Out of Her League (23 page)

He reached out an unsteady hand and yanked
open the drawer by his hip. Saliva was working for him so far, but he wanted to
take this further and wasn’t going to take any risks along that road.

The lube bottle felt cold in the room air,
and positively frigid compared to her skin. He contemplated tucking it under
her shoulder to warm it, but was loath to do anything that might distract her.
So instead he wedged it high between his thighs, bracing for the shock of
cold—though the only shock ended up being how little his body reacted to the
chilly plastic tucked up against his nuts. He could probably jam an ice pack in
there and it wouldn’t dim him arousal at this point. Not when he was looking
down at Michaela, spread out for him. Coming apart in his hands and on his
tongue. He felt like he’d been hard for hours, his cock aching from being
ignored.

He used one hand to draw her own slick
back, easing the passage of his fingers as he scissored and thrust. Her body
gave, opening beautifully, and while Lachlan didn’t have a whole hell of a lot
of experience in these things, he thought he was either extraordinarily lucky
or his guess about her previous experiences were way off.

“You’ve done this before,” he gasped,
intending it as a question and wincing when it didn’t come out that way.

“No.”
So, lucky?
She moaned when his
fingers spread wider. “Not with anyone else.”

His hand, his whole body, hell, his
brain
stuttered for a moment.

“By yourself?” he hazarded.

He watched, amazed, as color seeped up her
neck and into the cheek he could see—the one not pressed against the bed. When
she didn’t seem inclined to answer, he stopped moving. Which was probably cruel,
but—

“Yes,” she gasped, and he rewarded her with
a deep stroke of his fingers. His head spun a little at the sounds she was
making. The images she was provoking in his already over-heated imagination.

“Ms. Price,” Lachlan said in a mock stern
and sincerely intrigued tone of voice, “you never cease to amaze me. Care to
elaborate?”

“No,” she muttered.

He laughed, twisting his hand on a
withdrawal and watching how her eyes fluttered shut. The muscles low in his
belly clenched tight at the sight, his knees wobbling a little embarrassingly.
Not that she noticed, thank goodness.

“Do you finger yourself?” he asked, his
throat going hot and tight just picturing it and making his voice come out like
gravel.

She nodded quickly, her mouth dropping open
to suck in more air. He wasn’t the only one who got hot thinking about it.

“Toys?” he questioned.

“Lots,” she whispered, so quietly he wasn’t
certain he’d heard her correctly.

“Lots?” he asked as he fumbled with the
lube and got the lid open. Jesus Christ, he’d started asking these questions so
that he would have needed information, and now he’d managed to turn
himself
on so fucking much that he was about to lose it.

Which he absolutely refused to do before he
was locked inside the promise of her tight, hot ass.

She sighed, and it sounded less perturbed
than aroused and relieved. “I have a whole box of them. Locked up tight under
my bed. I use them and I think about…”

He paused in the process of pouring lube
over his fingers, probably applying way too much as he hung there, waiting for
her to finish that thought and unable to function while so many ideas settled
in and took root.

“What do you think about?” he asked
hoarsely when it didn’t seem she would say more.

She let out a long, almost painful-sounding
groan. “You, Lachlan. Lately, all I can think about is you,” she admitted, her
voice little more than a whisper.

The bottle of lube hit the floor with a
dull thud, having slipped from his nerveless fingers. A bead of precome pearled
on the tip of his cock.

She groaned as his other hand resumed
moving, going faster, their passage made a thousand times easier by
his—slightly excessive—application of lubricant.

“You—” He swallowed hard, his mouth gone
dry. “You fuck yourself with a toy and—”

“Wish it was you. Yes,” she gasped. “All
the time since this started. All I can think about is how I want
you
to
do these things to me. To fill me up with your cock and toys and fuck me
properly.”

And now Lachlan was groaning because, fuck,
she was
killing him
. If his heart pumped this hard during a game, he’d
bench himself until he could pull it together. Now, though, he went all in, plunging
his fingers deeper, thrusting harder and watching how her muscles eased. He
slipped a third finger in next to the others, pushing in and holding still as a
long, keening cry locked in her throat.

“Please, Lachlan,” she whispered.

He could do nothing but give whatever she
asked of him.

Carefully, he eased his fingers from her
body and scrabbled for a condom in the drawer. He hadn’t felt this desperate
and uncoordinated since he’d been a late-blooming teenager in college about to
lose his virginity to his Philosophy TA from the semester before.

The image of Anna and one of the children
in his current classes flashed through his mind and he shuddered.
Ew
. He
forced the thought aside for another…never. It did, though, serve to restore a
modicum of his control.

He managed to get the condom on quickly, if
not particularly gracefully, and retrieve the lube from the floor to slick
himself up. He took a deep breath to center himself but it was an utterly
wasted effort the moment he looked down and saw her there, waiting for him.

“Ready?” he asked, pleased he didn’t sound
nearly as undone as he felt.

Her answer was to rock back, forcing the
head of his cock past the tight ring of muscles and locking him inside her.

He swayed, immediately realizing far too
late that he should have pushed them both up on the bed. How the hell was he
supposed to stay on his feet when she kept sweeping his legs right out from
under him?

 He gripped her hips hard, his fingers
digging in as he tried to ground himself and prevent her from going any
farther. Not that he minded her enthusiasm—hell no, he did not—he just needed a
moment, damn it. Even as his body was clamoring at him to
hurry up,
he
wanted to wallow in the ecstasy that was pressure ringing the crown of his
cock, his head spinning at the contrast of the cool air on his shaft, and the
warm ache in his chest as he stared down at her face.

Shit, he was in so much trouble. And he’d
thought his knees felt weak before?

Michaela shifted beneath him, impatient,
and Lachlan forced aside the alarming realizations forming in his head in favor
of honing in on the only thing that really mattered right now—getting this
right
.

He’d sort out the rest of it later. Maybe.

He thrust forward gently, keeping hold of
her hips as he eased farther into her body, mesmerized by how she stretched around
his shaft, how hot and tight she felt around it. He listened carefully as she
made the most amazing noises, as if the air were forced from her lungs with
each roll of his hips.

When his hips came to settle against the
firm, soft skin of her ass, he stopped, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to
absorb the heat, the
clench
of her body. Michaela arched her back, and
he stared down at the long, smooth slope of it, trailing his eyes up her spine
until he saw her face. The smile on her lips was arresting.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said
hoarsely, the words sent from his addled mind to spring honestly from his lips
with no filter in between.

She blinked, her smile growing. “So are
you.”

He huffed at that, ignoring the way it stirred
up that ache in his chest even more, and concentrating on how the motion
shifted him inside her body. He shifted again and her eyes fluttered closed, while
his made a run for the back of his head.

There was no way he could stop, setting up
a steady grind, listening to how she moaned and cried beneath him until he
couldn’t take it anymore and pulled back, easing himself from her until only
the head of his cock was trapped inside her body.

Then he thrust back in. Carefully. Slowly. Battling
for control.

Control that within a few thrusts was gone,
torn from his grasp by her cries that he go faster, harder. And, once, telling
him to “hurry the fuck up.”

He couldn’t remember a time he’d laughed so
much, so often, while having sex, let alone sex so blindingly good he feared
he’d lose consciousness when he finally,
finally
could come.

She lifted onto her elbows, her hands
fisted in the comforter to anchor her as she met and matched each thrust,
pushing back into him until their bodies met with a solid smack that shook
through his body and tore more cries from her throat.

He pounded into her, per her demands, and
clenched his teeth against the coil of tension curling in his gut. His balls
were tight and full and aching, each thrust forcing them against her wet, warm
skin, until he had to stay there, grinding deep and close.

He curled an arm around her hip and
attacked her clit with his fingers.

“Oh. God. Yes. That!” she shouted at him
and he laughed again, resuming his thrusts, even more powerfully than before,
until bright white stars hovered on the edge of his vision and he resigned
himself to begging her forgiveness later, when he’d recovered enough to make it
right, but there was no way he was going to be able to hold off for much longer.

He was startled by her hand grasping his, shoving
his fingers back until he could sink them into her body.

“I got this,” she gasped, and he could feel
her take up his steady rhythm over her clit. He groaned, because Jesus fucking
Christ, that was hot. How she took what she wanted. Needed. And told him how to
help.

He wasn’t nearly sufficiently coordinated,
nor did he have enough room, to fuck her properly with his hand right then, but
he curled his fingers as deep as he could manage and let the motion of their
bodies do the rest.

It didn’t take long. Three, four thrusts
later she threw her head back and screamed, muscles clamping around his fingers
and cock, holding him inside her body when he shoved forward one last time,
dragging him over the edge.

“Fuck!” he barked. His face pressed between
her shoulder blades as his orgasm crashed over him, bright lights exploding
behind his eyelids and his spine bowing as he tried to get as deep and as far
into her as he could.

Awareness returned when Michaela slid forward,
taking him with her until they were both laid flat. He knew he should get some
of his weight off her, but he hadn’t quite regained the ability to control his
limbs.

“Holy crap,” Michaela muttered, her face
hidden beneath the wild disarray of her hair.

Lachlan grinned and pressed a kiss to her
shoulder, very carefully not saying any of the words rattling around in his
brain. For now,
holy crap
covered just about all of it, anyway.

Two hours later, Michaela carefully lowered
herself into the chair across from Robby’s in the swanky South End restaurant,
Valentine’s.

He took one look at her and burst into
laughter.

The next week was a blur of exams and
papers, suitably accompanied by torrential downpours and a cold, wet wind that
made everything feel raw. The study group met almost every moment they weren’t
sleeping or in class, and Michaela’s apartment was constantly filled with
people and food and laughter and frustrated groans.

There was a distinct possibility that Fang
might actually explode with happiness at having all this company, and Michaela
had to admit she was pretty content with it, too.

The only thing missing was Lachlan.

He’d been texting her throughout the week,
they’d talked on the phone a few times, and they’d tried to find a time for a meal,
or even just a cup of coffee, but between her study schedule and all the work
he was putting into revamping his lectures for his new and expanded audience,
there hadn’t been a way to make it work.

Tonight he was at his hockey game, and she
had the crew over for another round of studying for their last—
thank
god
—exam
until finals kicked in at the end of the semester. She’d actually contemplated trying
to convince the rest of her group to study in the stands at the ice rink so she
could keep one eye on Lachlan’s game, but hadn’t dared voice the idea. They
already liked to make moony eyes and bat their eyelashes whenever Lachlan came
up.

It was ridiculous. And sort of awesome.

Tonight, they were in her kitchen, sitting
around the table and in the midst of a heated debate about what new form of
torture their professor would subject them to on the exam, when her phone
buzzed.

“The boyfriend again?” Eric asked with a
smirk.

Michaela sent him a dirty look, the effect
somewhat diminished by the fact that she could see that the message
was
from Lachlan and she couldn’t stop her lips from curling, just a little.

Tanner made a gagging noise. “You’re sort
of disgusting, you know that?”

“Leave her alone,” Sadie said, but she,
too, was silently laughing at Michaela.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Michaela said for
what might have been the thousandth time.

Eric snorted. “Okay.”

She picked up her phone and typed out a
quick message to Lachlan, explaining that the exam prep was still going strong
and that they were thinking about ordering dinner so they could keep going for
a while longer. As tempting as it was, she wouldn’t be able to sneak out to
McGinty’s for a drink.

She didn’t think too much about it when he
didn’t write back, figuring he was getting dressed and heading out with some of
his teammates. She was deep into reviewing their readings when, an hour later,
there was the sound of a key in her front door and Fang took off running, barking
his head off.

Michaela looked over her shoulder from her
seat in the kitchen and watched Lachlan come through her door. She tried very
hard to ignore the way her heart sped up at just the sight of him.

He scooped up Fang with a fond smile and
tucked him under one arm, allowing the little dog to lick his chin
enthusiastically. His briefcase hung from one shoulder, and two very full
plastic bags that smelled suspiciously like the Indian food they’d ordered swung
from the fingers of one hand.

“He has a
key
?” Tanner asked under
his breath.

Michaela ignored him. She’d left the key
for Lachlan earlier in the week when she’d known she would be tied up at the
library for long hours and he’d offered to come let Fang out for her.

She’d been grateful for the help, and scolded
herself not to dwell on how ridiculously sweet he was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked,
hoping her smile didn’t look as big and happy and stupid as she suspected it
did.

He came into the kitchen and deposited the
food onto the table. “Mike sent this up with me,” he said, as if that answered the
question. He bent to press a kiss to her cheek and smiled at the rest of the
table. “How’s it going here?”

If Lachlan thought it at all odd that her
study group was, to a member, grinning up at him like he was the greatest thing
they’d ever seen, he didn’t show it. Michaela quickly took care of the
introductions, praying none of them would embarrass her, and went to get
everyone plates and utensils. Sadie, Tanner, and Eric chatted with Lachlan
easily, insisting they had more than enough to share as they divvied up the
dishes and made him a plate.

Sadie slid her chair to the side, away from
Michaela. “Here. Have a seat.”

Lachlan smiled gratefully. “I don’t want to
interrupt.” He looked at Michaela. “I have a ton of work to do, too, and my hip
is killing me from the game. Are you okay if I take this into the bedroom so I
can stretch out and get some work done?”

The study group monsters were grinning
again.

“Sure,” she said, as casually as she could
manage, holding still as he bent to kiss her again. Her heart gave a
treacherous lurch as his warm lips pressed to her forehead.

She didn’t dare attempt to meet anyone
else’s eyes, instead keeping her gaze fixed on Lachlan as he went down her
hallway, Fang trotting happily at his heels, and disappeared into the bedroom.
A moment later, the door shut gently.

She didn’t suppose she could get away with
not turning around again
ever
.

Probably not.

As expected, all three of them were staring
at her, eyes wide and unblinking. Eventually, Eric couldn’t contain a slightly
hysterical giggle.

“Not your boyfriend, huh?” Sadie asked
dryly. At least she kept her voice down.

“He’s just a friend,” Michaela said,
sounding desperate even to her own ears. “We’ve only known each other for a
couple months.”

Eric stopped laughing. “When I fell in
love, it only took two weeks.”

Everyone looked at him, but he glanced down
at his books, as if he hadn’t just said something important. Eric was single,
they knew that much. And they knew that the reasons for that were not something
he was interested in discussing.

Tanner cleared his throat,
uncharacteristically tactful in drawing the attention off Eric, who clearly
didn’t want it. “He has a key.”

“He lets Fang out for me sometimes.”

“And your doorman, who is more protective
than a mother bear with her cub, gave him our food.”

“They’ve gotten to know each other pretty
well.”

Tanner looked unimpressed with this admittedly
poor counterargument.

“He’s hanging out in your bedroom,” Tanner added
with a pointed tilt of his head.

“He doesn’t want to disturb us. He’s really
considerate. He knows how hard we’re working.”

“
And
he’s really considerate,” Sadie
said, throwing Michaela’s own words back at her.

“Well, I’m not dating every considerate man
I know, am I?” Michaela tried desperately. “Although, that would certainly
exclude the two of you if I were,” she added with dirty looks for Tanner and
Eric.

Eric grinned. “You’re not my type,” he
assured her blithely before going in for the kill. “Also,
he
kissed
your forehead.
”

And, well, that had been particularly
sweet. Michaela sat silently and tried not to think about what it meant that
she really, really
wanted
Lachlan to be her boyfriend.

Which was so stupid. She was too old to
have a freaking boyfriend, first of all. She wanted a partner. A
significant
other.
Which had been a turn of phrase that had always seemed kind of weird
to her before, but now she understood completely.

None of which mattered, of course, because
it wasn’t going to happen. She was all wrong for him. They were totally
ill-suited. He hated the attention, the press, the social commitments, and the
constant rumors and speculation. He would never
want
to be her
boyfriend, because he was smart and knew himself well enough to know that it
would make him miserable.

He deserved better.

“Michaela,” Tanner said with his customary smirk,
“
I
am your friend.”

She smiled helplessly at him, because that
was nice to hear. And even better, it was
true
. He
was
her
friend. They all were, and she wasn’t even sure when it had happened, but it was
kind of amazing and great.

If there was any way she could express that
without sounding like an insecure second grader who’d just discovered their
first BFF, she would have done it.

As it was, Tanner was studying the dopey
look on her face with something like alarm.

“Oh. Um. Yes. Thank you?” she said, going
all-out on the award for Most Awkward in a bid to get him to continue.

He acknowledged that with a nod, kindly
refraining from pointing out that she was a complete dork. “And I’m never going
to kiss your forehead, okay?”

“Me, either,” Eric added helpfully.

“Nor I,” from Sadie.

Michaela rolled her eyes, even if her heart
did skip a little as hope crept in. “You’re all reading too much into this
because you want it to be true.”

Tanner continued, undeterred. “The only
foreheads I ever kiss are my sister’s and my grandmother’s. Is that how it is
with you and Lachlan? Do you think he thinks of you like his sister?”

Which,
ew.
No. That was just wrong
on a lot of levels, which she was sure was written all over her face. She stared
fixedly down at her kitchen table and suddenly pictured Lachlan eating her out
on top of it before fucking her senseless in the chair that, if she weren’t mistaken,
Tanner was currently sitting in.

Swallowing back a hysterical giggle, she glared
at her books and wished furiously that she could blame the vindaloo for the heat
searing her cheeks and neck.

“
Oh, ho
!” cried Sadie gleefully as all
three of them burst into laughter.

Michaela buried her face in her hands.

“Definitely not his sister, then,” Eric gasped
between guffaws.

Michaela locked the door behind her
departing study group and slumped against the wall. They were definitely as
ready as they could be for the exam, but it had taken longer than any of them
had predicted to cover all the possible material.

It was well past midnight and she was ready
for
bed
. Dragging herself down the hallway, she opened her bedroom door and
smiled.

Lachlan was asleep, propped up against the
headboard with books and papers scattered around him and his laptop on his legs.
Fang was curled up on Lachlan’s chest, with one of Lachlan’s big hands curled
protectively around him to prevent him from sliding off.

Moving as quietly as she could, she
gathered up Lachlan’s work and set it on her dresser, then plucked Fang off
Lachlan and popped him outside to his patch of grass. When they returned, she
found Lachlan blinking at her blearily.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she said softly.

“No, it’s good. My back would never forgive
me if I slept like this,” he mumbled back, slowly sitting up and putting his
feet on the floor. He groaned as he stretched his arms above his head.

She padded around the bed to stand in front
of him, using his distraction and raised arms to start tugging his shirt up and
off. He looked up at her curiously, his hair going in every direction once he
was freed from the shirt.

“I can go home, if you want?”

“No.”

He smiled faintly and stood, shucking his
pants and socks. She stripped down to a t-shirt and her underwear and crawled
under the covers. Lachlan slid in on the other side, Fang surfing the shifting
covers with a disgruntled look before jumping to safety on Michaela’s side of
the bed.

As soon as her head hit the pillow,
Michaela felt the need for sleep evaporate. This was…awkward, actually. She hadn’t
slept in the same bed with someone in years. And she probably shouldn’t be
doing it now. That wasn’t what this was supposed to be.

Not that Lachlan seemed the least bit
bothered as he shut off the remaining light and rolled over, scooting up behind
her and throwing an arm around her waist. Before she could say anything, like,
“What the fuck are we really doing here?” he tugged her back against him.

“This okay?” he murmured. He sounded half
asleep.

She nodded quickly, instinctively curling back
into his warmth. God, this was nice. She liked how their breathing synced up,
growing deep as she forgot all about her concerns and the tension bled from her
shoulders, the heat radiating from Lachlan’s body seeping into hers.

Lachlan’s hand on her belly jerked when
Fang pawed at it and he reached out to snag the little menace and pull him in
against her chest, a third very, very small addition to their set of spoons.
She snuggled back even more and watched Lachlan’s thumb stroke over Fang’s
bulbous little head in long, slow sweeps.

The dog fell utterly under Lachlan’s spell.

He wasn’t the only one.

The following week was Halloween. In honor
of the holiday, and in a bid to raise money for a local organization helping
orphaned refugee children find new homes in the area, Seamus Lynch was throwing
a party at his house.

As far as Lachlan could tell, what Seamus
was
actually
doing that evening was cementing his support for Michaela,
and forcibly entrenching her into Boston society with the clear message that
she would be welcome,
or else.

Michaela had responded eagerly when Seamus
had sent along his invitation, but looked genuinely alarmed when the wily old
man anchored her to his arm the moment they passed through the door. She looked
at Lachlan with wide eyes, and he realized she was worried, in part, about him.
He waved her off with as reassuring a smile as he could manage.

Tonight, at least, she wasn’t his only ally
in the crowd. His sister and her partners were here. Somewhere.