A Kiss of Color: The Complete 3 Book Collection (6 page)

Their history.

In all the strength she’d gained since she’d left the woman’s house, Janette herself still remained Helena’s one weakness. If Xavier hadn’t come, it was not unlikely that she would have let the woman drag her from the campus. That wasn’t to say that she would have abandoned her studies to do as she demanded, but certainly, Janette wouldn’t have left without a fight.

But then, Xavier had appeared. To both her shame and relief, he had arrived in time to prevent a gigantic blow out.

Now she just had to live with the fact that he knew who her mother was.

Time and time again, Helena berated herself for blurting out her personal information to a complete stranger.
Why
had she told him? She had never,
ever
even thought of revealing details about her mother to any of her peers. Somehow, when Xavier had caught her at her weakest, the words had just burst from her. After so many years of hiding and pretending, they’d come out.

Come out to the one man who made her weak with his low, assured voice and ridiculously charming smile.

She must be out of her mind.

“So what’s it like to hang out with him?” At Magda’s fourth inquiry of the evening, Helena reluctantly gave up trying to study and snapped her book closed to fix her roommate with a withering look.

“He’s really goddamn bad at Chemistry.” The blonde was preparing for a night out, clad in a red dress that probably used to be a tank top, with her blonde waves cascading around her like a goddess. There was a reason every man with eyes on campus wanted her – but to Magda’s credit, she only indulged about a fourth of them.

Probably.

“Ugh, Helena. You know that’s not what I mean! Gimme something juicy about the man! What kind of girl does he like? Who’s he dating? When’s the next big Thompson social function?”

Helena arched a brow. It never ceased to amaze her how much a psychology major could get sucked into the material world.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about any of those things because we didn’t talk about them, Magda.” She shot the blonde a saccharine sweet smile.

Magda’s bright green eyes widened in affront. “You mean all you did was
actually
study?”

Helena sighed, shaking her head. “Is it really so hard to believe? I mean, come on. This is me we’re talking about. I’m not a party girl, and I’m not one of his groupies.” Though she might hop on that bandwagon when she was ready to sleep at night and wondered what it might be like to have Xavier’s long, lean form next to her in bed.

“So you’re not attracted to him, at all?” The woman strutted across the room to her with a knowing smile, leaning over Helena’s chair to envelop her roommate in a tight hug, obtrusively pressing her mostly exposed breasts against Helena’s back. “That voice of his, those eyes…that
body…”

Rolling her eyes at Magda’s dramatics, Helena merely shook her head in denial. “I have exams coming up. I’m supposed to graduate in a year! And he’s a distraction.”

The word made Magda’s eyes light up as she released Helena, spinning around almost joyfully as she cackled with satisfied laughter. For a moment, Helena thought she’d taken leave of her senses before the woman finally faced her, her grin triumphant. “You said
distraction
. He distracts you. You
like
him.”

Was she
that
obvious?

Her face flaming, Helena rose from her desk, shaking her head as she made to pull another book from the shelf next to her bed. “Anything that keeps me from passing my exam with flying colors is a distraction. Technically, Magda, you could be classed as a distraction right now.”

“Pffft.” The blonde shook her head, straightening the rather short hem of her dress before blowing her roommate a kiss. “Give me a break, Helena. Unless you swing that way, I’m not your type. Honestly, I don’t know a woman alive who wouldn’t be attracted to Xavier…and you, Miss ‘I Haven’t Been Laid in a Millennium’, would almost certainly be far more susceptible to his charms than someone who needs a once a week tumble.”

Despite herself, the dark-skinned girl couldn’t help but smile at Magda’s assessment. “You mean someone like you?”

The blonde stuck her tongue out at her roommate. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. So are
you
or are you not attracted to Xavier?”

For about thirty seconds, Helena contemplated lying. It would certainly make her life a lot easier to deny that Xavier Thompson did something…ungodly to her senses. However, being the bookworm she was, she didn’t have a lot of girlfriends that she could talk to. She and Magda had opposing personality types. Helena was quiet while her roommate was a party girl. She was buried herself in books more often than not and Helena had to have all her lectures recorded because she hated reading. However, the opposing dynamic between them usually seemed to work. When she was forced to admit it to herself, Helena realized that Magda was the closest thing she had to a true friend.

Which meant telling her the truth.

With a low groan, she closed her eyes as if in pain, nodding ever so slightly. When she opened her eyes to see Magda’s reaction, she jumped to see her friend perched on the bed not two feet in front of her, brilliant white teeth exposed in an ecstatic grin. “You
like
him!”

Oh boy. She was in for it now.

“No, no,
no
.” Repressing a sigh of exasperation, Helena gazed down at the equation that Xavier had attempted to complete. She didn’t think she’d seen a bigger mess in her life. It was the third session they’d had together, and between trying to teach him things he seemed intent on forgetting and fighting the urge to throw herself at him, the young woman was almost as stressed as she’d been before her exam.

She had, of course, passed the test with a near perfect score. Her near religious studying regimen, stirred on by her desire to one day fill her father’s shoes, had made sure of it. So now that she wasn’t in the books until the wee hours of the morning every morning, she could afford to put more time and planning into her meeting with Xavier.

Of course, no matter how much she prepared, Xavier was still a pretty hopeless case. At least, when it came to academics. When it came to being the textbook definition of arousing, Xavier got top marks. Today was the first spring day that the thermometer had inched over sixty five degrees, and so everyone on campus had taken the opportunity to bust out their warm weather wear. Girls wore miniskirts and tank tops, and guys with physiques to show off did so flagrantly.

Xavier was a tad bit more subtle. He wore a black short-sleeved polo and casual sweatpants, but a man with a body like his couldn’t really hide it. It was a strange contrast, to see him squinting at Chemistry equations, his swarthy face concentrated behind thick rimmed glasses, his mouthwatering biceps exposed by his shirt. Helena was trying to be stern, but it was all she could do to correct his equation Xavier had muddled.

She tried not to think about what Magda had told her. She knew her roommate was just trying to be helpful, but no sooner had Helena revealed that she was attracted to Xavier, her roommate had started trying to persuade her to seduce him. Such a thing wasn’t a viable option for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost of which being that she’d never seduced anyone in her life. The few sexual encounters she’d had were woefully one sided. She had far too little experience for a man like Xavier.

Not that she was even
contemplating
it!

The very thought made her swallow thickly as she forced her eyes from him, shaking her head in a barely perceptible motion. To think, she’d been the one to insist that she wasn’t going to be his conquest, and here she was, daydreaming about peeling that goddamn shirt from what had to be a magnificent chest.

“What were you trying to do here?” She cleared her throat, trying to think more clinical thoughts. “This side of the equation’s an absolute mess. You know, it’s called
balancing
for a reason.”

“I did exactly what you told me.” He scooted close to her, closing the distance between them to bare inches as he stared down at the equation. “Carried there, made sure to do the same thing on each side.” He indicated each side of the problem as his delicious scent wafted over her. “What’s wrong with it?”

What was wrong with
her
?

No matter what Magda said, she was a scholar, not a vixen. Taking a deep breath, she turned to face Xavier, trying to steel herself against the beautifully structured face scant inches from hers. “Look, Xavier…I don’t know if I can do this.”

It wasn’t what she’d meant to say, exactly, but Helena didn’t know what else she
could
say. She knew she’d promised she would help him, but if she could hardly help herself, it wouldn’t be productive for either of them. She almost wished Magda was there to tell her some sexy way to put the man off, but, unfortunately, she was on her own.

He looked to her with apologetic blue eyes. “What? I mean…I’m sorry. I know I’m shitty at this stuff. I’ll try harder, I just-”

“It has nothing to do with Chemistry.” She had to be the most awkward woman she knew. Twenty two years old and she fled whenever she was attracted to a man. No wonder Magda thought she was completely and totally helpless. Closing her book, she cleared her throat as she attempted to lay her cards on the table. She wouldn’t be able to effectively tutor him if she was attracted to him and that was that. It was probably for the best. “I just…this isn’t working. I’m not…I’m not helping you.”

“You’re helping me tremendously.”

Suddenly, he was even closer to her than before, and the private study cubicle was much too hot. Helena felt her skin flush and her blood heat as his breath fell warm against her lips. “I don’t think you know how much you’re helping me, Helena.”

She couldn’t look away. While her every impulse might have been to leap from the table and run, Helena found herself rooted to the spot. She watched, transfixed, as Xavier removed his glasses –the only barrier that remained between them- so that they were closer than they had ever been. “This…this isn’t helping.” She managed in a low whisper, even as his hand came up to cup the line of her jaw more gently than she would ever have imagined.

She had to be dreaming.

How many times had she pictured this moment? Not only since she’d first run into Xavier a few weeks ago, but since she’d been a little girl, cowering in her room to escape her mother’s wrath. Since she was old enough to appreciate the idea of romance, she’d wanted a man to come and save her from the terrors that her life had dealt her. While she knew that it was foolish to expect any of that from a man like Xavier Thompson, she had imagined that kissing him would be pretty spectacular.

“On the contrary, I don’t think there’s anything that could help more than this.” With those words, he closed the distance between them, pressing his mouth against hers.

**

God, how long had he waited for this?

Despite how much his self-absorbed personality had mellowed in grad school, Xavier was not a patient person. When he wanted something, he wanted immediate gratifications. He had known the moment Helena had told him she wouldn’t be his conquest, however, that she would be a harder nut to crack.

It was the only reason he’d endured these god-awful Chemistry sessions for as long as he had. He certainly wasn’t taking Chemistry, and he’d hated science for as long as he could remember. In grade school, Brandy had physically tied him to his chair to get him to finish his science homework and his parents had never been pleased with his grades. Even his younger sister was better at science than he had ever been, and she was only thirteen.

Every time they’d met, he’d relished the mere sight of her. Usually, she was clad in sweatpants and an Antioch sweatshirt, her dark hair pulled into a haphazard knot atop her head. If she was attempting to hide her curves from him, it wasn’t working. The voluminous cloth covering her only made him work harder to imagine the amazing figure they concealed. While she tried to teach him concepts that he had no intention of learning, he absorbed himself in the curve of her neck and shoulders, the glorious fullness of her lips and the way she chewed the lower one when she was trying to figure out something particularly difficult.

He’d wanted to kiss her from the very first time they’d ever been alone together, but he’d made a promise he intended to keep…unless, that was, she looked like she wanted him to break it. To be honest, he’d watched her struggle almost as much as he had for the past three weeks. It was nothing cocky or overbearing for him to say that she was obviously attracted to him. It was evident in the way she avoided any physical contact with him whatsoever. How she could never meet his gaze and seemed flustered whenever he got too close.

He liked her flustered. When her cheeks reddened, her eyes widened and her breath started to come a little faster. He’d like nothing more than to see her the exact same way, spread out across his bed as he had his way with her.

The moment his mouth touched hers, Xavier groaned softly, low in his throat. She tasted like coffee, sweetness, and cherries. Her mouth was so goddamn soft and yielding against his that it was all he could do not to yank her out of her chair and into his lap to feel the decadent body of hers flush against his.