Breaking (4 page)

“Good!” she
mumbled, her head tossing. “Oh, God, Ander, it’s so good.”

He sped up the
pumping of his fingers. She was just barely rocking into his hands, and she gripped
the bedcovers in an attempt to hold still so he could pleasure her.

The sight of
her nipples beneath her bra was too tempting, and Ander leaned over to take one
in his mouth without altering the stroke of his hand.

She cried out
loudly as he suckled through the fabric, her body tensing so deeply she started
to shake.

He could feel
her pussy tightening around his fingers until she cried out again, a shudder
running through her entire body as she climaxed.

Ander stroked
her through the spasms, and he didn’t stop, even as she began to relax and gasp
out her satisfaction.

He did lift his
head though, so he could see her red face, her glazed eyes, and the sultry
languor in her expression.

“Very nice,”
she said, a little flicker of amusement in her eyes.

“It looked nice.”
Ander glanced down at his fingers still pumping in and out. She was wetter than
ever now, the slickness allowing his fingers to continue moving despite how
tight she now was.

“Oh,” Lori
said, as if she were surprised, when he pressed hard against her g-spot again.
When he pushed against it a second time, she cried, “Oh, God!” and her arms
flew up above her head.

Ander had never
seen anything sexier in his life, and he had to fight the compulsion of his
cock. “Can you come for me again?”

“Uh huh,” she
mumbled, closing her eyes as the sensations washed over her. “Uh huh.”

He pushed hard
on her g-spot until she came a second time, her hips riding out the spasms with
shameless enthusiasm. Then, unable to resist, he lowered his face between her
legs and closed his lips around her clit, drinking in the scent of her and the
sound of her loud, eager response. He could no longer thrust his fingers, but
he kept them inside her as he sucked hard on her clit.

She came again
with a broken cry, almost sobbing in her intense pleasure as he continued his
ministrations without giving her a break.

Finally, he
slid his fingers out, gently stroking her intimate flesh.

He stared down
at her limp, flushed form as she panted out a mumbled series of, “Oh, God, oh,
God, oh God!” and tried to recover from her orgasms.

Ander’s eyes
blurred over with desire and with a primitive pride that he had reduced a woman
as strong and articulate as Lori to this state.

“So was that
lucky enough?” he asked, after giving her a minute to recover.

His own body
was screaming at him to take her hard and fast, but she was sore from last
night and he wasn’t about to hurt her.

“Oh, God, I
feel really, really lucky.” She reached up to caress his head.

He stiffly
tilted it away from her hand. “Better not.” He was so aroused he might lose it
at any moment.

“Poor Ander,”
she murmured. “Maybe you can get lucky too, after all.”

His shoulder
stiffened. “But you’re sore.”

“Not that bad. It
will be fine. Just don’t be too rough.” She fumbled with his trousers until
she’d freed his cock. “I want to, Ander. Really.”

He could tell
she meant it, and he groaned in relief, positioned himself above her and then
sliding in with a careful thrust.

She cried out
on the penetration, her voice drowning out his hum of helpless pleasure at the
feel of her around him.

“Okay?” he
managed to say, holding himself up on shaking arms.

“Oh, yeah. It’s
good.”

He began to
thrust almost immediately, his control snapping. He moved in a fast, steady
rhythm, desperately trying to rein in his need so he wouldn’t be too rough.

She was with
him, though, bucking up her hips eagerly to meet each of his thrusts. And soon
they were both gasping as they worked up toward release.

Ander wasn’t
sure if Lori would be able to come again, but her cries of effort and pleasure
got louder until her body froze and then shuddered. Her climax pulled him over
the edge too, and he completely lost it as the pleasure clenched and then
exploded out through his cock.

He must have
cried out as loudly as Lori did, although he wasn't conscious of doing so. The
next thing he was aware of was collapsing on top of her. He might have laid
there far too long had she not nudged him gently.

He rolled off her
with a groan, too boneless and replete to even move. He had to meet with a
faculty member in twenty minutes now, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy to
make it to campus.

After a while,
though, Lori turned her head to look at him. She studied him for a long time—so
long Ander actually felt rather self-conscious, since he wasn’t sure what she
was seeing in him.

 “Are you all
right?”

Ander pulled
his eyebrows together. “What do you mean? That was great sex.”

“I know it was.
That’s not what I meant. It just seems like maybe…maybe something else is
bothering you. Something not about the sex.” Her eyes were unusually soft as
they rested on his face. “Are you all right?”

He wasn’t all
right. Not really.

She reached out
to cup his cheek when he didn’t answer. “What’s bothering you, Ander? You know
you can tell me anything, right?”

He wanted to
tell her. He desperately wanted to tell her, but he didn’t want to be that man,
the man he would be if he let down his defenses, if he let himself break more
than he was already broken.

His father used
to tell him he was weak when he cried, weak when he complained, weak when he
asked for something he didn’t have.

He’d rejected
everything about his father and was determined not to give the man any more
power over his life.

This wasn’t
about his father. He wouldn’t let it be.

What Ander
needed was far less important than what Lori needed, and he wasn’t going to
give her anything less.

“I know,” he
said. “I’m really just tired from the trip.”

The next day, Ander was working
in the library when Lori called him, wondering if he was free for lunch.

He was supposed
to have called her, but he’d gotten wrapped up in research and lost track of
time.

Lori didn’t
sound annoyed at his lapse, but he wasn’t going to risk hurting her feelings by
refusing her invitation so he got his stuff together and headed out to meet her
at a café near her conference hotel.

He would rather
have just worked all day.

When he was
working, he didn’t have to think about anything else. He could drown all
brooding thoughts with words on pages—words about a culture that was dead and
unchanging. When he was with Lori, however, his mind started to move in
directions that were simply too dangerous.

He tried to
focus on the conversation at lunch—on her enthusiastic ramblings about her
morning at the writers’ conference she was attending. He met her eyes, nodded
at the right times, laughed at her amusing descriptions of eccentric fellow
writers and the argument she’d gotten into at one session.

The first time
Ander had met Lori had been in a coffee shop, for an initial meeting to discuss
terms and prepare for her first client session with him. She’d been pretty and
young and nervous and surprisingly blunt.

She’d asked him
about his unusual name, and for some reason he’d told her the truth.

“Ander,” she
said, pulling his attention back.

“Yeah.”

 “Do you think
that’s a good idea?”

He took a bite
of his sandwich to give him time to figure out what she’d just said. Finally,
he had to admit, “I’m sorry. What?”

“What about
May?” She spoke slowly and without any particular inflection, a clear sign she
was growing impatient with him. “That would be in between the end of the
semester and your next dig, and I don’t have anything big planned for the whole
month.”

He blinked,
finally processing that she’d changed topics and was now talking about wedding
plans. “Okay.”

She frowned.
“Is that not a good time for you? When would you prefer?”

“Whatever you’d
like is fine.” He wanted to marry Lori—more than anything—but he honestly
didn’t care about the date, the location, or the kinds of flowers involved.

“I’d just like
to set a date so we can make plans. It really doesn’t have to be May. Do you
want it earlier? We don’t have to—”

“Lori, May is
fine. No reason to make it earlier.”

“Oh.” She
looked down at her salad for a long time. “We can postpone it if you want.”

He had no idea
why she was being so wishy-washy about this. He’d be happy to marry her
whenever she wanted. Next weekend, even. “Make the date whatever you want it to
be. I really don’t care.”

“Well, it’s
your wedding too.”

He sighed,
hoping the next eight months weren’t going to be like this. “I know.”

He shouldn’t be
surprised she might get hung up on wedding details. They were important to a
lot of women, and Lori had a very strong romantic streak in her, no matter how
hard she tried to mask it with irony.

She was a
romance writer, after all.

She’d intrigued
him from the beginning. A romance writer still a virgin at twenty-six. It
wasn’t that he’d found her situation implausible. Women all had different
reasons for having or not having sex—he knew this better than most—and if
authors could write convincingly about committing murder or living in the
Middle Ages without actually doing it, then they could certainly write
convincingly about having sex without having done it. None of that would have
made him blink.

But her coming
to him, trusting him with her first time—that had been beyond his experience.
Being with her in bed had felt different, even in their first session. The more
he’d been with her, the deeper he’d fallen, until he was hopelessly in love, with
no way of shifting their business relationship into something real.

It didn’t take
much for him to relive those raw, helpless feelings even now.

He’d stayed
awake night after night back then, thinking about her, fantasizing about
scenarios where she might fall in love with him, aching for another taste of
real intimacy with her, when he’d had absolutely none of it in his life before
he met her.

His mother had
died early. And his father wasn’t a man who’d ever known how to love.

“Ander? Did you
hear me?”

“What?” He
blinked, trying to drag himself away from the memories and wanting to claw that
awful shuddering from his chest.

 “You totally
zoned out. Did you hear anything I said?”

“Sorry. I’m just
tired.”

“You look awful.”
She studied his face closely. “Do you feel all right? You look like you might
be sick or something.”

“Yeah. I’m
fine. Just tired.” It was true. He was tired of so many things. Tired of never
being able to move on from the past, when he had everything he’d ever wanted
waiting for him now.

Lori sat
silently, just looking at him. And he was suddenly scared she would see
something in his expression that he didn’t want her to see.

“You’re not
going to start to fuss over me and try to feed me chicken soup, are you?” He
smiled, so she’d know he was teasing.

She laughed
with what looked like relief. “Maybe. If you still look so tired when you come
home tonight, I’ll have to coddle you a little.”

“I can think of
certain ways I wouldn’t mind being coddled.” He twitched his eyebrows and was
rewarded when she giggled again, her cheeks flushing a delicious shade of pink.

It gave him an
idea. He could show her how much he loved her—since he’d been a flop at
conversation today—and he could also distract himself from everything lurking
in the shadows.

He glanced at
his watch. “What time does your next session start?”

“Two. I still
have an hour. Did you want to do something?”

“No. I need to
get back to campus, but I think I left a book in your car. I’ll walk with you
to get it.”

“I wasn’t going
to my car. I’m in the parking garage next to the hotel, and I just walked over
here. Anyway, I don’t think you left a book there. I haven’t seen one.”

“It probably
slid under a seat. Do you mind walking with me to check?”

“Sure.” She
looked completely innocent as she finished off her water and then reached for
her bag.

They walked
together to the parking garage and then up the stairs and across the level to
her car, a small blue SUV. When she clicked the doors unlocked, Ander opened
the driver’s door. “Check the back, will you?” he asked casually. “I’ll check
the front.”

Lori obediently
opened the back door and bent over to look under the seat for the fictitious
book.

Ander shut the
front door. Then he grabbed her by the waist and heaved her into the backseat.

She cried out
in surprise and then with a different emotion as he climbed into the backseat
behind her and then hauled her onto his lap. “What are you doing?” she demanded
breathlessly.

 “You know me.
Never one to miss an opportunity.” His hands settled on her ass, holding it
possessively.

“But your
book?”

“There was no
book. It was a shameless ruse to get you where I wanted you.”

She flushed
deeply red, but her eyes glowed with affection and excitement. “In the back of
the car?”

“Only
convenient place, unless you want to try a public restroom.”

She giggled. “You
don’t want to wait until tonight?”

“We can tonight
too. I’ve been gone a long time. We have a lot of time to make up for.”

“Oh. I guess
that makes sense.” She leaned forwarded to kiss him. “But someone might see.”

“Who’s going to
see? The back windows are tinted, and the car is facing a concrete wall.”