by Lucia Jordan
Looking at Connor across the room, his head thrown back in a long laugh at something the blonde he had been with earlier had just said to him made Sandra’s head ache. She should have stayed in her own room the night before, kept to herself, and simply gone to bed like she had thousands of night before.
But it had been different, the way he made her feel had been so far out of the bounds of the things she normally felt that she still had no idea of how to handle it. What she did know was that it had been the first time in her life that she had felt whole and complete. She had no idea of why that was though, and was not certain she wanted to know either.
The food on her plate was unremarkable: a piece of Brie baked in a pastry shell that shattered noisily under her fork’s tines, crushed candied almonds had been baked into the appetizer’s center and it made the dish cloying instead of flavorful.
The main course would arrive in a moment and Sandra was fairly certain she no longer wanted it or anything else. The woman speaking at the podium had a strident voice and bright red hair that had been dyed so often it looked like it would break under a finger, shatter like the pastry. The lights were too bright and the smell of too many perfumes and cologne filled the air. Sandra put her fork down and stared at the door at the end of the room, wondering if she could leave without being noticed.
The speech dragged on, the main course arrived and she still could not leave her seat. She bit into overdone chicken covered with capers and a too-rich sauce, rolls that had been drowned in butter and ate the gooey chocolate dessert but none of it registered, all she saw was Connor’s fingers caressing the bare shoulders of the woman parked in the chair next to him.
Connor was aware of her gaze and what was more, he was all too aware of how lovely she looked with her hair pulled back into a sleek little knot that showed off the long and graceful lines of her neck and the high slash of her cheekbones.
The blonde next to him, whose name he was having trouble recalling, smelled of a strong musky perfume and her scarlet lipstick stuck to every surface she touched with those lips. Her mark was on her own wineglass, his fork (he had ordered the fish and she had ordered the chicken then insisted that they try each other’s food) and even his collar. She had aimed for his neck and he had turned his face in time to use his chin as a roadblock to her teeth. His collar would never be the same again.
Dessert came and went and they stood to exit the room. His companion…Lauren, Lori?… simpered out, “I think we should hit the bar and have a nightcap.”
“I have to head upstairs. I have an early flight.”
She froze. Her instincts were as sharp as the stilettos on her feet and she sensed that she was being dumped immediately. “Well, maybe we should tuck you into bed then,” her lips pursed suggestively and her index finger hooked onto the first button of his shirt.
“No, I think I will manage that by myself.” He untangled her finger and took a step back. “It has been a pleasure.”
He vanished before she could make too much of a scene, though he was positive she would not let him off the hook as easily as that. He had a feeling that before morning there would be rumors circulating about everything from the size of his dick to his sexuality. He could not muster up enough of a shit to care about that though; he had spotted Sandra’s straight back exiting the room in a swirl of plain black silk.
He did not mean to follow her but he found himself doing so anyway. She came to a halt before the elevators and he stood beside her silently allowing the crisp clean perfume she wore to cleanse the heavy perfume and cigarette reek of his dinner companion from his nostrils.
“Did you enjoy your dinner?”
At first he thought she was speaking to him but just as he opened his mouth to answer the woman next to her replied, “No, not really. I never know why I pay for those awful things, it is just one of those things you do at a conference.”
Connor shut his mouth with a snap. The elevator doors opened and they all stepped in, he stood behind Sandra, her body heat and the small mole on her upper right shoulder drawing his attention and keeping it firmly fixed until the doors opened and he had to step out.
Her face was pointed toward the floor when he gazed back for a moment. The doors closed, leaving him frustrated with himself for being such a coward.
**
The days of her vacation passed slowly for Sandra. She got home from the writer’s conference and immersed herself in the books she had bought but nothing could hold her attention for long. She began her garden but even the lure of fresh turned earth and sunshine failed to keep her mind occupied.
Irritated by her inability to concentrate she went out to the local lake for a day of sunbathing and took a picnic lunch. It was while she was on the shore that she first heard the news that had the college buzzing.
“Connor Beaumont,” a young woman with a short ebony pageboy gushed to her equally nubile friend, “Can you believe that they got him to agree to be writer in residence for a year? At this stuffy old college?”
“He is so hot,” her friend yawned.
Sandra quit listening. Her heart throbbed and hammered at her chest walls. Connor, here? Where she worked, and lived? How would she stand that? Writer in residence positions lasted for a year!
Her vacation ended as the new semester began. She went back to work, her nerves at a fevered pitch. Crossing the campus from her small home to the main section where the tall red brick buildings that housed the storied fraternities and sororities stood her mouth went dry at the sight of a low-slung Corvette parked across the graveled drive. A young man ran out of one house and jumped into the sporty car and her breath returned to normal, she had been utterly convinced that Connor would be the driver of that car.
You are being silly, she chided herself. You are going to see him; there is no way around it so act like you have some sense.
The rational part of her brain knew that if she had been aware that he was going to be teaching at the university she would never have slept with him. All she needed was a dangerous stranger who knew her darkest secrets walking the campus halls with her.
Her face flushed again at the memory of what she had allowed him to do with and to her. His hot mouth and clever hands, the hard cock that had filled her so entirely, all of it came back in vivid detail.
Sandra reached her office and closed the door, trying desperately to sort her thoughts. The summer had ended and the campus had sprung back to life almost magically, freshmen with anxious, expectant faces had arrived and the older students were renewing friendships and planning parties. The schedules were going up, the sororities and frats were busy sorting through pledges.
There was a tingle of anticipation that Sandra had always loved hanging over everything. The feeling that anything was possible and great things were about to happen. She knew by the end of winter term the campus would have slumped into a somnolent daze and the freshmen would be wearing tired glazed expressions as they headed toward the spring quarter and the end of their first year of higher learning.
There was a part of her that longed to stop time, to keep those early heady days bottled up forever. She knew that that was part of her problem, she longed for adventure and fun, for the eagerness that came from embarking on something new and unexpected but the practical part of her being would not allow for that too often.
It was probably a good thing too, given the way she had behaved at the conference. She still had the remnants of a blister on the top of her smallest toe from the wild dancing she had engaged in with Connor, right before he had led her to the elevator and to her own room.
Sighing, she shifted the papers on her desk and stared out at the green and bustling campus. Her office, like all offices, sat in a tall gray and red building whose lower floors were a warren of small rooms hacked into even smaller rooms as the faculty grew. The Lit department sat in the east wing of the building so that the sun fell on the windows attractively in the evenings but during the day the rooms were often chilled a
nd sterile feeling.
“I am totally lost.”
Sandra’s head yanked up in surprise but her own shock was no greater than Connor’s. He stared at her, certain that he was hallucinating. He had just spent a long few weeks thinking about the woman he had met at the writer’s conference and here she sat before him, tucked neatly behind a massive oak desk. Her hair hung in shining waves to her shoulders and her eyes, widened by surprise, were emphasized by a bare amount of mascara and a soft russet shadow that brought out their color.
He swallowed hard and tried out his most disarming smile, still rattled by the sight of her it felt more like a jack o’ lantern grin than anything else. His eyes went to the soft curves of her breasts, covered and revealed simultaneously by the crisp white blouse and blue blazer that she wore.
“Your office is two doors down.”
Her words were icy. His gaze went back up to her lovely face. It was set in a stern mask; obviously she did not take well to being interrupted. “Thank you.” He paused, debating for a moment. His gaze went to her ring finger, which was bare, “I suppose we were never really properly introduced.”
“I know who you are. Did you lose the blonde on your way here?”
Ouch. He wanted to grin at the catty nastiness in her query but he knew she had every right to be pissed. He had avoided her after the night they had spent together; he deserved whatever she dished out. However, perhaps she would be willing to take a little too.
“No, but I lost a beautiful brunette at the conference.”
“Maybe she is hiding in your pants.” Sandra snapped the words out, her ire growing by the second. She did not know why she was so angry, he had never promised her anything. It had been clear that they were just having fun that night so why did she want to make him feel badly?
Connor gave her a malicious smile, rubbed his hand down the front of his pants and said, “I do not think so but if she would like to be that could be arranged.”
“You are a pig,” she hissed.
Connor knew he had gone too far. Before he could decide how to fix the situation an older man with thinning blonde hair and an absent manner walked into her office, “Sandra—I need to ask…” he stopped, his pale eyes blinking myopically at Connor.
Was this her boyfriend, Connor thought. He was twice her age. Connor excused himself, closing the door on his way out but not before he heard her say, “What is it Father?”
He doubted the man was a priest so as soon as he got into his own office he booted up his computer and hunted through the faculty files. An hour later he sat back in the uncomfortable chair, his eyes gleaming with speculation and a plan brewing in his mind.
He had already given up fighting the urge to take her, he knew he wanted to and while he was a man who exercised great self -control he was also a man who went after what he wanted with abundant gusto.
Professor Sandra Eckhart needed some excitement in her life, and he wanted to be the man to give it to her.
**
Of course that was easier said than done, Connor found out as he spent the next month trying to find ways to interest or entice her. She refused dinners, drinks, invitations to book outings and everything else.
He sent her flowers and she snipped the heads off and sent them back. He had stared at the dismembered things with a laugh rumbling up in his belly. Every time he saw laid eyes on her his cock went hard and his mind wandered to all sorts of ways he’d like to ravish her, and to master her as well. He could picture her on her knees, a lovely length of chain around her neck and silver cuffs on her wrists and ankles, or draped in silk ropes, tied to his bed with her body opened to his own.
With every rebuff he grew more determined to have her. She was obviously not about to forgive his desertion at the conference and he did not blame her, he had behaved like an asshole—and a coward. His attraction to her had been one thing, the deep seated need to have more of her had frightened him and he was man enough to admit that. The issue at hand was how to prove to her that he was sorry.
Or how to turn her on so much she could not resist.
Once that idea hit home he wondered why he had not thought of it sooner. Sandra was hiding a passionate, fiery nature below that placid surface of hers and he had seen it firsthand. Knowing that he had overlooked that solution made him wonder if he were slipping, then he began to plan.
Sandra entered her office, fully intending to do nothing more than deal with the appointment that was on her books for the afternoon and then head home. Her day had been long and very stressful, and she was tired and irritated.
The student that had made the appointment had insisted that their schedule would not permit an earlier meeting so the offices around hers lay dark and shuttered for the night, and the hallways were dim, musty smelling and deserted.
She turned on the lights and her eyes widened in shock. Connor sat in the chair behind her desk, his handsome face wearing a stern expression. On the desk in front of him lay a long jumble of red silk rope, a pair of scarlet stiletto heels and a plaid schoolgirl’s skirt. She stared at those items, unsure of just what was happening but unable to stop the curl of lust that began in her belly despite her confusion.
The skirt caught her eye again—its cheerful plaid somehow so appealing despite his obvious intentions for it. Intentions that should have felt wrong, but did not—not at all.
“I have an appointment,” she said in a dry croak of a voice.
“I am your appointment.”
Desire Book 2: Love’s Disciplines
“You have got to be kidding,” Sandra said flatly but deep down, she honestly hoped that Connor was not. Her eyes shot back to the rope, to the shoes and skirt as Connor tapped a finger against the scarred surface of his desk, a grin that said he was not only not kidding but that he fully expected her to drop her clothes, don that outlandish get up and say thank you to him while doing it lighting his face.
Don’t be ridiculous, he certainly does not expect that at all.
“I am not kidding.”
Her mouth went dry. Her fingers twitched toward the buttons on her blouse then stilled as she realized what she was doing. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you want me to.”
The bluntness of his words made her already damp panties even wetter. They stuck to her labia, the oils dripping form her tangling into her dark brown pubic fleece. “No I do not.”
“Then walk out.”
She could not do that, though she knew damn well that she should. She wanted to, her dignity and pride demanded it but her body demanded that she stay. That did not mean that she could just strip for him though.
“This is my office. You walk out.”
“I am not going anywhere.”
“I could call security.”
“You could,” he conceded.
The impasse dragged on for long moments but surrender was inevitable and she did surrender, she had no choice. She approached the desk, her fingers sorted through the things and her eyes went back to his face.
There were no panties, no bra—nothing but the skirt and the heels and the rope. He read the expression on her face and said, “I am going to put you into a gorgeous harness but you have to get undressed first.”
Sandra had no idea what a harness was but she wanted to find out. More than that, though, she wanted to feel him again, feel him deeply inside of her. Her hands trembled as she undid the buttons on her blouse. Too late she recalled the plain white underclothes but he did not seem to mind, in fact he told her to keep the underwear on.
The skirt he had brought slid over her hips and she stepped into the shoes. Fear had begun to creep into her lower belly, her eyes darted to her door—she had forgotten to lock it. She moved toward it but he spoke again.
“Leave it alone.”
She swallowed hard. The door was closed but anyone could open it. What if they were caught? She was dressed like a tramp with a Peter Pan complex! “It is not locked.”
“I kno
w.” He sounded amused. She risked a look at his face but could not read his expression.
The fear turned her on. That caught her by surprise. It should not have, the idea that anyone could walk in should have had her fainting on the floor, instead it simply made her even hotter, and wetter.
Connor got up and picked up the rope. He flicked the ends of it in a lazy motion that drew her eyes, she stared, mesmerized, as the rope slid through his fingers and then down. The rope was slippery and cool on her heated flesh as he drew it around her chest.
“Put your hands behind you back.”
She followed the order blindly, her heart beating so fast she was fairly positive she was going to end up dead on the floor of her own office in that ridiculous outfit. What would the dean say? Or her father?
The rope circled around her and then he tucked the ends into a clever little twist that saw her neatly trussed, her hands pressed palm-to-palm and her shoulders back so that her large breasts were lifted high.
Looking down at her rope encased upper body Sandra grasped immediately what he meant by a harness. It was lovely and intricate, and it obviously required skill. She tested the bondage by pulling against it but it held tight. That comforted her even as it sent erotic thrills racing into her lower belly. There was something about it, the vulnerability, the helplessness that made her aware of her body in a way she had never been before.
Her pussy was heavy, full. She could feel every inch of its contours in her panties; feel the cotton chafing against her delicate lips there. Her hands pressed close to her back, the skin there was softer than she had realized before, her fingertips gained a hyper-sensitivity as they strained to touch something, anything.
“You are beautiful, but bondage makes you even lovelier, you are the loveliest thing I have ever seen.”
The words made chills crawl down her spine, raised goose bumps on her flesh. His fingers traced her large aureole, outlining them before he squeezed her breasts, kneading them firmly between his strong fingers. Sandra fought to breathe as her legs went weaker than water and threatened to go out from below her. His finger ran down her sternum and then her belly, halting at the top of her panties.