A Kiss Remembered (6 page)

“Grant, don’t.” She clamped her upper teeth over her bottom lip.

“For months I tried to convince myself that I was concerned about your virtue, that I had a paternal compulsion to protect it. But then I had to admit why I was so tormented by such thoughts. I was jealous of him. I—”

“No, no. You shouldn’t be saying this to me. Don’t—”

“I wanted to be the one kissing you, fondling you. I wanted to see your breasts, touch them, kiss—”

“Stop!” she cried, pulling her feet free from his hands and standing up so rapidly she swayed dizzily. “I … I need to get another book,” she said, almost upsetting her chair as she pushed it back.

Forgetting to put on her shoes, she all but ran from the table and disappeared between the bookshelves. Finding a dark aisle where an overhead fluorescent tube had burned out, she leaned weakly against the cold metal bookshelf, placing her forehead on her folded hands.

“This can’t happen to me again,” she moaned under her breath. “I can’t let
him
happen to me again.”

But he’d already physically and emotionally affected her. He had paralyzed her mind so she couldn’t think of anything but him. Her body longed for his. She knew from the promising kiss on her front porch that he could satisfy this burning need inside her.

She ached to know fulfillment, held as she was in a prison of desire. Would that his hands, his lips, could give her deliverance. But that wasn’t possible. She had fought this yearning for him for years and she would keep on fighting it.

Yet, when he came to her out of the shadows she didn’t move.

Motionless, she maintained her leaning position against the shelf when she heard him behind her. She knew the prudent thing to do would be to run as far and as fast as she could, but she didn’t move. Instead she stood rooted to the spot, terrified that he would touch her … and praying that he would not leave without doing so.

He swept her hair aside with a solicitous hand and placed his lips directly against her ear. “Shelley, what’s wrong?”

He molded the contours of his body to hers. He was inches taller, but it was amazing how well they fit together, how his shoulders curved around hers, how his chest protected her back, how his hardness was cushioned against her softness.

“Shelley?” he repeated.

“Everything. Everything is wrong,” she said with a mournful shake of her head.

“It’s not. I won’t let it be wrong. No one will tell me it’s wrong. Not this time.” His arms came around her waist, hugging her closer.

She shuddered with desire. “Oh, Grant, please don’t. I’m not a child any longer.”

“Thank God.”

“But I’m behaving like one.”

“Only if you refuse to recognize and accept what’s inevitable between us.”

“It’s not inevitable. We’re mature adults, responsible and accountable for what we do. We should stop this before it gets out of hand.
I
should stop this.”

“Can you? Can you stop it, Shelley?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she repeated, but only to keep from saying the opposite.

“I couldn’t help kissing you ten years ago. Thank God I was able to restrain myself from pursuing you then. But those restrictions no longer apply. We couldn’t nurture the attraction between us then, but we can now. I want to. So do you.”

“No,” she denied, then gasped when his hands slid up her sides. “No, please, Grant, don’t touch me there.” But it was too late. His hands closed around her breasts. His lips were at her cheek, emitting hot, unsteady gusts of air. His chest was a bellows expanding and collapsing against her back.

Belying every protest she had made, she flung her head back against his chest and covered his hands with her own. He kneaded her gently. “Harder, harder,” she begged with a desperation that, when recalled, would cause her to cringe with mortification. But at the moment all her actions were governed by her senses and their clamoring need for him. Frantically her mouth sought his over her shoulder as the pressure of his caress, under the urging of her hands, increased.

With remarkable discipline, he freed his mouth and turned her in his arms. His fingers interlaced with hers and he positioned their hands on either side of her head as he moved forward to trap her between himself and the bookshelf. She was a willing captive, meeting the smoldering glow of his eyes with her own.

For heart-racing, thunderous moments they only looked at each other. Desire, savage and primitive, crackled between them. Their raspy breathing echoed in the empty stacks.

When he finally lowered his mouth to hers, her lips were parted and waiting. He whispered her name a heartbeat before their mouths came together. He stroked the lining of her mouth delicately with his tongue, and matched the movement with his fingertips on her opened palms.

Giving in to an irresistible urge, he lifted his mouth free of hers and kissed her palms, imitating the way he had kissed her mouth in the soft, receptive center of each. She inclined her head to the side as he administered the erotic caress and moved her lips and nose through the unruly thickness of his dark hair. His tongue probed the sensitized hollow of each hand until she was near sobbing with want of him.

Kissing her lips again, he rocked from side to side, rubbing his chest across her breasts. The nipples hardened instantly, revealing her desire to him.

“Yes, yes,” he whispered. Gradually he pulled back to see her better.

He unknotted the sleeves of her sweater from around her neck and moved them aside. With agonizing slowness, his hands combed down her chest to her breasts until they covered them completely. Her nipples tingled in the heat of his palms. Moving his hands to the sides of her breasts, he pushed them together and leaned down to bury his face in the fragrant softness of her cleavage. He breathed deeply, as if her scent were his life-force.

“I want to see you without anything on,” he said, standing straight once again. “I know you look beautiful naked. You feel … beautiful.” When his idly circling thumbs coaxed a higher level of response from the crests of her full breasts, he repeated, “Beautiful.”

He eased her away from the shelf, kissing her with drugging passion. His hands slid into the back pockets of her jeans and squeezed her bottom, drawing her ever closer to his hard virility.

“Put your hands under my sweater.”

Sliding her hands up from his waist to the middle of his back, she splayed them over the hard, smooth muscles. “You’re warm.” The words were caught by his open mouth. His tongue flicked at the corners of her lips and over her dimples.

“Touch my front.”

She hesitated only an instant before moving one hand around to his chest. With tentative movements encouraged by his ardent kiss, she explored the hair-dusted skin of his stomach and chest. His breath hissed through his lips.

“I want to be inside you,” he said on an agonized sigh. “Deep. Surrounded by you.”

She answered his sigh, tangling her fingers in the thatch of hair whorling around his navel, and meeting the fervency of his kiss. Provocatively he moved against her and she reciprocated.

At first she thought the blinking lights were only a product of her fevered imagination. Simultaneously they realized that it was the signal the library would be closing within five minutes.

Shakily, breathlessly, they backed away from each other. He captured the hand beneath his sweater and massaged the back of it as he pressed it over his skin. When he extracted it, he brought it to his mouth and kissed each fingertip.

“We’d better go,” she said hesitantly when the lights blinked again.

Hastily they went back to their table. She slipped on her shoes while gathering up her study materials. They hurried down the two flights of stairs. They were laughing at their exertion when they reached the lower floor.

“Mr. Chapman, I see you almost got locked in …”

The woman’s voice trailed off as she saw Shelley beside Grant. Shelley recognized her as the woman who had attended the political-science department meeting with Grant, the one who had laughed at his small joke, the one who didn’t seem able to tear her eyes away from him.

She took in their flushed expressions, their dishevelment. No doubt obvious, too, were Shelley’s pouting, well-kissed lips, where she felt the wonderful sting of whisker burns. The professor’s smiling expression puckered into one of prim censure.

“Good night,” Grant said hastily and propelled Shelley by the elbow toward the door that an attendant was waiting to lock.

“Good night, Mr. Chapman,” the woman said in an accusatory tone.

Shelley wished the ground would suddenly open up and swallow her. Confused by the sensual excitement of the moment, she had temporarily allowed herself to forget what a relationship between them would look like to anyone else. Now, as she was sent crashing back down to earth it all came back. Such a liaison was out of the question. She would look cheap. People would see her as a new plaything for the errant professor. He would be shunned by disapproving colleagues.

As soon as they gained the parking lot in front of the building she set off toward her car. “Good night, Grant,” she said, pulling her arm free.

“Shelley … ? Wait a minute,” he called after her retreating figure. He grasped her arm and spun her around. “What’s the matter now?”

“Nothing,” she said, wrenching her arm from his fingers.

“Like hell there’s not.” He advanced far enough ahead of her to block her path. “Tell me what happened between the third floor and the do—Oh, Miss Elliot saw us together. Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Did you see the look on her face? She looked at me like … Never mind. Good night.” She tried to pass him. He wouldn’t let her.

“What do you care what she thinks? Is her opinion all that important?”

She rubbed her forehead wearily. It had begun to pound. “No, not her specifically. Everybody. You’re my teacher—”

He jerked her erect, his hands gripping her shoulders. “I’m a man first, dammit. And you’re a woman first, before you’re anything else. Besides, I don’t think that’s the real problem, is it? What other roadblocks have you constructed in your mind?”

His perceptiveness frightened her and she stiffened in fear and anger. “Let me go.” The manner in which she gave the order brooked no argument and his hands slowly relaxed, then dropped to his sides.

“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing around.

She saw the unconscious gesture that revealed so much. “You see, Grant. You’re wary, too. Wary of what people will think and say about you if they see us as a couple.”

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll admit to a little caution. I’d be a fool not to be concerned about my reputation being lambasted again. But it won’t be, Shelley. If we’re open and aboveboard, who’s going to accuse us of anything unseemly?”

She responded to his words with a negative shake of her head. “It doesn’t work that way. People are always looking for the worst in others. That’s human nature.”

“You’re avoiding the real issue, aren’t you?” he demanded with alarming insight. “What’s really troubling you, Shelley?”

“Nothing,” she insisted in a strangled tone. “I have to go.” She walked around him, going straight to her car and unlocking the door. She maintained her rigid posture until she drove past him, then she slumped back in the seat.

He was right. He posed problems in her life he couldn’t even guess at. And she didn’t know how she was going to deal with any of them.

CHAPTER 4

W
hy weren’t you in class today? Are you sick?”

It had been two days since she’d seen Grant in the library. The last thing she’d expected was to find him on her doorstep. “No. I’m not sick.”

“Why weren’t you in class?”

“Do you personally call on all your students who cut class, Mr. Chapman? Doesn’t that take up a lot of your valuable time?”

He looked thoroughly annoyed. Putting his hands on his hips, he shifted his weight to one leg. His eyes, under the thick brows, took a long, slow, scornful survey of her. “You’re a coward.”

“You’re right.”

Her quick agreement surprised him. He had expected an angry outburst of denial. His exasperation manifested itself in a long sigh. “May I come in?”

“No.”

“Yes.” He backed her into the room until he could close the door behind him. She sputtered a protest, but he silenced it. “I don’t think you want to thrash this out while standing on your front porch.”

She glared at him before turning her back to go stand at the window. “Say what you have to say. It will make no difference. I’ve dropped your class.”

“Why?”

“I have too heavy a load this semester,” she said, still keeping her back to him.

“Try again.”

She pivoted to face him. “Okay,” she shouted. No longer the infatuated student in awe of him, she was a woman meeting an adversary on equal footing. “I can’t stay in your class after what happened the other night. I should never have let you kiss me.”

“You didn’t
let
me kiss you. You were doing your fair share.”

“I … I was … To satisfy my curiosity. That’s all.” She was lying, buying time, and he knew it.

“What did your fancy doctor-husband do to you to make you afraid of sex?”

“I’m not!”

“You’re afraid of something.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Then why are you standing there so tense and rigid? Surely you know I would never hurt you. What did Daryl Robins do to you to make you so guarded around men?”

“Nothing!”

“Tell me!”

“He taught me what heartless, self-serving, selfish creatures they are!” she yelled, her breasts heaving in agitation.

His head went up and back as if she’d clipped him under the chin with a right hook. There were several moments of charged silence.

Now that she’d dropped her bomb, Shelley took a deep breath and continued. “His father didn’t come through as Daryl had hoped. In order to support us, I had to quit school and go to work. I worked in an office with a hundred others just like me. I started as a file clerk and gradually worked my way up to the typing pool. For five years I spent eight back-breaking hours a day pounding on that machine.