by Mia Madison
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I said softly, looking away from his face to trail my fingers over the diamonds. “Thank you so much.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat for a moment, groaning with frustration when the light turned green and he had to look away. I was about to ask what was wrong when he interrupted my thought.
“I know I said I could wait until graduation but I was wondering if you would make an exception for tonight.”
“I—”
“I miss you, angel,” he heatedly whispered, turning to glance at me with a look so pained that I could feel it in my own heart. “Do you miss me?”
“All the time,” I replied honestly.
Joshua smiled and I followed suit, the two of us silently agreeing to leave the rest unspoken. When he pulled the car up to Dickerson Hall, he took a moment to help me clasp the bracelet around my wrist before he brought my hand up to kiss my knuckles.
“Seven o’clock?”
I hesitated for a moment before shaking my head. “Can you make it eight? My roommate and her boyfriend have plans tonight. They should be long gone by then.”
“Eight it is. See you soon, angel.”
The matching sappy smiles stayed present on both of our faces throughout his entire class.
I tried not to think about the date I had with Joshua when I got home that afternoon. I busied myself with the homework assignments I had to finish over the weekend in the hopes that by the time I got through all my work, I’d have the apartment all to myself to get ready.
At least that’s how it should have gone.
But when I hopped in the shower a few minutes after seven, I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of the television playing through the bathroom wall. I didn’t think much of it and as I was drying myself off, the noise stopped.
I was dressed and ready to go a short while later. A quick glance at my phone warned me that I’d be late if I didn’t get a move on, so I hurriedly grabbed my purse and made a beeline for the door.
Which was when I found out that I didn’t have the apartment to myself after all. Ben and Finley were hanging around the living room, sipping wine from our sole set of matching glasses and eyeing me warily as I came in wearing what was obviously a date outfit.
“Where are you off to?” Ben asked.
I was getting ready to deflect his question with one of my own when my phone made the sound that alerted me to an incoming text.
- I’m here.
I was so distracted by the message that I didn’t even notice Finley had walked over until I felt her pulling the phone out of my hands.
“Is that from the mystery man you supposedly broke up with?” she asked, frowning down at the name. “Who’s Joshua?”
Ben groaned from the couch, leaning forward to bury his face in his hands. “That’s him. That’s his name.”
Finley’s eyes narrowed. “Please tell me you’re not seriously fooling around with a teacher, Brooke.”
My jaw dropped and I yanked the phone away from her, looking between my best friend and Ben numerous times as I spluttered, “What—How—”
“I saw you,” Ben admitted with a sigh. “The night you and Finn got in a fight, I followed you downstairs and saw you getting into that silver car. It wasn’t hard to find out who it belonged to. Not many people drive Mercedes to school.”
I was frozen by the ambush, though the weird behavior I’d been getting from them for the past week finally began to make sense.
The only thing left that didn’t make sense was how the hell I was supposed to explain myself.
A gruff voice in my head whispered, ‘Why the fuck should you have to?’
Funny how quickly my voice of reason had changed from sounding like Finley to Joshua.
I hardened my gaze and shoved the phone into my purse. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Like hell you don’t!” Finley shouted. “You could get expelled for this, Brooke! He could lose his fucking job!”
“We’re not doing anything until after graduation!” I fired back. I couldn’t stop myself from feeling cornered by their judgmental gazes and I was compelled to defend both myself and Joshua. “Tonight is just—It’s just one night.”
“One night that could completely destroy the both of you,” Ben argued, moving over to stand beside his girlfriend. “Don’t let him take advantage of you, Brooke. You’re better than that.”
My phone chimed again, but I ignored it. “He’s not taking advantage of me, Ben. And I fail to see how this is any of your business.”
“It’s not. But if I found out—others will, too.”
When my phone chimed a third time, Finley rolled her eyes and snatched my purse away.
“This needs to stop, Brooke. I’m not going to stand by and let you throw away your future for some creepy old man who wants to use you for sex.”
The old man comment gave me pause and Finley used it to her advantage—typing out a quick response on my cell and sending it before I could stop her. I snatched the phone back, glancing down and reading what she’d sent.
- Leave. It’s over.
I pressed the button to call him, but Ben was there to wrestle the phone from my palm and end the call before it connected. He held it up over his head and with the extra foot of height he had on me, I knew the only way I was getting it back from him was if I got violent.
I turned to Finley instead.
“He’s not an old man, Finley. You don’t even know him.”
“Exactly,” she said in exasperation. “I don’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know he existed because you hid it from me! How do you think I felt when Ben told me about this? Can you not see why this looks so fucking bad?”
I was about to explain that I could see why it looked bad and this argument was the very reason why I chose to hide it in the first place when a series of sharp knocks landed on the door. Finley and I both froze and Ben let out an irritated gust of breath.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Standing on the other side of the door was Joshua, looking as gorgeous as ever in an outfit similar to the one he wore on our first date. His eyes widened with shock for a moment as he recognized Ben before they flickered over to land on me.
“I didn’t send—”
“You need to go,” Ben cut in, interrupting me. “Leave her alone or I’ll report your ass to the dean.”
I clenched my teeth together to keep from screaming at him as I grabbed his arm and tried to pull it away from where it blocked the doorway.
“Let him in,” I hissed. “Before someone else sees him.”
“No. Get the fuck out, Professor.”
Joshua looked between us a few times and I saw the recognition as it dawned on his face. He pushed forward—easily shoving Ben’s arm out of the way—and stepped inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
“You told them?” he asked me, though his eyes remained focused on his former student.
“No, they already knew. Ben recognized your car,” I offered, feeling oddly grateful when he moved to stand protectively between Ben and myself.
Finley jumped in to stand beside Ben, though her eyes were roaming over Joshua with surprise. Apparently the picture Ben had painted in her head looked far different than the reality.
“You said he was old,” she whispered, but it was so quiet in the apartment that every one of us heard her.
“Isn’t he? He’s got to be at least forty.”
“That’s not old,” Finely said, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling. “It’s too old for Brooke, yes, but—”
“But that’s really up to me to decide, now isn’t it?” I cut in, surprising everyone in the room—myself included. “It’s not your place to tell me who is and isn’t good for me, Finley. Have I ever given you crap about any of the losers you’ve brought home? Seriously—give me one example.”
Finley looked properly abashed, her eyes lowering to the floor with a mixt
ure of shame and sadness. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt, Brooke.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
All eyes turned towards Joshua, who had moved to my side and slung an arm loosely around my back in a silent show of support.
He looked down at me and smiled as he softly said, “You look lovely, by the way.”
The oddity of Joshua’s presence in my apartment was thrown out of my mind in an instant. I stared up at him and smiled back, totally forgetting where we were and who was watching us with confused stares until a forced cough finally broke through the trance.
Ben looked sheepish about breaking the moment and I watched as Finley’s eyes shifted back down to the floor. I could tell she was going through the motions in her head—trying to decide whether to support me or protect me. Deep down, I knew she was only trying to be a good friend, which made it impossible to be mad at her.
“I think this is a really bad idea,” she finally said, though her tone was resigned. “I’m sorry, Brooke. I’m trying to be happy for you—I want to be happy for you. But I can’t support this.”
“You don’t have to support it. Just let me go tonight and you won’t even have to think about it for the rest of the semester.”
I kept it to myself that I had already begun planning one more exception night for Joshua’s birthday next month. No need to rock the boat.
“Fine,” she relented, waving her hand at the door. “Go. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”
Behind her, Ben looked absolutely flabbergasted. “For fuck’s sake, Finn—he’s almost twice her age!”
“Not my place,” she said, her hands held up in a gesture of surrender as her eyes stayed focused on mine. “Now go.”
Joshua took my hand and pulled me towards the door, but I was still looking at Finley. I gave her a small, sad smile and mouthed the words thank you.
She winked at me in response and I realized that things would eventually get better between us. Our friendship might never be exactly as it once was, but maybe this was the wake-up call she needed to finally see that things after college were going to change. There was no escaping it.
When the door closed behind us, I heard Ben and Finley beginning to argue loudly enough that I was sure the neighbors were going to get an earful as well. While we might not have been able to escape changes after college—I could sure as hell escape this right now.
I tugged on Joshua’s sleeve and gave him a pleading look as I whispered, “Get me the hell out of here.”
“With pleasure.”
11
“For a minute there I didn’t think they were going to let us out alive,” Joshua joked after we finally made it into his house. “Ben looked like he wanted to fucking strangle me.”
I snorted at the mental image, knowing that even if Ben had tried, Joshua would have been able to take him down with little to no effort.
“Finley looked like she wanted to tie me up in my room and never let me leave. Well, that or bitch-slap some sense into me.”
“I like the sound of that,” Joshua purred as he pulled me flush against his body. “The tying you up part. No one bitch-slaps my girl.”
His girl. My heart fluttered and I was instantly reminded of just how long it’d been since we were last alone together.
“Joshua? How would you feel about a late dinner?”
He smirked, catching on to my meaning immediately. “Pretty damn good considering I didn’t have time to make anything yet.”
“Stuck in paper-grading hell?”
He hummed and nodded. “All part of the job.”
We began the ascent up the stairs and a question I had never thought to ask popped into my head.
“Do you like it? Being a professor, I mean.”
Joshua paused on the top step, regarding me with curiosity for a moment before he nodded. “Yeah, I love it. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.”
I smiled at him, hoping that one day I’d be in the position to say the same thing.
But my smile turned into a frown when he stepped up beside me and said, “Wait—that’s a lie. There is one thing I’d rather do.”
“What’s that?”
“You. All day, every day.”
I squealed in shock and delight as he lifted me over his shoulder like a caveman and carried me into his room. I bounced up and down on his mattress a few times after he dropped me and crawled backwards until my head was resting on the pillow.
Joshua and I undressed each other slowly—a stark contrast to the desperate kisses we shared while doing so. When we were both stripped down and I opened my legs to take him, he sat up on his knees and shook his head.
“Hands and knees, baby,” he commanded before he crawled off the side of the bed and strutted over to his dresser.
After I got into the position he wanted me in, I turned my head and watched him approach. When I spotted the bottle of lube in his hand—I froze.
Seeing the terror written plain as day on my face, Joshua rested a knee on the bed beside me and cupped my chin in his hand.
“If you don’t like anything I do—anything at all—just tell me. I will stop.”
“P-Promise?” I asked, cursing the way my voice stuttered as he popped open the cap of the lube bottle.
“I promise, baby. We’ll take it real slow.”
He took his place behind me and I gasped when I felt the tip of his cock brushing against my clit. He swept over it a number of times before moving to my opening and pushing inside.
The pace he set was slow. Far slower than I realized he was even capable of. But when I felt one hand spreading my cheeks and a slippery finger pressing against my back opening, I figured he was only doing it in an effort to distract me.
He circled the rim a number of times, still gently rocking his hips as he roughly asked, “You good?”
While I appreciated the out he was giving me, I had no plans to take it. I wasn’t entirely sure I was ever going to be able to take his massive cock there, but I was at least curious about what his finger would feel like.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He stopped the movement of his hips for a brief moment while he forced the pad of his finger past the tight ring of muscle. I cried out at the intrusion, thankful when he stopped to give my body a chance to relax. When I felt eased enough to take more, I wriggled my ass backwards, taking his finger up to the knuckle.
“Fucking hell,” he groaned, pumping his cock into me roughly a few times before slowing back down. “You’re gonna need a hell of a lot of prep to take my cock.”
“I-I’ve never—”
“I know, angel. I’ll go slow.”
My body immediately relaxed at his words and it was enough for him to slip the rest of the digit into me. He pulled it out in time with his cock, pausing to drip more lube on the hole before he continued both movements.
“Oh my god!”
I could practically hear the smile in his voice as he gruffly asked, “Like that, do you?”
My body writhed when he picked up the pace of both his cock and his finger sliding in and out of my body, the dual stimulation overloading my senses. I couldn’t respond to his question with anything other than his name, but even that failed me when he reached around our joined bodies with his free hand and expertly stroked my clitoris.
What followed was a blur of unintelligible words and noises as the most powerful orgasm of my life ripped through my whole body. Joshua stilled completely except for the fingers that continued to rub circles against my clit, wringing every last drop of pleasure out that he could.
When I came back to my senses, I was pretty certain that I had blacked out for a moment. But if I had, it hadn’t been long enough for Joshua to notice. He had removed his hand from the oversensitive bundle of nerves and curled his upper body over my back, murmuring soft praises into my skin as he kissed up and down my spine.
My internal muscles relaxed and he slid his finger out of my ass. He straig
htened his spine and I waited for him to continue, moaning loudly when I felt two fingers push into me.
Joshua pumped his hips hard and the force of his thrusts made my ass move on and off his fingers. Even though I was mostly lax from the mind-numbing orgasm he gave me, I still felt a twinge of fear at the daunting prospect of taking his cock there.
There was a big difference between two fingers and Joshua’s cock. Emphasis on the ‘big’ part.
“You get so fucking wet when you come,” Joshua panted, the slick sound my pussy made as he slammed into me emphasizing his words. “Have you ever squirted?”
It took a lot of willpower to get my mouth to sound out the word, but I managed to force out a whispered, “No.”
“Next time,” he whispered back, the words holding a promise I knew he would keep. “I’m too fucking close.”
That surprised me, as did the hand that twisted in my hair to pull me upright. His fingers left my ass and he wrapped his arm around my waist, holding my back flush against his chest as he continued to pound me.
I could feel another climax building inside and though it was almost torturous to do it, I still slid my hand down to frantically rub my clit as I chased the blissful sensations.
His lips were pressed against the shell of my ear as he murmured, “Gonna fill your pussy with my come, sweetheart. You want to feel it?”
“Yes!” I cried out, desperation taking hold as my legs started to wobble. I chanted his name over and over again, moaning when his grunts got louder in my ear. “Please let me feel it. Come inside me, Joshua.”
He did—and right as I felt the first strong pulse of his cock—my own release came barreling into me. He inhaled sharply as my walls contracted around him and milked his cock, a low groan rising from his throat on the exhale.
“You’re incredible,” I deliriously whispered, tipping my head back to rest against his shoulder and allowing my eyes to drift shut.
I felt his fingers tilt my chin even further back as he craned his own neck forward to kiss me, moving our lips together lazily as we waited for our racing hearts to return to normal speed.