she smiled up at me and lazily kicked off her fuck-me heels. When she reached out with both arms, I was drawn back in. Without thinking of consequences or morals or rules, I climbed on top of her and crushed our mouths back together.

 

Unlike most of the guys I knew, kissing wasn’t just some pre-show for me to get a girl ready for the big event. Kissing was its own affair. I’d been known to do nothing but kiss a girl all night, until she was the one begging for something else. I could do it until my lips were numb and it was impossible to tell whose tongue was whose.

 

Finding a girl who kissed just right was like a goldmine. And Aspen Kavanagh was the goldmine of all goldmines. She sighed into my mouth, her body warm and pliable. I buried my fingers into her hair, ruining the tempting way she’d fixed it.

 

I have no idea how long we kissed, our mouths mating and forging a bond that went far beyond mere physical companionship. But when she found the hem of my shirt and skimmed her fingers up my abdomen, I was more than willing to repay the favor.

 

“You’re so hard,” she murmured, the awe in her voice killing me.

 

“And you’re not even touching the hardest part.” I grinned as my lips found her jaw, then worked their way down to her throat while my fingers explored under her shirt.

 

“Feels so good,” she murmured just as her hand went limp and flopped onto the mattress beside her.

 

My tongue paused on her pulse as my gaze darted to her fallen hand.

 

“Aspen?” I glanced up to find her eyes closed and lips parted, her face canted away.

 

The woman had passed out on me. My body screamed in denial while a far distant part of my brain tried to tell me this was a good thing. But I agreed more with my poor, throbbing body. This sucked.

 

“Jesus.” Beginning to tremble, I rolled off her and landed on my back. Wiping my hand over my face to cool my heated skin, I blew out a breath before counting to twenty in my head.

 

Then I craned my face around to check on her. Yep. Still out cold.

 

This had to be a new low for me. I’d taken advantage of a drunk girl until she’d passed out in my arms. And not just any drunk girl, but the most forbidden one I could ever want.

 

My dick throbbed in my jeans, pinching painfully as it crowded against the back of my zipper. After readjusting myself, I glanced toward Aspen to check on her again.

 

Well, at least she looked at peace. For the life of me, I could not get my body to calm down. My hormones continued to rage, and watching her dewy lips part as she breathed did not help.

 

Twisting my head the other way, I scanned her room for something to divert my attention so I could combat the lust once and for all and be on my way. One of the paperbacks on her nightstand caught my eye. On the cover, a bare-chested, long-haired dude leaned over to hover his face into the plunging neckline of some chick in a big, frilly dress. The title was something about denying a Highlander.

 

A smile cracked my lips. I bet she didn’t teach about these kinds of novels in her classes. I reached out and flipped the cover around to study it a little more fully. The woman lying next to me was a romance junkie. Strange. I hadn’t been able to detect that during any of the classes she taught. She seemed so clinical and profession when teaching, I never would’ve guessed she had a daydreamer inside her.

 

Turning back, I studied her passive face as my chest filled with sympathetic pangs. Things started to add up. Her asshole parents had never taken her to a carnival. They hadn’t given her a proper childhood, but they had probably pushed her in school until she was skipping grades and excelling in education. I couldn’t picture her with a lot of friends if she’d always been the freak genius girl. And if the fucker who’d hurt her when she was fourteen was any clue as to what her life had been like, she hadn’t felt very loved or protected. She’d probably been alone a lot.