I increased the speed of my movements and brought him to the point of gasping before I slowed down again, looking down at him with a grin.
“God damn it,” he spat out. “Don’t stop Maddy or I swear to God I’m going to flip you over and fuck you so hard…”
As appealing as it sounded to be flipped over, I wanted things on my terms right now, and I began to rock on top of him again, refusing to slow down this time. I focused on myself for a moment, rubbing myself in just the right way so that I was crying out and coming around him as he reached his peak and roared, pulling my hips down as we crashed into each other.
I leaned forward and rested on his chest, still feeling him inside of me.
“I love you,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
“I love you, too,” I whispered into his ear. “I wish I had realized it sooner.”
Alex shook his head and opened his eyes to look into mine. “It’s all behind us now. You’re mine.”
A few months later, after I had moved into Alex’s place on the Killarny Estate, the couple who were planning to buy Pineapple backed out of the deal, deciding they would rather go with another horse instead. That meant we got to keep Pineapple and her colt, Yellow Nevada, there at the ranch and I could tell that Alex was pleased about it.
My father lasted a few months longer, long enough to see me with Alex and understand that although things with him and Sean Killarny had never been resolved, Alex was a different man from his father entirely and that he wanted the best for us together. He was happy when he died and very grateful to Alex for restoring our family’s ranch like he had. Lucy had half of the property deeded out to her, while I kept the half that adjoined the Killarny property.
Early that fall we sat out on the porch swing of Alex’s house—our house—and watched the young colt run in the pasture, clearly happy to be alive.
Alex ran his fingers through my red curls, and I leaned into his shoulder.
“Happy?” He asked.
I smiled and gave him a kiss on the lips, thinking how much I had missed that and how many more kisses I had to look forward to.
“Happy,” I said as we watched the sun fall into the horizon, the colt whinnying in the distance.
Teach Her
Chapter 1
Meredith
Being a professor got real stressful at times and that was why sometimes, if we stayed late preparing lesson plans or marking, myself and Marcus Wilson would give each other a helping hand to release some of the tension. We weren’t fuck buddies - it had never gone that far - we were come buddies.
It had begun the middle of last year. A day that had bee
n extraordinarily hot, and I had had fractious and short-tempered students being smart asses the whole day. It was a problem I expected to address only at the beginning of a semester. The grad students were at least eighteen years old, and at twenty-five I wasn’t that much their senior. But, senior I was, and I had made sure they had learned that pretty damn quick. For the most part students were respectful, but you always had the odd one who had had a bad day or was struggling with life at that particular time. The day we became come buddies, a student had walked out of class, after giving me a heap of abuse and I was still new to that kinda confrontation. The stress, added to a shitload of work I had to finish and prepare, meant I had ended up in the staff room determined that I was not getting behind the wheel until I had calmed myself the fuck down. My peers had come and gone until there was only myself and Marcus left. We had gotten along pretty well from the get go and maybe I would have dated him if either I had a) wanted a relationship, or b) it hadn’t been against the school’s policies. He was cute in an Orlando Bloom kind of way: sexy but with a young and fresh face, freckles, and a smile that quirked the corner of his lip.
“You look like you need vodka.” He had told me, taking a hip flask from his laptop bag and handing it over.
“That transparent, huh?” I had replied. “I have been in here for two hours now, trying to get caught up on things and attempting to calm myself down.”
He had lightly stroked my forearm. “I heard about the face-off with Fleishman.”
A heavy sigh had left my mouth. “I’m trying to forget about it.”
He had sat on the couch at the side of me and put an arm around me. “Come here, let Prof. Wilson give you one of his amazing hugs.”
Despite the heat I had snuggled up into his arms. It had been exactly what I had needed. Just to know that someone else gave a damn that my day had been the pits. However, after a few minutes it was clear that we were both too hot.
“Thanks, but I am going to pass out if I stay next to your shirt any longer.” I smiled.
“Well, I could always take it off,” he had said.
“I don’t want a relationship.”
“Neither do I. Why don’t we just give each other a helping hand, or tongue,” he had winked. “Get rid of some of that stress.”