by Mel Blue
While Paul was in the shower, she pulled out her laptop and set it up right next to his. She checked her email and answered as many as she could while she had a bit of time. Cameron and Brandy had both sent her suggestive Happy New Year emails that she answered vaguely. She’d let them wonder how this weekend had gone a little while longer.
She heard the familiar tone on Paul’s laptop that signaled the arrival of a new email. Since he’d just checked his emails before he’d gone into the shower, the screen was still aglow, and she saw it was from a Dr. Daniel Wolfson, the Department Head over Classics at Harvard. Anguish washed over her like a tidal wave as she thought again about what the Harvard position could do for Paul’s career, versus giving it all up to be close to her. This type of plumb position was an academic’s dream. One she certainly couldn’t see herself giving up on a flight of fancy.
The possibility of separation for another year or so wouldn’t be that much of a disruption if what they had could last past the weekend. But it was enough to practically give Karen an immediate migraine pondering all the “what ifs.” She massaged her temples as she bandied about in her head what she would do were the roles reversed. She would never base the decision about her long-held career objectives on a weekend fantasy tryst, but Karen had to admit that Paul Beaudelaire made the idea of giving up a teaching post at Tulane very tempting.
***
“You’re doing great,” Paul said and flashed Karen a smile. He massaged the top of her hand that he’d been holding for the last hour, as his friend, Andre Broussard, created a masterpiece on Karen’s chest. It had taken almost half an hour to get her prepared to allow yet another man to see her chest scars, but once Andre stenciled the pattern, she calmed down and got more comfortable with him touching her skin and wielding the needle.
She inhaled a deep breath when the tattoo artist changed needles and ink colors yet again. “As long as I know there’s an end in sight, I can handle this.”
“I know it smarts,” Paul said. “But you’re going to be so pleased with the final product.
She eyed the pattern on the stand next to Paul. “If it looks anything like that, I know I’ll be pleased.” The pattern she’d chosen was a beautiful spray of flowers indigenous to New Orleans—Japanese Magnolias, Foxglove, Hibiscus, Magnolia Blossoms, Dogwood Flower, and Louisiana Iris.
“You can still come back to do the next hour at a later time and finish it up.”
“I’d just as soon finish it now,” she said. “I may not be back in New Orleans for a while.”
“So, you really don’t think Tulane is serious about you?”
“I think the more pertinent question is ‘when do you have to have your answer back to Harvard?’”
“I told Dan I’d let him know today.”
“And?”
“It would be the opportunity of a lifetime. But, I’m hoping to seize this opportunity along with another lifelong dream.”
“Oh yeah? What else even comes close to this?”
“Okay, touching again,” Andre said, before he dove back into inking Karen’s skin. Paul caressed her hand, glad to have the reprieve from telling her a secret he’d kept for nine long years.
***
On the way back to the Beaudelaire after a stop at the drug store to pick up some Aquaphor and gauze, Paul left Karen in the car and took the opportunity while he was waiting in line to call his LSU Department head, Dr. Barry Gluck, who was good friends with Dr. Charleston over at Tulane.
“Hey, Barry, it’s Paul.”
“Happy New Year, Beaudelaire,” Barry said. “Couldn’t wait until the sixth to hear my sonorous voice, eh?”
“I wish that were the only reason I was calling. Remember the Harvard possibility for the summer?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s been moved up. They want me this semester. One of their professors who’s in a risky pregnancy has been put on bed rest for the next three months, then when you consider maternity leave after that, she’s out until next fall.”
“That’s too bad for her, but losing you for the semester would be a real blow to me.”
“I know, and I really don’t want to make this decision without having some additional information.”
“Like?”
“Whether Dr. Charleston is going to hire Karen Freeman.”
“I thought he gave her a firm offer a couple of weeks ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but I can find out.”
The sales clerk called out to Paul, “Next in line.”
“Hey, I gotta go, but call me back in a half hour, would you?”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks, Barry.”
Paul wasn’t particularly a man of faith, but he prayed that Karen would be coming to New Orleans, because he would happily stay at LSU and let another lucky SOB take that job at Harvard. He’d allowed her to get away once, and if he could do anything to have her close to him now after the weekend they’d just shared, he’d move heaven and earth to make it happen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Barry called him back just after Paul got Karen settled on the bed.
“You know, this tattoo doesn’t make me an invalid,” she said with a chuckle.
He grinned. “I know. It just gives me a reason to pamper you, is all. I’ll wash it and let it air out. Then I’ll change the dressing for you in a couple of hours.”
“If you insist, Dr. Beaudelaire.”
Paul leaned in and gave her peck on the lips. “I insist.” His cell chimed, and he slid it out of his pocket.
“This is Paul.”
Without preface, Barry said, “Dr. Freeman starts as a new associate professor at Tulane on January 6th.”
Paul didn’t allow his face to register how this news affected him. If Karen was starting on January 6th, she had to have known she’d gotten the job weeks ago. He didn’t know how to process the information.
“Thanks, Barry. I’ll see you on the sixth.”
“Does this mean what I think it means?”
“It does.”
“Why do I not feel like LSU beat out Harvard for you, as much as one Dr. Freeman’s relocation weighted the decision in our favor?”
“You would be right in that assumption.”
“Enjoy the rest of your break, Paul.”
“You, too, Barry.”
Paul returned his phone to his pocket, and it seemed Karen had already surmised from his conversation that he’d made his decision.
“So, Harvard is a no?”
“As much as Tulane is a yes,” he said, staring at her intently. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth, Karen?”
Her eyes quickly glassed up, but she seemed to beat back the tears. A familiar darkness morphed her features, and the heat of her glare scalded him before she uttered a word.
“You’re serious about giving up Harvard for a piece of ass? This was a weekend fantasy. A tryst. Nothing more.”
Her refusal was reflexive, like a mantra she’d repeated often, as if guarding herself from an attack. Considering what she’d shared about her insensitive ex-husband when they’d first become friends, and how intimate they’d gotten, her reaction made sense.
He moved quickly, his anger propelling him forward unexpectedly. When she flinched, he stopped. His voice was tight and measured as he said, “You don’t get to decide what this weekend was alone. There is a whole other person participating here. I have never, nor will I ever, view you as just a ‘piece of ass.’ ”
Someone at some time had said this to her, made her feel that way, and he needed to get to the bottom of it—make her understand wasn’t like them.
But she was on her feet and walking away before he could think of anything else to say. When she walked out the door, it dredged up unpleasant memories. Nine years ago, the thought of leaving her in Baltimore had crushed him. He’d pined over her for months, lived every week for her emails, their chosen and only form of communicati
on. They’d been his lifeline. He wasn’t about to let her go again. His panic galvanized him.
He hurried out the door after her. The closer he got, the harder his teeth clenched in nervous desperation. All he could taste was the bitter failure he’d suffered before, even as he tried to find words adequate enough to stop her from leaving him. His hands shook. Finality lingered in the air around them. Its presence was as tangible as the luxury furnishings in the hotel that had been their sanctuary for this idyllic holiday weekend.
Harvard be damned. She was the only thing he’d ever wanted. He would do everything he could this time to stop her from leaving. When he caught up to her and took her arm, she turned to face him. Despite all the education he possessed, his words came out clumsy and malformed.
“Karen…please… I can’t…don’t leave.” It was as if he were resigned to the futility of his plea before he uttered it.
She stopped moving toward the elevator, expelled a frustrated breath, and angled away from him. He stepped forward, and this time took her into his arms.
“I stupidly didn’t fight for you nine years ago, and I will not do that again.” He punctuated each word so she’d understand their potency, and she trembled almost simultaneously with each syllable. “There are consequences to every decision we make in life. No guarantees. I shouldn’t have given up the way I did. I know that now. I want you in my life. Permanently. But you have to want me in return.” He pulled away and held her gaze, refusing to allow her to look away. “You need to give yourself permission to want more out of life. What you lack doesn’t make you less. Not in my eyes. You are more woman without your breasts than any I’ve ever met, and Greg was an ass to make you think otherwise.”
He kissed her with a fierceness he hoped conveyed his intentions. “I’m not perfect. I have an Achilles’ heel like the best of men. But I’m no longer that guy you saw flitting from woman to woman. I know what and who I want, and I’d give up a thousand Harvards to be with you. I was only seriously thinking about taking it because I thought it would put me closer to you. Now that you’re going to be here, I don’t have to go anywhere, except to spend forty-five minutes several times a week burning up that little piece of highway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, getting to you. ”
He could tell when her perspective shifted on tectonic plates to allow her desire to win. Karen threw herself into his arms so forcefully, he almost lost his footing, but he struggled to keep them both upright before he gathered her into his arms and held onto her for dear life.
Their final night at the Beaudelaire could have been a bust given her new tattoo, but they found intriguing new ways to avoid it—her leaning over, holding the arms of the stuffed chair—him feasting between her legs all he wanted—her going down on him. None of these disturbed the delicate skin on her chest at all.
When they finally lay in bed, exhausted from pushing their bodies to the brink, Paul spooned her to allow the skin on her chest to breathe. They whispered long into the night.
“So you’ll come back here on the fifth?” he asked.
“Yes, Seraphina’ s giving me a great weekly rate until I can find a place.”
“Will you stay with me until you do?”
“I don’t know…”
“Despite this great rate she’s giving you, I know how much the rooms are, and you could be out thousands of dollars. You could save a chunk of money by staying with me, at least on the weekends.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you out like that.”
“It won’t be an imposition. So it’s settled?”
She sighed. “It’s settled.”
“Would you have really allowed me to take that job at Harvard, knowing you were moving here in a week?”
“Probably.”
“That would’ve put us twenty-two hours apart. Did you not have any inkling of the depth of my feelings for you?”
“All I ever saw was you dating a lot of women.”
“Didn’t their appearance give you a clue? Tall. Dark hair. Brown eyes—”
“Big breasts.”
He turned her gently to face him. “It wasn’t my intention to flaunt them in your face. It was just a coincidence that each woman I dated was similarly endowed. On my honor, you will be the only woman for me from this day forward, unless you decide you don’t want me.”
“Good, because I can’t compete. I wouldn’t be able to endure that kind of betrayal. So let’s be clear about this. You have to give up the double-D’s and love these A-minuses.”
Paul chuckled. “Is that even a bra size?”
“I made it up.”
“Do I get any cool points at all for sexing you up all weekend and feeding you and getting you inked?”
She screwed up her face as if she were in deep thought then shook her head. “No, I have to leave you something to aspire to.”
“As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand women.”
“You don’t need to understand us as much as you need to know how to treat us.”
He clutched her waist, pulled her closer to him, and kissed her, first gently then more insistently, until he challenged her libido so much, it was on once again.
EPILOGUE
“Penthesilea bewitched Achilles in a way no other woman had. Her fighting prowess was an aphrodisiac, but in the heat of battle it had become too late for him to do anything about it. Once the gauntlet had been thrown down, neither of them could pick it up again.”
Karen listened, enraptured by the sexy professor. He was hers, and she knew it intuitively, but sometimes she was afraid when other women looked at him in a certain way. Even now as some of his female students looked at him like he was Christ incarnate. But why did the thought paralyze her? The negative noise in her head came to a halt as the answer appeared as if in an idea cloud.
She’d found solace in just having an affair of the heart with him, first in Baltimore, then for years as email pals. Yes, they traveled in the same academic circles, went to many of the same conferences, but she was the one who’d forbidden pursuing a relationship. She’d kept herself off-limits. There’d been sweet relief in the knowledge that he could never reject her if she never allowed herself to be emotionally available.
Except now she’d taken a chance and let him in.
Karen closed her eyes as his lecture went on and replayed images in her head from the night before.
When the class ended, Karen held back until Paul addressed the students lining up to have a word with him. The final student was a petite brunette but otherwise just the type who might’ve been on Paul’s arm if Karen were not in the picture.
There was a classic shift in the student’s posture to show off her girls to Paul via her tight vee-neck sweater, which signaled Karen it was time to make her presence known.
“So you really think Achilles and Penthesilea would’ve hooked up if she hadn’t died in their fight?” the coed asked as Karen slid next to Paul and snaked her arm around his waist. He reciprocated and cupped her ass in a proprietary way without the student’s knowledge, but Karen was aware. Very much so.
He turned his attention away from his student and laid a wet one on her. “Hey babe.”
“Hey yourself,” Karen replied, then turned to the student and locked eyes with her to answer the question she’d asked Paul. “I totally believe they would have, and it would’ve been epic.”
The student stared blankly at Karen for a few seconds. She hadn’t expecting the professor’s girlfriend to show up. Karen decided then and there she needed to do this every so often to remind these hot-assed coeds this hunky professor was taken.
“Um…Okay, Ms… ”
“Professor Freeman,” Paul said. “My significant other.” The label, however simple, struck a chord with Karen. It settled over her like a blanket, its warmth removing the intimidation the young student and her stellar mammaries had evoked in her just moments before.
The student backed away in a hurry, now that she’
d seen her flirting would get her nowhere. “Thanks Professor Beaudelaire,” she said over her shoulder as she scurried out.
My significant other.
Karen recalled his words again, letting them quell the fear that flared up in her every time she witnessed an attractive woman, who had all her parts intact, flirting with her man.
As soon as the door closed, Paul sat on the edge of the desk and pulled her onto his lap to kiss her properly. When they came up for air, he looked into her eyes.
“Does this adequately demonstrate the depth of my feelings for you?”
“I don’t know,” she said and narrowed her eyes, playfully. “Lay another one on me.”
He kissed her again, and this time it was just like during their fantasy weekend at the Beaudelaire, when they’d taken the chance orchestrated by her sister and Seraphina and wisely left their inhibitions at the door.
***
ABOUT L.V. LEWIS
L. V. Lewis is a married, mother of four who lives in South Georgia and works in the Florida Panhandle. A new author who decided stories like Fifty Shades of Grey needed a little more diversity and comedy, penned Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever as a parodied response to those wildly popular books from a woman of color. A voracious reader since Kindergarten, Lewis loves nothing more than to curl up with a good book and a glass of wine. She and her husband are political junkies, a hobby that is time consuming but free. Now that Lewis has young adults who think they don’t need their parents anymore, she has taken up another time-draining career of writing. However, she is happy to report, for once, her extra-curricular activity costs far less than her husband’s. Her love for writing is only eclipsed by her love for her family.
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