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

She jerked her head back as if slapped. “That was low, Blake.”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “Yeah, it was. I shouldn’t have said that. But this ends right here. I don’t want you to come to my office unless you have school business to discuss.”

A smile curved her lips. “You have yourself a deal.”

She left, seeming entirely too pleased with herself. Probably plotting, if he knew her well, but he could handle her if she tried anything. He sat back, trying to focus. He was glad things had been squared away with Melinda. Maybe some closure there was a good thing.

He would fix thing

s with Erin tonight when she came over.

So why did it feel as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet?

Chapter Seven

Erin

On autopilot, Erin threw her backpack into the passenger seat and pulled out of the packed parking lot. She spent the drive to her apartment going over the outline for her research paper. She’d been sketching it out for months. Now she could finally get feedback and start writing it. The thought excited her—and terrified her. It was only her entire future.

Maybe she could run her ideas by Blake tonight.

Tonight.

The company she started working for mostly did residential cleaning, but sometimes they asked her to clean a corporate office after hours. They had a standing date to see each other in the evenings she wasn’t working. She had taken up the habit of showing up at his door with a DVD in hand. He’d order Chinese delivery, and they would eat greasy noodles and crack open a fortune cookie to share between them for good luck.

They’d only watch the first half of the movie because by the middle he would be kissing her and she’d have her hands down his pants. It had seemed like bliss only a few days ago. Now it all paled, darkened under the shadow of a woman from his past.

From the shadows of her own past that she’d never told Blake.

What did they really have in common? Great sex. That wasn’t much to base a relationship on, especially when they needed to keep it a secret. Maybe Erin was blowing this out of proportion. Hopefully so. Old wounds causing pain in the winter. This could all mean nothing. Professor Jenkins meant nothing. Though still new and even fragile, her feelings for Blake felt breathtakingly real. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

God, she hoped so.

She pulled onto the dappled concrete beneath the large elm tree. The apartments farther away from campus were much cheaper. Unlike the manicured gardens near campus, the beautiful foliage here was allowed to grow and bloom—even if it was only allowed to run wild to save on trimming costs.

Even the old building had a certain charm—she imagined the mottled brown shingles and faded yellow shutters had been very pretty when they were brand new. And if she had to put up with the old pipes breaking every month and backing up questionable water onto her bathroom floor…well, she didn’t really have a choice. This was all she could afford.

She unlocked the door and waved to Courtney.

Her friend and roommate didn’t glance up from the thick, spread-eagle textbook. Her sleek, straight black hair fell around her face. “How was lover boy’s first day?”

“Oh, swell.”

Now Courtney did look up, her eyebrows arching in question. “Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good. What happened?”

If only Erin knew the answer to that. She grabbed an orange from the bowl and sat down. The sharp citrusy scent burst into the room as she pulled the peel away, invigorating her after the deflating ride home. “Well, things started off pretty good. Scratch that, really good.”

“Sex?”

“Oh yeah. The best kind. Sort of frantic and breathless. And extra urgent because someone might have come in.”

Courtney moaned. “Stop. I haven’t been laid in like five years.”

“You broke up with Derek a month ago.”

“Yeah, but we hadn’t had sex for a month before that.”

Erin suppressed a smile. Two months wasn’t very long in her book, considering she’d gone for two years without it before Blake. But she could understand better now. The orgasms, the intimacy—it was all so wonderful that she didn’t want to go without it ever again.