Beauty and the Professor (A Modern Fairy Tale Duet 1)

“Fuck,” he muttered. “I can’t—I can’t—”

“Don’t hold back.” Then she repeated his earlier words. “Take what you need.”

That seemed to release him.

He picked up speed, slamming inside her so hard it took her breath away. He pressed his lips to hers, moving his tongue to the same rhythm as his hips. He invaded her at both places, her mouth and her sex, and held her down in all the rest, but she wouldn’t have moved for the world. She longed for him to take her, to use her.

Anything she could do to bring him pleasure.

Anything to bring him peace.

His hips lost their steady motion, jerking up against her like waves on a cliff, crashing until he let out a hoarse shout and held still for his climax. Long moments spent in the most intimate way a woman can hold a man, with her secret muscles, drawing out his come.

He did not collapse on top of her. Very carefully, gingerly, he pulled out.

She whimpered slightly at the loss.

He stroked her thigh. “I’ll be right back. Have to take care of this.”

He disappeared into the bathroom to dispose of the condom. The water ran in a quiet rush. She stared at the glowing yellow edges of the door, resolved to wait until he got back into bed. There were problems they hadn’t quite discussed, ones without a quick resolution—the fact that she was still a broke college student, for one thing. The fact that he was at least fifteen years older than her, well established and wealthy. No single conversation would resolve those issues. Wasn’t it better to try, though? To talk about them? To make him understand that she, at least, was willing to be with him no matter the cost.

But his clever tongue and determination had done their job, and she was too exhausted to last. Beneath the shadow of defeat, she drifted off to sleep.

Blake

Blake returned to the bed, admiring the smooth cheek and dark eyelashes of his lover. Her brown hair looked like spun gold in the night, her skin pale as the moon. His gaze roamed lower, to the sweep of her neck and below. The sheet bared one breast—gorgeous and round, topped with a dusky nipple. He hadn’t paid enough attention to her breasts this time, but then he always felt like that. He wanted to lick and suck every part of her body and then do it again.

He didn’t fool himself about the ever-present tinge of desperation, as if he needed to hurry, as if she’d slip through his fingers like sand in the wind. He had realistic expectations.

He was ugly as sin. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It was only a matter of time before she never came back.

Though it wasn’t just his looks. They were a symptom of the root problem. Regular people could lock away their wounds and their weaknesses. Blake’s hung like a sign on a storefront. A label on a map. Here Be Dragons. Everyone heeded the warning.

No one had ventured near him—until Erin.

He was fundamentally changed after his tour. Not just the explosion, although that had messed him up but good. For those long months overseas, he’d turned into something subhuman. Something with instincts, with power—something animal.

The things he’d seen still haunted him. He didn’t much feel like being around people at all, and when they recoiled from him in fear it didn’t help matters.

Maybe they should be afraid of him. Maybe the explosion had truly changed him, honed and sharpened him into something only useful for fighting—not living.

He’d existed in a world of darkness and palpable hellfire since the explosion and his return. So much for a life in the public spotlight. The well-planned career on a political stage was ruined. His parents were disappointed.

His fiancée had been disappointed too, until she’d left.

Hell, he was getting maudlin. He tried not to do that, especially when Erin was around. She had changed all that. He wasn’t fixed—not even close. Hope was a small blade of green poking up from the hard, cracked earth.

As she’d said, he was well and truly awake now. If he stayed in bed with her, he’d only keep her up with his restlessness. With his relentless arousal.

Despite his pensive mood, his dick was ready for round two—or was it three or four? A steady state around her. He couldn’t keep badgering her like this. He may live like a hermit these days, working at odd hours and all through the night, but she had to leave early in the morning.

Treading quietly, he slipped out of the bedroom to his study across the hall. The answering machine blinked red like it had all afternoon, but he ignored it. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. Instead he flipped the screen up on his laptop, suffusing the room with a dim blue light that comforted him. Here he was in his element. Here he was treated as an equal.

There were six new emails today, each several pages long, dense blocks of text he’d sift through, dissect, and debate. Four from professors and politicos in the U.S., one abroad, and the last from a Jain monk in India. Well, the man’s assistant, technically, since he didn’t use a computer or even prepare his own food. The topics varied from domestic politics, global events, human rights, anything they could discuss passionately and endlessly, spinning his intellectual wheels in the rut of rhetoric. A network he’d built up over his years as a young, ambitious soldier with his eye on public office, never realizing he would one day need them as his sole link to humanity.

He lost himself in the words. Only here, he didn’t have to be himself. The subjects tested him intellectually, but he didn’t have to think about his own life and the lack of it. Not about Erin and when she might realize what a loser she’d hooked up with.