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

“At least in that one they end up together.”

“Because he turns back into a normal man,” he reminded her. “There are no happy endings for the beast.”

Her expression dimmed. She crawled to him, straddling his legs with hers, and shit, how was he supposed to restrain himself like this? His dick was right there. A few layers of cloth could disappear and he’d slide inside her. She plucked the DVD from his fingers and tossed it to the side table.

“What are you doing?” he choked out.

She slid down to the floor between his feet. Her eyes flicked up, troubled and wicked. “Proving you wrong.”

She proceeded to do just that, using her tongue and lips and breathy sighs to drive him to ecstasy. The truest form of pleasure, a pure and potent happiness that was not what he’d meant but so much better. He wanted this all the time; he wanted her forever.

Beneath her seductive touch, he trembled with need, with hope. But he’d wanted things before, and they’d exploded right in front of him. He’d dreamed these things before and woken up alone.

He tried to resist, to accept the satisfaction of having her in his arms without the promise of a future, but it overwhelmed him. Like a tidal wave it swept him along, dragged him under, further away until he couldn’t see the shore.

There was only an endless expanse of him and her together, of sex and love and hope converging on the horizon. He was lost then, hips jerking upward in helpless thrall and coming copiously into her warm, waiting mouth. Dragging her onto his lap, he licked and suckled and teased her breasts until she rocked her hips down onto him. In barely minutes he was hard again, an aching erection ever ready to serve her need. It wasn’t even about sex then but sharing. None of it mattered without her, not the beauty or relief.

He impaled her onto him; this is what you do to me. He pushed up into her; feel me, take me, never let go. Her mouth was open in wordless entreaty while her eyes…dear God, her eyes. They burned with something more poignant than lust—there was knowledge. She knew what she did to him with her body, how low he could fall. She knew how hopelessly he thrust into her, desperate for more of her all the while aware it would never be enough.

“Don’t hide from me,” she whispered.

But he didn’t even know what she meant. He was looking at her. She could see the worst parts of him, in the ugliness of his face and the degenerate use of her body. He showed her every dirty, unkind desire and God help her, she never told him no.

He realized she was murmuring something. Not a wordless sex-chant, but something more. “Let me see, let me see,” she moaned, and he shuddered beneath. He writhed, and it must have looked like pain. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. A fucking tear—how had that happened? He didn’t know, but it hovered there on the brink, and he was unable or unwilling to reach up and wipe it away. She wanted to see? He would show her what a coward he was, and even then he wouldn’t let her go. Mine.

The teardrop slipped from his eye, falling over skin that should have died. But it wasn’t dead, it was wholly, painfully alive. It burne

d all day and all night as if the explosion had never stopped. The moisture of a single tear wasn’t nearly enough to put the fire out, but she rested her face against him, right there. Her soft skin was a balm anywhere, but there, on his burns, it was a goddamned miracle.

He’d stopped moving, he realized dimly, but she hadn’t. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved over him in sweet, rhythmic sex. Her face was pressed against his, right where he was most disgusting, right where he was most vulnerable. He didn’t know why she’d want to see that, but it twisted something inside him. It made him desperate.

Desperate, he grasped her shoulders and pulled her down. Too hard. She winced.

Shit. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“No, that’s what I… Show me.”

He shook his head, refusing even while he held on tightly and did it again. She gasped at the impact, the breathy sound spurring him on. He thrust inside her faster and harder, the room filling with the slaps of her skin against his, of her moans and her cries. He was cruel and relentless but instead of turning him away, her sex clenched around him. It squeezed him tight as she threw back her head. Beautiful, so beautiful.

He shut his eyes tightly and placed hot, open-mouthed kisses at her neck while his body shuddered its release. He groaned against her skin, breathing her in while he ground her body down against his cock. Helplessly, his hand clenched in her hair. Her soft pussy tightened around his cock, her hips rocking gently, wringing a final spurt of come from his cock.

Her contented sigh was hot against his neck.

Chapter Nine

Erin

Consciousness came back to Erin, carrying an almost acute sense of loss. The chill of something found and then lost. Still groggy, she stretched slightly, feeling along the thin cotton sheets of her bed. They were cool to the touch—and empty.

With a start, she opened her eyes, looking around for Blake. After their passionate bout of sex in the living room, they’d made their way into her bedroom for round two before falling asleep entangled in each other’s arms. It was the first night he’d spent over at her place, the first time he’d been here at all, and though his house was certainly nicer, it felt lovely to have him here. Like the first burst of bright spring, blinding hope on well-worn terrain.

He wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom. She slipped out of the bed, clothed only in the lingering musk from their lovemaking. A puddle of white turned out to be his undershirt. As she picked it up, something flat and square flipped open.

Little pieces of white floated down to the floor. His wallet. And she’d just spilled something. Bending, she started to gather the slips of paper when she realized what they were.

She opened one. The key to your future lies in the past.

Another. All your hard work will soon pay off.