Dark Notes(72)

As I slow at a stoplight, she unlatches her seat belt and leans over the console.

Her hand makes a familiar sweep through my hair, her eyes smiling up at me. “You’re sort of charming when you get all serious and bossy.” She lowers her chin and deepens her voice. “Like I’m the man, laying down the law, and this is how it’s going to be.”

Cute. I shake my head, fighting back a grin.

She tightens her fingers against my scalp and moves her mouth a hair’s width away. “But I have my own mind and voice, and you’re going to hear it whenever and however I want.”

I stare at her lips, amused and aroused. “I expect nothing less, Miss Westbrook.”

Just as she expects me to shut her down when she questions me.

“Good.” A glimmer flickers in her gaze. “You should also expect that I won’t be giving up on Leopold.”

Of course, she won’t, which means I need to figure out how to make it work.

She slides her fingers to my jaw, cupping my face as she kisses me. No one from Le Moyne would venture into this part of town, so passing motorists can gawk all they want.

I lick her lips and press forward to join our tongues. Just a nuzzling stroke, a suggestive movement, but that’s all it takes. She moans, angling her head for a deeper connection, her chest shifting closer, heaving for air. Christ, her desire is as staggering as my own.

The traffic light is going to change any second. I don’t give a shit. I take over the kiss, gripping her hips and wrenching us together against the console. With my foot firmly pressed on the brake, I give her a thorough teasing with my tongue, stabbing and lashing between her lips, as my hand shifts lower to grab her ass in a bruising grip.

A honk sounds behind us. We pull apart, laughing through heavy breaths like school kids.

I propel the car forward, my attention darting between her and the road. “Every time I see you today, I’m going to think about that kiss.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear and gives me a sultry look. “Me, too.”

As blocks of buildings blur by, we settle into a vibrating nexus, a wordless bond strengthened with an exchange of lingering glances and smiles. It’s such a comfortable thing, this energy between us, like we’re in our own private world, where past mistakes, college dreams, and student-teacher laws don’t exist. Here, in this secluded suspension of time and space, nothing can break us apart.

I weave our fingers together in her lap. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She rolls her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “It’s weird sitting in your car, dressed in nice clothes, feeling stuffed from a huge breakfast. My stomach’s happy.” She closes her eyes then opens them, locking on mine. “I’m happy. And scared. I guess I’m scared a lot, but happiness… That doesn’t come around very often, and I’m so afraid to lose it.”

She’s probably thinking of her father and the security she lost when he died.

I want to command her to leave all the worrying to me, but it doesn’t work that way, so I offer her a different perspective. “When we’re together, Ivory, when it’s just you and me like this, happiness can only be limited by us. We make the rules and decide how this is going to go. Our world is as boundless and real as our feelings for each other.”

She lifts my hand and places a kiss on my fingers. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“For always knowing what to say.” She holds my hand beneath her chin. “For feeding me. For letting me feed Schubert. For the phone, the clothes, and—”

“You’re welcome.”

I swear her heart is wrapped around mine, stretching and purring and rubbing against the walls of my chest. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, the way she sneaked inside me so swiftly.

A few blocks from school, I pull over on a quiet side street. “I’m not happy about this.”

She opens the door and tosses me an easy smile. “I walk to school every day.”

“I don’t like the secrecy.”

Been there, did this dance with Joanne. Ivory deserves better.

But if I’m caught, she goes back to Treme, Lorenzo Gandara, and financial desperation. I’m the one responsible for protecting her everything.

I grip the back of her neck and pull her in for a kiss. “It won’t always be this way.”

When she graduates, I won’t be her teacher. Our relationship will be legal and… She’ll go to college, wherever that may be. Then what? Will I follow her? Will she want me to? She won’t have a f*cking choice.

She rests her forehead against mine. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

My face inflames as conviction hardens my gut. “I’ll do whatever—”

She presses her soft lips against mine and instantly abates my rising temper, kissing me until my dick swells.

Too soon, she pulls back. “We can discuss the future after I absorb everything that’s happening right now.”

With that, she slips out of the car, her killer body, f*ckable ass, and long legs all back lit by the sun. Fucking stunning.

Shouldering her new satchel, she bends down to poke her head in. The neckline of her red dress drops open, giving me an unholy view of her firm young tits heaving against the red silk bra.

She catches me staring and raises an eyebrow.