Tempting (6 page)

His attention broke only when another student finished, and asked him a question on the text.

When class was over, Nathan exited the room like he was in a hurry for something. As I packed up my things, there was a heaviness in me from the look he’d given me, and I wondered what he was trying to tell me when he stared at me like that.

My phone buzzed, and I snatched it up from my bag. Incoming call: Celeste.

My thumb hovered over the screen and I debated opening it. Curiosity won out and I slid my finger across “Answer” with a liquid kind of dread in my veins.

“Celeste.”

There was a pause before she spoke. “Mom and I are shopping and she wanted to talk to you.”

I ground my teeth together, bit out a “Fine,” before my mother’s breathy voice came over the line.

“Adele,” she said.

“Hi, Mom.” I looked around as the students cleared the room, took a deep breath and prepared myself.

“How are you, honey?”

“Fine. What are you shopping for?” I rubbed my temple, not caring what she was shopping for, but waiting for her to say what she needed to say.

“Some winter boots for you. What size are you?”

I let out a breath in a whoosh. Maybe that’s the only reason she was calling. “I’m okay, mom. I have last year’s boots still.”

“Don’t be silly. Let me buy you some boots.”

My mother wasn’t an affectionate person, not in the traditional way at least. She purchased her love for me, in the form of clothing, shoes, or a fat envelope stuffed with cash in the bottom of my purse after a visit with her. It was how she compensated for how completely incompetent she’d been while I was growing up. I wasn’t too proud to accept the cash, which often went toward rent or food, but I felt, in a way, like I was accepting that this was normal. That a mother wouldn’t love her daughter in the way she’d needed her to.

“Mom, it’s fine, really.”

“Well, what do you need?”

The hand rubbing my temple rubbed deeper. What I needed from her couldn’t be purchased. “I’m good.”

“Why don’t you come home this weekend? I’ll give you some cash. How much is your rent? Are you eating okay?”

I sighed, covering the phone so she couldn’t hear. This was what she wanted from me. To come home. No doubt to see dear old dad. “I’m pretty busy with classes and work.”

“Surely you can get someone to cover your shift at the restaurant—”

“Not a restaurant, mom. A coffee shop.” Celeste’s voice came through the line and I rolled my eyes, knowing exactly what Celeste thought of my job. And my major. And my very existence.

“No, mom. We’re short-staffed.” A lie, but there was no reasoning with her unless I made it abundantly clear that I didn’t want to see anyone at home. “I’ll try to get a weekend off to come visit.” Another lie. Because I had no intentions of skipping a weekend’s worth of pay to spend time with people who I’d like to shank.

“Oh, that would be so nice. You know, we missed you on Saturday.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Celeste said you went to another party.”

Tell Celeste to go fuck herself
, I thought. “How does Celeste know?”

“Facebook.” Celeste’s voice again. Damn, Leo. He probably tagged me in something from Saturday’s party. “Must have been really important to miss Dad’s birthday for.”

“I thought I was talking to mom?” I said, ignoring her statement.

“I’m here, honey. I have you on speaker phone.”

Of course. “Okay, well I have another class to get to,” I lied again.

“Your dad was really upset you didn’t come, Adele. He wouldn’t talk to anyone about it.” My mom’s voice was strained.

“I know it seems impossible, but you should try to stop thinking about yourself for just five minutes and remember your family.” I wanted to reach through the phone and smack the bullshit out of Celeste. But because I couldn’t, I simply pressed “End” on my phone and turned it off, marching out of the classroom and to the computer lab.

An hour later, armed with a printed piece of paper, I found myself in front of a large cape cod-style home. I didn’t hesitate walking up the driveway to the front steps. Determination made my eyes sharp, my tongue on fire. After the phone call from my mom and Celeste, I was feeling pretty raw, chastised by them both.

But I was a glutton for punishment, especially at Nathan’s hands. Which was why I found myself knocking on his front door in broad daylight.

I
wish
I could say that when I opened the door and saw Adele that I was immediately angry at her showing up at my house. But that would be a horrific lie. My first gut reaction was a flare of lust so hot and so bright that I thought my skin might melt off the bone. Because the look in her eyes was so full of challenge, practically daring me to slam the door in her face. She’d probably have liked that, actually.

But the dance that we’d been dancing the last couple weeks was so far beyond what I could do right now. Not since I’d spent the last hour staring at an email from Elias, my brother-in-law, if you could call him that. The dick who was my dead wife’s brother who hadn’t shown his face in the good ol’ US of A since she died, now suddenly wanted free reign to go through her stuff. Yeah, that had put me in an awesome mood to begin with, so close to a tipping point of bad decisions.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed, yanking her by the upper arm into the house. The last thing I needed was some nosy, ‘well-meaning’ neighbor noticing the tall, slender blonde who happened to be one of my students standing at my door. Besides, I didn’t put it past Adele to sit on the front porch for hours just to piss me off.

“Can’t a girl swing by to say hello to her favorite professor?”

I released her as soon as the door slammed shut, and without removing my eyes from her face, I saw the way that she rubbed at her arm where I’d gripped her. Only with her, she was probably praying I’d leave a mark.

“No. You can’t. How the fuck did you find my house?”

She clicked her tongue, eyes flitting beyond me to look into the family room that led into the kitchen. “Such a dirty mouth. Though, I suppose I knew that already, didn’t I? In fact, if I had a dollar for every time you said
fuck
that night we were together—”

I grabbed her arm again, marching her back toward the door, because if she finished that sentence … I didn’t know, but there was no way I was in the frame of mind to be tested.

“Hey,” she said, yanking her arm out of my grip and walking backward, very much away from the door. “No need to get grabby, okay? I’ll be good.”

I almost laughed, the way she batted her eyelashes at me when she said it. Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and gave her a level look. “How do you know where I live?”

Adele dragged a finger along the edge of the entryway table, probably picking up dust along the way, then smiled up at me. It was a real smile, genuine and disconcerting at the same time. “A girl’s gotta have a few secrets, Professor Easton.”

Then I did laugh. I couldn’t help it. The entire situation was so absurd, that I kept laughing harder and harder until I had to brace my hands on my knees. When I finally got ahold of myself, I stood up, only to find Adele so close to me that I could reach out and touch her, had I wanted to.

Though wanting didn’t have much to do with it, I supposed. Wanting was a strange thing, because so much of it was just out of your reach. Either you couldn’t move your hands far enough to grasp what you wanted, you
shouldn’t
grab it, or it was perpetually moving. Adele was standing stock-still, right in front of me. For a few moments, all we did was stare at each other, me trying to catch my breath.

Finally, she lifted a hand like she was going to lay it on my chest, but I circled her wrist before she could make contact with my shirt, and her hand hovered in the air just a breath away from touching me. Her pulse was frantic and skittish under my fingers, where they wrapped around her skin. The speed of her heart belied the look on her face, which was pure, unadulterated seduction. The fact that I’d touched her at all made her think she’d won, I could see it.

“You need to leave,” I said under my breath, trying to regain control of the situation, because I felt horribly out of control.

“You don’t want me to though. I can see it in your eyes.” Adele moved toward me again, and even though I tightened the grip on her wrist, she laid her hand over my heart, smoothing up over my shirt until she curled her fingers around the back of my neck, digging her fingernails into the skin just below my hairline.

All I could hear was my ragged breaths and my pounding heart, and I didn’t let my eyes leave her emerald gaze, which bored into me like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

She probably did. She probably knew exactly what I was thinking because my cock was about to burst the seams of my pants, it was so damn hard. Adele took a step closer, pressing her breasts up against my chest, and I let out a hard exhale.

“Do you remember how good it felt?” she whispered, leaning up to my ear. “Because I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Me neither
. I held those words so deep inside of me, just short of digging my teeth into the soft flesh of my tongue to keep them in. That tiny shred of pride that I was able to grip onto didn’t let me say them out loud. While I struggled not to reply, Adele fitted one toned thigh in between my legs and tilted her hips into me.

“The way your cock felt, so hard and so big,” she continued, undeterred by my silence, “you fit inside me so perfectly.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” I ground out between gritted teeth. But the words fell with a hollow thud in between us, because I pushed back against her as the words came out of my mouth. The feeling of swimming against a riptide overwhelmed me. Adele was the current, and all of my limbs fell in her direction, the hand that wasn’t gripping her wrist came around to clamp on her waist.

“No,” she said resolutely, not the quiet resistance I’d expected, but in a firm tone that brooked no arguments. That wasn’t the worst part though, it was that she moved her face even closer to me, so that only a slight turn of my face would mean that our mouths, our lips, those traitorous little swaths of skin, would touch. I looked forward, refusing to give her the satisfaction of closing the gap.

“Then you need to leave.”

Adele turned her face and I couldn’t help but move my eyes to meet hers head on.

“No.”

What made my face angle toward her wasn’t the stark stubbornness of her earlier refusal, it was the quietly spoken plea, the slightest tinge of defeat that colored her tone. It snapped any thread of defense I had against her, so I shoved her backward, not away from me, but into the wall behind us.

The little slut, she grinned at the same time that her back hit the wall. Then I kissed her, pushed my lips against hers so hard that I hoped they might be branded on hers for everyone to see. Our tongues met instantly, tangling and battling for dominance. When she moaned into my mouth, wrapping a leg around my hip, I ground myself into her, hoping for a bruise.

God, I could smell her; she was so fucking turned on. I ripped my hand from her waist and jammed it up her shirt, underneath her bra and filled my palm with one warm breast. She groaned, using her teeth on my bottom lip, trying to open up my belt buckle with one hand, as the other one was gripping my ass. Not willing to give up the nipple that I was rolling against my thumb, pulling so that the piercing dragged her flesh downwards, I brought my other hand down, pinning her hips against the wall with my own.

Our fingers tangled on my zipper, and I grabbed her hand, using it to palm my aching cock. We both sank when she made contact, the wall catching our bodies before we heaped onto the floor; me because the relief of getting her hands on me was more than my body could take, and her because … honestly, I couldn’t give a shit why she was making that noise. She was touching me; that was all that mattered. All that could
possibly
matter, and I was not willing to think too deeply as to why.

While she sucked my tongue into her mouth, her fingers wrapped tightly around the base of my cock, I ripped down the zipper of her pants. We both had our eyes open, despite the close proximity making everything else a little blurry. When my hand slid into her opened pants, underneath the scrap of lace and curled into her soaking wet pussy, her eyelids finally fluttered shut. Adele broke her mouth away from mine and let out a long exhale, a restrained and quiet sob, and it made me even harder.

She needed this, as much as I did. Maybe more, judging by the utter relief covering her face when I added a second finger and hooked them, grinding my palm against her clit. Her hips starting moving in slow circles against me, like she was fucking my hand and not the other way around. Adele brought the hand that was behind my neck down to grip a handful of my shirt, her fingers squeezing so tightly that I could feel the seams of the shirt pull at my shoulder.

“Oh, yes, yes, Nathan, yes,” she whispered, tilting her head back against the wall. Only after a few moments, I could feel her pussy start to pulse around my fingers, the heat from inside her climbing.

Leaning forward, I was about to clamp my teeth down on the long, graceful line of her neck when there was a hard knock on the door only three feet from us, causing both Adele and I to freeze. We breathed on each other’s lips when the knocking became more insistent. I yanked my hand out of her pants and couldn’t help but smile a little at the pissed off look on her face. Whoever was on the other side of that door, Adele probably wanted to fucking kill them, as close as she was to getting off.

“Nathaniel, I can see you’re home,” my father’s voice came from the other side of the door. I cursed under my breath, shoving Adele toward the staircase that led upstairs. He’d never go up there, I don’t think he had since the weekend Diana and I moved in.

“Who’s that?” Adele whispered after hurrying up the first couple steps, pulling her pants back into place while she did.

I clenched my jaw and pointed upstairs. “My father. Now just go into the bathroom, first door on the right and stay
right there
until I tell you to come down.”

The knocking continued and I pulled in a breath and called out, “Coming!”

“No,” Adele said and leaned her head around the top of the stairs to look down at me, despite the incredulous glare I leveled at her, “but I was really,
really
close.”