by Ginny Glass
Talk Dirty to Me
Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley
TUESDAY
Sleep disturbed. Had to replace car window.
Temp 98.6, pulse normal. Beginning to hate this paper.
“So, the Byronic hero is, in essence, an idealized but ultimately flawed character.” Jarod leaned back on the edge of his desk, addressing the sea of college students seated in front of him. “Can anyone give me an example of the Byronic hero in modern-day literature?”
He zeroed in on a waifish kid who raised one finger and nodded at him.
“I think Batman is a really fine example of…”
Batman? Unreal. Jarod tuned the kid out. When he took this job he hadn’t expected to miss the excitement of New York City, but in this sleepy New Hampshire town, with its stores that closed at seven and its obsession with adding seafood to everything, he was bored stiff.
Except for Tuesdays and Thursdays at exactly 5:00 p.m.
The kid droned. Jarod crossed his arms and pretended to listen. From the single window of his classroom he could see the main quad. It didn’t get much traffic during class times. That was why she had first caught his attention.
She had been the lone traveler in the vast cobblestone path. Worn, faded jeans and a dark blue pea coat swaddled her frame. In her arms she carried a tall laundry basket. Long inky black hair flowed riotously over her bright red scarf. When the autumn wind kicked up, the mass of unruly jet tendrils tangled with the scarf and she stopped to brush her hair back.
That was when she looked over—right into his window. Jarod felt something—a shock, warmth, an unexplainable electric attraction. Well, it was explainable if you wrote it off as instant white-hot lust. She shifted the basket to one hip to free her hand. Her coat fell open and exposed what could only be described as Heaven in Underwire. The blouse dipped low enough to show a shadowy valley of cleavage, and the brisk wind tightened her nipples to button-hard points that defied her clothing. Not huge, not tiny, those breasts were the perfect size to be cupped and licked and nibbled on.
Her lips, full and free of any lipstick, moved as she walked, as if she were talking to herself. Visions of those lips wrapped around his cock had sent blood speeding to his balls. He’d bet his doctorate her hair felt like silk. Even in memory he could nearly feel it sliding against his palms as he cupped her head, those lips sucking him, those breasts bare and heaving as she swayed against him, taking him deeper into her throat.
He moved quickly behind his desk as an erection stirred inside his pants. Damn, he needed to get laid. Another thing this tiny piss-ant town lacked was single pretty women. At least, available-to-him single women. From the corner of his eye he caught the inviting tongue slide of one of the BJ girls. There were four of them in two different classes. They all looked cut from the same Barbie mold and made it clear they’d love to work on any extra credit he assigned as long as it involved him, nudity and his office couch. One had gone so far as asking him if she could earn a B on her knees. She wasn’t at all interested in the literature he assigned. The suggestive prose she slipped into her essays was closer to Literotica.
Right, as if he were going to risk his job, bland as it was, and his professional reputation for a little naughty schoolgirl romp with any of them. No, thank you. He’d get his rocks off the old-fashioned way, with his palm and pay-per-view. It was the best this place had to offer.
Four fifty-nine. He wondered what Laundry Woman’s name was. She walked past his window during class every Tuesday and Thursday and he cursed whatever fate had put them on such differing schedules. He never saw her on campus otherwise, had never run into her going to her car at night. She looked to be approaching thirty. She could be an older student but he didn’t think so. They tended to take early classes to be home with families and children in the evenings or to hurry to second shift jobs. So who was she?
Boy genius finished up his epic thesis. “And so Batman upholds justice while at the same time breaking the law by being a vigilante. That is totally Byronic.”
It was totally moronic.
Several young ladies in the class seemed to think this was not only remarkably smart but worthy of longing stares. Jarod bit his tongue and forced a smile. He was not yet forty, but each birthday rendered the mating rituals of modern youth more and more annoying. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a faint headache threatening.
Five o’clock exactly. Jarod waved a hand at the assembly. “Class dismissed.”
He was tired of missing his chance to meet Ms. Right Now. One bookish kid earned death glares when he spoke up. “But, Professor, class isn’t over until five thir—”
“Every student that leaves this room now gets an A on the next pop quiz.”
The room cleared in less time than it took Jarod to collect his coat. The chilled air was damp and the wind blew bitingly into the collar of his jacket. Dry leaves rasped with a brittle scrape across the empty brick courtyard. Spoking pathways led away from its center, creating a giant wheel made of cobblestone and brick. The sun set earlier every day thanks to the coming winter, and Jarod squinted into the fading light as he turned, searching for her.
After long minutes of nothing, he cursed under his breath. He was chasing hot random strangers after cutting his own class.
Crazy.
He turned, ready to head back toward the Gothic brick building behind him. A rolling gust of wind barreled through the quad, carrying the sharp smell of wood smoke and fallen leaves. It slammed the door to Jarod’s building closed. He opened his mouth to swear but a husky feminine curse warmed the frigid air.
There she was, on her knees in the slips of what was left of the sun, in a pile of tangled coat hangers, her laundry basket upturned beside her.
Fate, you tardy bastard.
By the time Jarod made it across the courtyard to help her, she’d gotten to her feet and was angrily shoving a mass of white linen into the tall, round laundry hamper. Mud streaked the knees of her jeans and heels of her graceful hands. A crooked nametag read Nora MacGregor, Asst. Her long white lab coat snapped in the wind over a tight caramel sweater. A canvas backpack, its top yawning open, hung over her shoulder and pulled the material taut. No cleavage this time, just rounded swells of perfection hidden under soft cotton. His jaw tightened to stifle a moan.
He might have made a sound, he wasn’t sure. She looked up and an invisible fist punched him in the gut. She wasn’t just pretty, she was stunning. Her wind-pinkened skin shone like a candle flame against the deep night of her hair. Jarod had a sudden urge to smooth the flyaway strands from her face, tilt her chin up and claim that pinched mouth. A stormy scowl only made the depths of her dark bourbon eyes glow in the dusky light.
She hefted her laundry basket and stepped back a few paces. “What are you looking at?”
A good month’s worth of stroke material and the most interesting thing this town has seen since the McDonald’s opened.
Had she asked him something? If it was an invitation to nail her, he’d blanked it out. Wait. Wow. Where the hell had his brain gone?
South.
Speaking of south, his gaze trailed over her, sliding lower. She was petite and curvy, with the kind of hips he could spend a weekend bruising. She turned and he took in a quick breath at the glimpse of her backside. God, what he would love to do to that ass. The ass that was walking away.
He snapped out of his lust-induced coma. “Wait.”
She spun, a small can of pepper spray clutched tight in her hand. “Get lost, asshole!”
Jarod backpedaled, holding his hands up. “Whoa, whoa! I was just coming to help you. I saw you fall, I—”
“I don’t give two shits. I’m having a seriously bad day, and I
would appreciate it if you would back the fuck off.”
Jarod, enamored as he was by the way her gesturing made her high breasts bounce, knew when he was about to get his ass handed to him. He took another step back but did not lower his hands.
“This is me, backing the fuck off.”
She looked skeptically at him, then spun on one heel and hefted her basket toward the laundry room across the quad. Halfway there she glanced over her shoulder and paused. A twitch dipped her dark sculpted brow and she shook her head. Jarod shoved his hands in his pockets and watched until she disappeared inside.
Sexual encounters—zero. Hopes dashed—one.
Something lying a few paces in front of him glinted in the waning light. He took a couple steps, bent and picked up a sprawled paperback from the ground. A small clear mini-cassette tape lay underneath. He brushed a bit of dirt off the tape and flipped the book over. So what did beautiful, crazy, pepper-spray-wielding, completely fuckable women read these days? The title shot through him with heat, forcing the blustery wind’s bite away.
Nancy Friday’s Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Sexual Fantasies. The binding was creased and fraying. The yellowing pages were dog-eared and folded. Several loosened pages screamed “well-used book.” Small notes in the margins raised his eyebrows. Jarod skimmed the scribbled words, and the warmth spread to his entire body. Curiosity nudged at him and he examined the cassette. His eyes widened at the label. A slow smile turned up the corners of his lips.
Things just got a bit more interesting.
Nora slammed into the laundry room, her heart racing. Damn, she was turning into a psycho. Next thing you know, she’d lock herself in her apartment and become a recluse like nutty Aunt Margie, who hadn’t set foot outside since 1979.
She’d nearly assaulted that poor guy and all he was doing was being polite. Welcome to the twenty-first century, where chivalry and manners got you a face full of pepper spray and a sharp kick to the groin. She swung her laundry basket up and plunked it onto the metal table hard.
Braced against the scarred and scuffed edge, she took several slow, deep breaths before her pulse steadied. She had the good manners to feel guilty, but ever since some lowlife had started using the faculty parking lot as his personal audio-equipment shopping center, she’d been on edge. Last night he’d decided her little car was his blue-light sale and busted out her window to scam her cheap CD player. That, combined with the stress of her new position and the looming deadline for her dissertation, had kept her up many nights recently.
She started sorting the bundles of lab coats into open washers. Why had she taken this job, again? Oh, yeah, because it was the only school that had an opening in her field that actually paid something. Unfortunately it was also the school where she’d earned her undergrad degree, in the town where she’d grown up. No one took her seriously here. She was still Bobby MacGregor’s kid sister, Tom’s daughter and the girl voted most likely to succeed. Other students had sown wild, drunken, sexual oats, stretched fledgling wings in a first taste of freedom during college. She made straight A’s and watched those years pass her by. Even her coworkers, those professors looking down their tenured noses, treated her like just an undergrad. Her degree was worthless here.
Suffocating wasn’t the right word to describe the job, but the feeling—oh, yeah, suffocating was just right. Today had been exhausting—her vehicle break-in combined with no sleep compounded by the Sigma Delta fraternity’s attempt to create an alcohol still using stolen lab equipment. The stupid RA had called Security. They’d called the science lab to come dismantle the still and, as low woman on the totem pole, Nora had to brave the sweat-sock-and porn-magazine-infested dorm.
She needed a shower. She needed to calm down. She needed to interact with other people outside the droning monotony of the classroom and the lab. It was all grunt work—boring, asinine, and fruitless. Kind of like her life right now. She needed a night out to de-stress, to cut loose and just live.
Like the guy you just pulled your pepper spray on…He looks like he’d be fun to interact with.
Hello! Slow down. Back up. She wasn’t that desperate. Was she?
She had noticed the shocking green of his eyes as she’d turned. It would have been a shame to splatter those pretty irises with capsaicin.
Nora measured detergent into the open maws of the waiting machines and wondered if he was a student. No, not young enough. Not old, just mature looking in that annoyingly handsome way men get around forty.
There had been a dusting of gray glinting in the waning light, tracing highlights through his deep brown hair. Sharp jaw, slight splay of laugh lines at the corners of the eyes. Sensual tilt to firm lips. Tiny half-moon scar under his left eye, barely visible but calling for her to glide her fingertip over it. A glimmer of something in those eyes intrigued her. He hadn’t looked serious enough to be a professor, but Nora wasn’t familiar with all of the new staff for this year, either.
Slamming down the lids to the washers, she ignored the faint stir of warmth low in her stomach when she conjured the stranger’s face. Endorphins, chemical reactions, hormones. Her body often tried to usurp the cool practicality of her mind.
He was a stranger, not someone she’d be comfortable fantasizing about. Okay, she could fantasize but she’d never act on those fantasies. She liked her partners to be chosen and approached with certain requirements in mind. If she was busy a semester, she’d forego dating or date a man with an equally busy schedule so no more than coffee and the occasional dinner date had the chance to happen. It was safer that way, left her open for little complication or distraction from her work.
Still, he was certainly easy on the eyes. Excuse me, I know I just threatened you with possible long-term eyesight damage, but how do you feel about hot, sweaty one-night stands?
The niggling voice made Nora frown. Where had that come from? Sex was overrated. Sure it felt good. Good, not mind-blowing, not all skyrockets and fireworks. It was okay. Her experiences had been none too awe-inspiring, so Nora had come to the conclusion early in her adulthood that love was a messy undertaking—both physically and potentially personally. Not that she was frigid…
“The Vagina Myth—The Modern Educated Woman and Sex: A Biological Study of Female Sexuality.”
Her dissertation title had been the easy part. She knew tying biochemical reactions to the stages of courtship and sex might be considered an odd subject for a woman. Especially when women were still considered the more romantic gender, but Nora knew it could be brilliant. It was certainly different. Now if only she could write the damned thing.
Hopping onto the table beside her empty laundry basket, Nora dragged her backpack toward her and rummaged for her book. The fantasies inside were honest, vivid and real and often they weren’t attached to people the fantasizer loved. When they were, they not only made Nora’s body stir but, alarmingly, they made her chest ache with some foreign want.
It was the honesty that intrigued her. Romantic hearts and roses, her foot. Women had as many quirks as any man, as many dark, dirty thoughts. They were as much a chemical chain reaction as any man and she’d show exactly how to trip that biologic trigger.
Her hand encountered too much empty space inside the canvas sack. She wrenched the bag open and upturned it on the table. Notebooks and journals plopped out. She shook the bag. Coins, lip balm, receipts, pens, her wallet…no book. Wait, the tape! She shook the pack again but nothing fell out except for a cough drop wrapper and lint. Shit. Her mind raced. Where could they be? All her notes, ideas, the interviews…thoughts on the fantasies.
Frantically she flipped through the steno pad and felt for the thumb drive in the corner zipper. Those were still there. A small measure of calm settled over her. Okay, if she had to recreate those notes, she would have a solid start. It wasn’t the end of the world. Where could she have left that book? She’d check the library. She’d spent her morning there, it was the most likely place. Was her name in the b
ook? She couldn’t remember.
The tape was another story. She couldn’t replace that. Even if she had time to find those same women again, their stories would be different. The rawness, the realism of the interviews, would be lost. She could never recapture that.