Romancing Her Protector

by Mallory Monroe

  “Stranger?” Matty said, offended. “You must be kidding me? After what we shared? I’m hardly a stranger to you, Shay. I would wager I know you better than anybody else.”

  Shay stared at him. He was right. That one night with Matty elevated him as the only human being she had ever been so intimate with. Anywhere close. It was a heady thought.

  “Have dinner with me,” he asked her again. He almost felt as if he was begging this woman, which would be ridiculous. He didn’t have to beg any woman. But Shay was different. Shay was somehow different in his eyes.

  “I can’t,” Shay said again. But she wavered. “I have class tonight.” He placed his hand on the side of her face. “Tomorrow night then?” Shay felt her pulse race when he touched her. Then she shook her head. This was not what she had in mind when she impulsively caught that commuter train to Baltimore. “I don’t feel like you understand what I’m saying.”

  “I understand perfectly. You said you had a class tonight. I said fine, what about tomorrow night.”

  “But what about your money? I can’t accept a gift like that.”

  “Then call it a loan, all right,” Matty said, although he’d be sleeping in his grave before he allowed her to pay him back a dime. “With zero interest.” It was too tempting for Shay to turn down. His interest rate was perfect, but what else would he require of her? “And what do you get in return for this zero interest loan?” Matty stared at her. She didn’t realize it, but he was now so close to her that he felt intoxicated by her sweet smell, her sexy eyes, her loveliness. “The satisfaction of knowing that you’re okay,” he said, staring at her hair, her eyes, her breasts.

  “I’ll pay it back,” she said, unable to regulate her breathing now. All she could think about was his nearness, his male scent, his sensuality. “I’ll pay back every dime.” He kissed her cheek. “I know you will,” he said, as he kissed her other cheek. And when Shay looked at him, and he saw the lust in her eyes, too, he was undone. He placed his lips onto hers and kissed her so passionately that Shay knew she was a goner too. But this was not the plan. This was not it, at all.

  But it became the plan because Matty would not let up. His kissing deepened, his closeness became airtight close, his big arms wrapped themselves around her small body and pulled her against him. She felt his erection expanding against her, she heard him moan her name, and she closed her eyes, unable to think rationally any longer. It was just as it was the first time they kissed. Intense!

  “Somebody could come in here,” she said breathlessly, attempting to forestall the path they seemed destined to take.

  But Matty wasn’t worried in the least about any sudden intrusion. Did she realize who he was? Not one of his employees would have the nerve to just walk into his office without permission. “Nobody’s coming,” he said, kissing her so hard that he had her backed against the desk and leaned over.

  His mouth kissed her chest as his hand lifted her blouse and then lifted her bra over her breasts. He started sucking both globes and kissing them and making her feel the way she was beginning to believe only he could make her feel. He had her sitting on his desk, with his body between her legs, as he kissed and sucked and made her breasts feel as if they were scorched by fire.

  She knew this was insane. What self respecting woman would allow a man to take her in his office this way? Especially after coming all this way to proclaim how saintly she was, how she was nobody’s whore.

  But Shay was never a blamer. She always took full responsibility for her own actions.

  And the answer was clear. He was able to take her like this because she wanted him to take her. It would lead no-where, and she knew it, but for right now she didn’t care about that.

  She just wanted him to make love to her again. She just wanted to feel him inside her again.

  Her roommate Jessica would call her weak and insufficient, the epitome of the dick-whipped sister. But Shay always ignored women like Jessica. Jess talked a good talk, but in the end, whenever the right man came along, whenever lust and emotions were involved, she was no more superior than anybody else.

  Matty was the right man for right now. Because she loved his touch and wanted more and more of it. She couldn’t get enough of Matty.

  And Matty couldn’t get enough of her. He knew he shouldn’t have kissed her. He knew he shouldn’t have let it get out of hand again, because now he couldn’t stop. And he wanted her so badly he wanted to take her raw. He wanted to feel her bareness, her rawness.

  He wanted to feel it so intensely that his dick was aching by just the thought of it.

  “Shay,” he said, still kissing her, “you trust me, don’t you?” Shay was leaned back, enjoying his every kiss, but somehow she couldn’t fix her mouth to say yes, she trusted a man she barely knew. She trusted him to make her feel good, she trusted that he knew what he was doing sexually to her. But what kind of trust was he talking about?

  He reached under her skirt and pulled down her panties so fast and so furiously that they fell down to her ankles in one swift swoop. He lifted one of her legs, causing one leg of her panties to drop off of her, and then he bent down and took her into his mouth.

  Shay fell back on her elbows and wrenched in pure pleasure as his mouth kissed, sucked, licked, and ate her. She’d never felt such an intensity before. And her body couldn’t take it. It lifted and fell, lifted and fell, and Matty squeezed her buttocks and kissed and sucked and licked and ate harder and harder. But as soon as she thought she would explode, as soon as she thought she couldn’t bear this kind of intensity, he stopped, looked at her, and then unzipped his pants.

  He lifted her up and leaned her against him. “You trust me, Shay?” he asked her again in a voice that sounded almost wounded. But Shay was not so thrown that she didn’t begin to understand why he kept asking her that.

  “I’m not sure,” she said with the kind of brutal honesty he was coming to expect from her. He looked at her again, rubbing her hair back, and he smiled. Shay was different.

  He put on a condom.

  She looked at him, at his manhood, at the lust in his eyes. His penis was so engorged, so full and thick that she just knew she couldn’t take that in too, not after that intense oral clinic he’d just given to her.

  But she did take it, all of it, and she wanted to scream with the pleasure of it. But she didn’t scream. They were in his office, after all, not on some deserted island somewhere. She muted her screams, but the elation didn’t stop.

  He slid in and out of her, in and out of her, slow at first and then in faster and faster gyrations until he was pounding her, over and over, muting his elation too as he pounded. And when it came, it came so intense that Matty slumped over her, and could barely contain his excitement. He’d experienced this all-consuming level of great passion twice in his life, and both times were with this young innocent.

  He was in trouble.

  After their now exhausted bodies slumped against each other for more than a few seconds, Matty finally stood erect. He looked at Shay. She had that look of guilt on her face again, as if she enjoyed it, but felt she shouldn’t have done it. He wanted to tell her that it was all right, that he wasn’t using her or thought of her any less for wanting him almost as much as he wanted her.

  But he didn’t say a word. They were already at the point of no return, it seemed to him. There was no way he was going to have this kind of great sex with her, feel the kind of feelings he was beginning to feel for her, and just let her waltz out of his life. The last time she left him, alone in that motel room, he felt as if he had just let something special get away from him.

  Now he understood why he felt that way. It wasn’t just the great sex, although that was a major part of it, he’d admit, but it was more about her. About Shay. It was like his business dealings. It was an instinctive thing because instinctively he knew when he had the real deal, and when he needed to back off. With Shay, almost from the first time he saw her working so hard at Stop Gap, he knew she wa
s the real deal.

  He lifted her into his arms, her already half discarded panties falling off of her other leg also. He carried her into the bathroom adjacent to his office and sat her on the marbled countertop. He then grabbed a wash cloth and began to rinse it in warm water.

  Shay just sat there. She’d never seen such a beautiful room, a room probably twice the size of her entire dorm room. And there he was, Matthew Driscoll, his pants still unzipped, his penis still exposed as he removed the condom and flushed it down the toilet. Then he took a warm cloth, opened her legs, and began to gently wipe her.

  And even that, his cleaning her up, was a turn on to Shay. Everything about this man was a turn on to Shay. Was sex this intense for everybody? Or was she some kind of new to the game, sex-starved nympho? Especially now, when she wanted him to take her again, and she wanted it so badly.

  Which scared her. What was she doing? He probably already had a girlfriend, maybe even more than one. He’d already hinted back at that motel that he hadn’t made a clean break with whomever he had been seeing. And here she was allowing him to bang her in his office like she was starring in some ridiculous porn flick. What in the world had she done? How could she be this irresponsible!

  But she was still under his spell. That was the pitiful part of it all to her. Because she wasn’t obsessing on his relationship with any other woman. She was thinking about her relationship with him, and how in the world was she going to leave here today and not crave his manhood inside her again. That was all she could think about. Being pounded by him, over and over. She wanted it again.

  And Matty wanted it too. Worse than she did. That was why he stopped wiping her and began kissing her on the lips. His kissing intensified and as soon as Shay wrapped her arms around his neck, to give as good as she was getting, and he was entering her again. This time there was no condom. This time it wasn’t even a pretense of finesse. He pounded her straight out of the gate, he pounded her furiously, and within minutes they both came again.

  Came with that elusive intensity that only their chemistry could conjure.

  Shay’s head lobbed back as the pleasure overtook her, and Matty leaned into her as the pleasure overtook him. For an experienced man like him, who’d been with many different kinds of women, it was Shay who had managed to rock his world. Young, inexperienced Shay.

  He was in trouble.

  FIVE

  “Hold the elevator!” Shay yelled as she and Jessica Malveau ran down the corridor of Devender Hall and jumped onto the elevator. They were already running behind schedule, and would only run further behind if they had been forced to take the stairs.

  “Don’t even try that, Ricky,” Jessica said into her Bluetooth as she had a very private conversation on her cell phone in the otherwise silent, cramped space. Shay leaned against the back of the elevator and watched her roommate. And she was a piece of work. Jessica Malveau was a short, high yellar Jersey girl who made juggling boyfriends an art form. Last Shay could determine, she was juggling four beaus and counting.

  She, in fact, was on the overcrowded elevator talking with boyfriend number three on her cell phone. And she was her usual loud, obnoxious self. But she was beautiful, that was why four guys would allow her to juggle them, because each one was too infatuated with her to risk losing her, even if they only had a quarter of her.

  Shay leaned against the back of the elevator and wondered if Matty was juggling women, too. He was so gorgeous, and knew so masterfully how to please a woman, that it was hard to believe he wasn’t already taken himself. He didn’t say anything, except that he wasn’t fully committed to anyone right now, which made her what? No better than those four idiots Jessica juggled? She pinched the bridge of her nose. What difference did it make?

  Nothing in this life had ever turned up spades for her, anyway. Why should her love life be any better?

  When the elevator dinged open on the first floor, all of the students raced out and headed for their mailboxes, a tried and true ritual before they took off for class. Shay never bothered, she didn’t have anyone to receive mail from, but instead leaned against the receptionist desk and waited for Jessica, who was still on the phone, to check hers.

  Shay had on her headphones, listening to Usher lay it down, her head bobbing with the beat, when the receptionist handed her a small box.

  Shay removed the headphone out of one of her ears. “What’s this?”

  “A courier left it for you this morning.”

  “A courier?” Jessica said, snapping shut her cell and walking toward Shay. “What courier would be leaving you anything?”

  Shay didn’t respond. She, instead, dropped her headphones around her neck and opened the box. Inside was a cell phone, cell phone case, and battery charger. A note was also enclosed. Jessica, who saw the note before Shay did, snatched it out of the box.

  “Give that back!” Shay insisted.

  “It’s charged and ready to go ,” Jessica read. “Call me. Matty.” She looked at Shay.

  “Who’s Matty?”

  Shay snatched the note back. “None of your business. Thanks, Bea,” she said to the receptionist, and then began heading out of the dorm. Jessica ran up beside her.

  “Finally you enter the modern world. A cell phone for Shanita! I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  But Shay wasn’t even hearing her roommate. She was too busy thinking about Matty.

  Yesterday, when she came to his office, she thought it was going to be all about business, specifically her setting him straight about hers, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. She smiled still at the thought of how it turned out. He made love to her twice, and she would have let him do her a third time if he had only asked. And the way he made love to her, including her first oral, still sent tingles down her spine.

  She wanted to phone him desperately. She had been thinking about him all night long.

  He even put her in his Mercedes and drove her back to campus yesterday, holding her hand the entire way, kissing her goodbye and promising to talk to her later.

  They’d also made a detour to a drugstore, where he purchased the morning after pill for her. He then suggested strongly that she get on birth control. What struck her as odd about it all was that they both were behaving as if they were in a full blown relationship when they hadn’t spoken about, or so much as mentioned, such a thing.

  Now he had given her a cell phone, something she was never able to afford on her own, and she was pleased to have it. Yesterday, before he made love to her again, she felt burdened by his gifts. Now she was pleased, which made her queasy. She knew she was operating more from emotion than her usual good sense, but she’d never experienced these kind of feelings before. Even old pros like Jessica were still fleshing out their own emotions where some man was involved. Shay knew it would take time for her to figure it out, too.

  But she wanted to phone Matty. But Jessica would give her no peace if she did.

  She began to walk at an angle away from Jessica, who noticed immediately. “Where are you going?”

  “You go ‘head on,” Shay said. “I’ll catch you up in class.”

  “You goin’ to be late, Shay.”

  “You go ‘head on.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes, but she went on ahead. Shay immediately opened the note again, found Matty’s number in the note, and dialed it.

  Matty was in the backseat of a limousine on the road to the airport when the call came in. He smiled when he saw the number. “Hello, sweetheart,” he answered.

  Shay smiled too. “Hi.”

  “Since you’re calling I take it you got the package.”

  “Yes, although I can’t afford no cell phone bill.”

  “Didn’t ask you to afford it. Where are you now?”

  “Suppose to be heading to class, only I had to ditch my roommate to call you.” Roommate? He didn’t know she had a roommate. “Have dinner with me Friday night.”

  “Dinner?” Shay asked. She loved remembering
their encounters, she loved the idea of being with him, but the reality of it still scared her.

  “Yes, dinner. I’ve got some business to take care of in Florida, but I should be back in a couple of days. I very much want to see you when I return.” Shay’s entire body began to ache for him. She was craving him again just that fast.

  What was wrong with her? “Okay,” she said. “I guess I can catch the commuter train after school Friday, and I’ll see if I can get another girl to work for me that night.”

  “A car will be in front of your dorm at six p.m. sharp, Friday. All right?” Shay smiled. She should have known a man like him wasn’t going to have her catching any commuter train. “Yes, okay, Matty. I’ll be ready.”

  Matty smiled. “That’s my girl. You take care, sweetie, and I’ll see you then.” He hung up. Shay smiled and hung up, too. Maybe it was sex and sex alone that was driving his interest, and maybe sex was a big part of hers as well. But somehow she didn’t think that was all there was to this. Somehow she could feel, whenever she looked into Matty’s soulful eyes, that there was more, much more, to their attraction.

  ***

  At six p.m. sharp Friday, Shay was stepping out into the warm evening air. To her dismay, however, Jessica was stepping out with her, on her way to the campus cafeteria for dinner.

  “Do I get to meet this Matty person?” Jessica asked as they walked out of Devender Hall.

  “Don’t you have enough to worry about with your own boyfriend? Or should I say boyfriends?”

  “So this Matty person is your boyfriend then?”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “Bye, Jess. See you later, Jess.” Jessica smiled, looking around. “So where is he? Don’t tell me boyfriend has stood you up?”

  Shay took a seat on the steps outside of the dorm. Again to her dismay, Jessica sat beside her. Shay frowned. “What is your problem?”

  “I want to see this Matty person. You’ve never mentioned him before ever, and suddenly he’s buying you a phone and woo-woo-woo?”

  “What woo-woo-woo?”

  “Woo-woo-woo. You acting all strange and junk, smiling all the time and junk. That’s what woo-woo-woo. What’s up with that?”