My Professor(69)

I check the time to find it’s 3:19 AM. Too late for me to go home now.

I settle in for a long night of restlessness and start to wonder if Professor Barclay has made it to bed or if work has kept him up late. I wonder if he’s sleeping soundly, having forgotten I’m even here.

A part of me—a silly child—wanted him to come tell me good night before he went to sleep, to need to come see me one more time because he couldn’t resist. There was no knock though, no sound on the other side of my door.

I sit up and kick off my covers, angry at the night for dragging this out for so long. Just get on with it. Either raise the sun or let me sleep.

I can’t stay in this room another second.

I go to the door and twist the knob with no clear destination in my mind. I could go down for that snack or hunt for that book, but my feet carry me toward the opposite end of the hall, where Professor Barclay’s bedroom door is cracked.

I take it as an invitation whether it is one or not.





Chapter Twenty-Seven





Emelia



* * *



I press my palm flat against the door and push it open wide, sneaking into his room with quiet steps, glad for the shaft of moonlight trickling through the closed drapes. There’s just enough light to guide me toward his side of the bed where he lies shirtless and sleeping on his stomach, his hands tucked up underneath his pillow. He’s turned away from me so his face is nothing but shadow. My gaze follows the cords of stacked muscles down his back to his slightly tapered waist. The blanket is bunched around the top of his boxer briefs.

He’s beautiful, half naked and posed in a way that reminds me of a high Renaissance sculpture, contours and valleys and slopes beckoning me.

I take a hesitant step forward and reach my hand out to slide it along his back, barely grazing his skin with the tips of my fingers. My intent is murky. I’d rather not disturb him, but I can’t help myself. I’ve never seen him shirtless. I’ve definitely never had freedom in this way.

He doesn’t stir as I guide my hand up to his shoulder blades and the tense muscles there. There’s a sharp juxtaposition between smooth skin atop hard muscle. I would continue my trail a dozen more times, but as my fingers delve gently into his hair, he suddenly turns over and grasps my wrist, capturing me. Even if I was thinking I’d flee, I have no chance of it now.

I yelp in surprise, but he doesn’t release me.

His eyes carry no hint of sleep. His blue stare is intense, not sluggish, which makes me think he was either not asleep at all or he woke up as soon as I entered his room.

He doesn’t ask me what I’m doing beside his bed. He uses his grip on my wrist to tug me down.

He scoots and makes room for me, putting me into the center of the bed and cocooning me with his warm body. His hands welcome me to his room as his mouth covers mine and asks me to stay.

I’m not shy, not in the moonlight.

I kiss him back with fervor, parting my lips and my thighs, accommodating him as he presses up and onto me, pinning me down into the soft mattress with his hard body. I yield like Play-Doh in a toddler’s hand, a pliant toy.

My lips already feel bruised. His kisses are almost punishing, like he’s taking his anger out on me. He’s impatient and hungry. In my fantastical thoughts, I imagine he was lying in here missing me, wishing he hadn’t sent me to the room down the hall. I imagine he’s kissing me passionately because he wants to make up for the lost hours, to regain the intimacy we almost lost. His true motives, I’ll never know.

His mouth moves down my neck. His teeth sink into my nape and I moan, deep and bloodthirsty. My nails dig into his skin.

“Professor—”

He peels back to stare at me, panting. “Jonathan, Emelia. Call me Jonathan.”

I say, “No,” but the real answer is, I can’t.

He likes my resistance. His hands take the hem of my borrowed t-shirt and start to gather it up, revealing first my panties and then my naked navel, my stomach, my rib cage, my breasts.

He stares at me in the low light, bewitched for a moment before he leans down and takes one breast into his mouth and then the other, tasting them with eagerness. He closes his lips around the tip and sucks for a fleeting second before doing it again, biting down until I hiss and my back arches off the bed. Then he’s kissing them gently, marking my skin, turning it red.

His phone alarm blares on his bedside table and makes me jump out of my skin.

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath before leaning over to silence it.

My ears are still ringing even when the room goes quiet.

“Do you always set your alarm for the middle of the night?”

“I have a six AM flight to catch.”

He sounds deeply annoyed by that fact, but it doesn’t change anything. He has to go, and my nakedness suddenly feels foolish. I wish I could pull up the covers and hide underneath them. I settle for tugging down my t-shirt.

“It’s the Cincinnati project—I have to tend to a few emergent things, but I shouldn’t be gone longer than two or three days. Hopefully I’m back in Boston no later than Tuesday.”

I’m already pulling away, unable to maintain eye contact as I slide out from underneath him and tuck my knees against my chest.

“Okay.”

“I was planning to wake you before I left.”