by Sandra Brown
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 a
nd 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
Why 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.
“When I got home from work I did the shopping, the housework, the laundry, the cooking. Then I typed Daryl’s reports. All through his last two years of premed, three years of med school, and one year of residency, I never complained. I was doing my wifely duty. Never mind that I was becoming boring as hell because all I had to talk about was the gossip in the office.
“Daryl worked, too. He studied. I’ll give him that much credit. It paid off. He was put on staff at one of the major hospitals in the city.”
She paused, taking in another gulp of air. “One night I cooked beef stroganoff, one of his favorites. He came in, sat down to dinner and said, ‘Shelley, I don’t love you anymore. I want a divorce.’ ‘Why?’ I cried. ‘Because I’ve outgrown you. We have nothing in common anymore.’
“Now, can you see why I don’t want any hassles in my life? I won’t be some man’s unsalaried housekeeper and bedmate. I’m a free and independent agent. I don’t want entanglements or disruptions. Even if you weren’t who you are, even if it weren’t already impossible that we become involved, I wouldn’t want you in my life.”
Exhausted, she collapsed into a chair, rested her head on the back cushion and closed her eyes. The woeful tale of her marriage had never been revealed even to her parents. Why she had blurted out the cold hard facts to Grant, she didn’t know. But now maybe he’d understand why she refused to see him on any terms.
The only element she had left out of her story was her sexual relationship with Daryl. In five years, it had never improved after a nightmarish wedding night. She had finally learned to tolerate his sweaty, vigorous lovemaking. Through a kind of self-hypnosis, she had trained her body to accept him even though her mind rejected him. Nothing he did stirred her. She lay beneath him as one dead.
Admittedly she had been unfair to Daryl. She had married him for all the wrong reasons. At that time in her life she had believed womanhood and marriage were one and the same. Every woman got married. It was the only truly accepted thing to do. Conforming to other people’s standards had been a way of life to Shelley Browning and it never entered her mind to buck the system.
She might have been able to make Daryl happy, and vice-versa, but for the one essential ingredient lacking in their marriage. She didn’t love him and never had. Still carrying a secret torch that nonetheless burned brightly and continually in her heart, she had settled for someone else because the man she wanted was out of her reach.
“Shelley.” His quiet voice, coming to her from across the room, across the years, was like a caress. In self-protection, she didn’t open her eyes. “I’m sorry for the unhappiness you’ve known. I don’t want to be a disruption in your life.”
She wanted to scream that he’d always been a disruption. Instead she opened her eyes and said wearily, “Then you won’t pursue this relationship?”
He shook his head sadly. “I can’t let you slip through my fingers again. I thought if I could see you in class every other day, it might be enough until the semester was over. But after what happened the other night, I know I can’t wait any longer. We were off limits to each other before. Not now.”
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“Yes now. More than ever. Too much has happened to both of us.”
“You’ve been spurned and I’ve lost my own naiveté. Neither of us is idealistic any longer. We can help each other.”
“We can also hurt each other.”
“I’m willing to chance that.”
“I’m not,” she cried desperately and jumped up from her chair. “You come roaring into my life like a steam-roller from out of the past and expect me to fall all over myself. Okay, Mr. Chapman, if it elevates your ego to know, I did have a crush on you. I worshiped the ground you walked on. My world revolved around the afternoons I spent with you. Everything I said and did was weighed against what you’d think of it. When my boyfriend kissed me, I pretended it was you. There, does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Shelley—”
“But I’m not a starry-eyed teenager anymore. If you’re looking for that kind of blind devotion, look someplace else.”
He closed the distance between them in several long strides. With angry hands he took her shoulders and shook her slightly. “Is that what you think I want from you? Hero worship? Infatuation? No, Shelley. You’re an intelligent woman and I respect your intelligence. But I want you as a lover, too. Naked and passionate and as hot for me as I am for you. And don’t try telling me that the thought of us together like that has never crossed your mind. You’ve all but admitted as much.”
He shook her again. “Didn’t you ever wonder what would have happened had I obeyed my impulse that night, carried you out of there, undressed you, looked at you, touched you, caressed you? By God I did, and cursed the morality that prevented me from ever seeing your body and touching it and tasting it and making love to it.”
She groaned and tried to bury her face in his shirt-front, but he wouldn’t let her. He captured her face between his hands and tilted it up to his. “You didn’t have a happy love life with your husband. You didn’t like making love to him, did you, Shelley?”
“Please,” she moaned and tried to escape his hands. He wouldn’t allow it.