Not His to Touch: a Forbidden Virgin, Guardian & Ward Dark Romance

by Piper Trace

  Bishop lips curled in spite of himself.

  “But Bishop, it changed. No matter how it started, it’s different now. It’s real.” Her eyes softened. “And I know this because it breaks my heart a little bit more every day.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t live together anymore.”

  “What?” she hissed. Her posture stiffened, panic evident in her voice.

  “We can’t go on like this, Pen. You said yourself that I’m hurting you. God,” he put his hand on her knee under the table, “the last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”

  She stared down at her lap and didn’t answer.

  “So, yes, planning that trip for you was a stupid and presumptuous thing to do, but I want to keep you in Sullivan Manor with me—”

  “And I want to keep living there,” she pleaded.

  “You and I will be stuck in this endless loop we’re in now unless we do something drastic. I thought about getting you an apartment.”

  “What?” She looked horrified.

  “One with a pool, where Cooper College students live and hang out, so you could be a regular student with a healthy social life.”

  “Bishop, please. I don’t want that.” She squeezed his hand.

  “But you’ve never tried it. As long as you stay in your father’s dusty old vault of a house, with me prowling the halls and hoping to run into you, you’re never going to have a chance to be young and experiment. Have a regular life. One where you will go on double dates with your friends, go to parties, get married, have kids. Those are the things your father would have wanted for you, and I want them for you too.”

  She stared at him, her eyes so hurt.

  “You can’t have that life with me, Pen. I’m a professor and I’m far older than all your friends would be. Anyone who knew our situation would be shocked and look down on us. I’m your guardian. They’d believe I took advantage of you, and that our relationship was one step removed from incest. I don’t want that for you.”

  She looked staggered, as if she was having trouble processing all the obstacles he was bringing up.

  “And then on top of all that,” he continued, “there’s my past. I don’t deserve to live happily ever after, not after what I did. I can’t allow it. You know how I feel about that.” He took a long drink of cabernet. “So rather than take the ultimate step of finding you your own place, I thought we might as well try this first. Maybe if you become more involved with Bryce, I can slink off into the background, resume that father-figure role, and you can have a blast defying all my rules by staying out too late with your friends and boyfriend.” He tried to smile, but knew it must’ve looked hollow. “I know I’ll have work to do on my part. I’m mostly to blame for how far things have gone, but I think it’ll be a lot easier for me if my urges are the only ones I need to fight.”

  The waiter brought their meals and hurried off without asking if they needed anything else. Pen looked at her plate, poking half-heartedly at her filet mignon with her fork. They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “I could try,” she whispered.

  He stopped chewing. Had he heard her right? “Really?” He lowered his head, trying to catch her eye.

  Her eyes flicked up to his, and then away. “I could try to…I don’t know,” she shrugged, “give Bryce a better shot? Try to love him, maybe.” Her eyes flew back to his. “I’m not saying I’ll love him. But maybe you have a point. Maybe if I opened to him a little, we could have more fun together. It might take my mind off you.”

  Bishop sighed with relief. “Thank you, Pen. That’s all I want. I don’t want to lose you.”

  She nodded and dropped her head, sniffing. He reached out and raised her chin. Tears welled in her beautiful eyes. His heart squeezed brutally. “What’s the matter?”

  “Before I try to love someone else, I need you to know something.”

  Bishop nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  “The heart wants what the heart wants, Bishop. No one can control it. And mine wants you.”

  “Pen…”

  “No, listen. My heart hurts because you won’t love me, and it doesn’t change. You can deprive it, beat it up, torture it, or break it—and you’ve done all those things already—but you can’t change what it wants.” She paused, as if deciding whether to speak her next words. “What does your heart want, Bishop?”

  His instinct was to hide the truth from her, but maybe if she knew his real feelings she could venture past him, secure in knowing she always had Bishop’s love, if nothing else.

  He cleared his throat. “There’s never even been a question, Penelope. My heart wants you.” His words were clear and strong, because they were the fucking truth.

  Her mouth popped open and her wary eyes searched his, perhaps for signs of deception, but she would find none.

  “You,” he whispered. “Only you. Always you.”

  “How can you say that?” Her voice was just an emotional squeak. “You want me to have sex with someone else.”

  “That’s not true.” His voice boomed louder than he’d anticipated, and she jumped. Diners around them quieted. He filled his lungs, trying to control his emotions.

  He placed his hand on her knee again. “I don’t want you to be with Bryce. I don’t want you to be with anyone. Ever.” His eyes bore into hers as he thought about how much to say, but then again, he was this far, so why not slide the whole way down that slippery slope? “Do you think this is easy for me, Pen? I never want another man near you. Even this—” he gestured around at the restaurant in general, “—makes me so fucking angry. I’m trying to enjoy it with you, but—” He broke off, shaking his head.

  She glanced around. “But what?”

  He could read in her face her desperation to understand and believe him. He lowered his head to hers, so it felt like they were the only two in the place. “Because this night with you is something I thought I’d never have. It’s something I will lay in bed at night—so many nights—and try to conjure up what it felt like to just sit at a table with you in public, like we were on a date. A real date, like a real couple. I’ll try to remember what it felt like to touch your knee under the table. Kiss you in the car.”

  He paused, closing his eyes in a slow blink to gather himself before continuing. “I will struggle not to forget one moment of this one evening for the rest of my life, and all the while Bryce and men like him will be able to have this any time they want.”

  She shook her head in disagreement, distress creasing her brow.

  “How many dates have you been on with him?” he asked, to prove his point. He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his tone.

  “None,” she answered firmly. “If this is a date, then I’ve never been on one. Nothing’s ever felt like this.”

  He dropped his head, not able to bear looking in her eyes when she said things like that.

  He forced himself to say the rest. “So just try to imagine how I feel giving you to him at all, let alone as a virgin.” Bishop could barely force the words through his clenched jaw. “Bryce may be a better partner for you, but you will never be the treasure to him that you are to me. No man could love you like I do. What man would love you enough to give you up?”

  “Bishop.” His name on her lips sounded like a prayer, and she touched his face, cupping her palm to his cheek.

  He turned his head into her touch, placing a kiss in her curved fingers like an offering. “When he takes you to bed,” he choked, “he’d better fucking make you feel special.” He kissed into her fingers again, letting his lips linger and nibble. “Special and satisfied.”

  Even after all that, her face still reflected uncertainty. “I want to believe you Bishop, but you think I’m a child, that I’m too young for you.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “You are not a child, Pen. You’re the strongest woman I know. And you’re not too young for me. I’m just too old for you. It’s not the same thing. You’re perfect.”

  Their dinners forgotte
n, he used her hand to pull her close. He touched his cheek to hers and then turned his head enough to press a kiss near her mouth. He could sense her stop breathing and it made him want to push her down and take her right there in the booth.

  Reaching further, he touched his lips to hers. They sat there like that for a couple thudding heartbeats, breathing into each other’s mouths and trembling, lips moving in the barest of kisses.

  He wanted to make her understand how desperately she was loved, at least by one person in this world, so he laid it all on the table. “I am madly, ridiculously, stupidly in love with you, Penelope,” he whispered against her lips. “I have been ever since that moment in the car at your father’s funeral when you looked at me like I could make a difference in your life. You asked if you could live with me, and the way you looked at me…it made me feel like someone like you—this gorgeous little thing full of rebellion and energy and intelligence—could maybe love someone like me, backwards and angry and fucked up. And that was it. As soon as I had that one seed of hope, from something so magical as you, I was gone, Pen.”

  She choked on a sob. “Then how can you just give me away?”

  “Because I love you enough that I’d rather lose you than deny you the life a girl like you should have.”

  She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

  He shook his head too. “But you’ve never tried it. Listen to me, I should not be anyone’s first choice. You need to see what’s out there. It’s what you deserve.”

  She pulled back to stare into his eyes, and the sadness he in hers nearly destroyed him.

  “I’ll try. You’re wrong, Bishop, but I’ll try.” She looked away. “I’ll try to be with someone else, if that’s what you want me to do, but you need to know that I can’t handle you being with another woman. It would kill me, Bishop. It would break me.” Her voice cracked, and she looked at his then, twisting her fingers into his shirt, one tear spilling down her cheek. Her syllables were emphatic. “I can’t do what you do.”

  He kissed away the tear, the salt bitter on his tongue. “Don’t worry about that. You are the only one for me, and I can’t even be with you.” He took both of her hands. His thick voice reflected the torture inside him. “You can have anyone you want, always. I want you to live the biggest life possible. But I will remain alone. I won’t touch anyone else. I won’t love anyone else. That, at least, I can give you. I will love only you, forever.”

  She raised troubled eyes to his. “How can you do that?”

  “I had already vowed to be alone, before you even came along. That was my penance for my crime and for the unpleasant things I crave now. At least now it will be easier, because I’m not alone anymore. I have someone to love, if even from afar.”

  “This is crazy, Bishop. The things you think are crazy. Your logic is crazy.” She swiped her hand at her wet cheek. “But I will do what you ask on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  Despite her pain, she raised her chin and leveled a look of strength in his direction, her jaw set with clear conviction. “The first time I make love to a man should be everything that I want. Exactly what I want.” She finished the last long drink of his wine and then laid her hands on the table nodding, as if it had been decided. “I want you to be my first.”

  He was already shaking his head. “Pen, that’s not a good—”

  She cut him off. “I get to decide, not you. I don’t agree with what you’re asking me to do, but I’ll do it if it’ll get me what I want. So, I will agree to have sex with Bryce. Maybe I’ll even try to fall for him during this vacation next week, but I’ll only do it if I have one night with you first.”

  She looked at him as if she’d just said, “Checkmate.”

  One night with you first…

  The words echoed in his head. Wasn’t that the way it should be? He loved her. No one would make love to Penelope with the same devotion as he would. He would make it perfect for her. Didn’t that at least balance out some of the many reasons he shouldn’t do it?

  He couldn’t believe the answer forming in his head. Yes. This one time. He would make sure she knew what it felt like to be truly loved by a man in every way.

  Then…then he would give her up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Bishop

  UNFORTUNATELY, BISHOP DIDN’T have a chance to give Penelope his decision before they were interrupted by an unwelcome acquaintance.

  “Well, well, well. Professor Cole. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you out. Certainly not here.”

  Since they’d succeeded in scaring off their waiter, they must have taken their privacy for granted, because both jumped at the mention of Bishop’s name.

  Professor Warner was standing at their table.

  The muscles in Bishop’s neck and shoulders steeled instantly. Of all the people to run into. Warner was wearing his tortured writer outfit, as Bishop liked to think of it, just shabbily foppish enough to make the girls swoon.

  With his tweed vest, expensive jeans, and stylishly unkempt hair, the young professor looked like a romantic’s idea of a handsome English poet, but Bishop knew the man was far more dangerous than he looked.

  Bishop had heard the whispered rumors from other staff. Loathsome stories about the way Warner used freshman girls, manipulating them and offering grades in exchange for sex. Regrettably, he’d been devious enough so far that he hadn’t been caught.

  Warner preyed on trusting young women. He was cut from the same disgusting cloth as Bishop’s father. Warner sickened him, and his first instinct upon seeing him was to protect Penelope. Bishop gripped her knee under the table.

  “Professor Warner,” Bishop growled.

  Warner’s face lit up when he recognized Penelope, and Bishop wanted to murder him.

  “Penelope Sullivan! So nice to see you outside of class, and looking so pretty, as always.” He shook a finger as if admonishing her for being naughty. “Seeing you out with another professor is going to make me jealous, so now you’ll have to come to my house for dinner. I can grill a better steak than this place anyway.” He winked.

  Penelope giggled and Bishop noticed her blush. He turned homicidal eyes back to Warner, wondering how wrong it would be to stab him in the throat with a steak knife. He barely contained himself when Warner’s eyes crawled all over Pen’s chest.

  “Hey—” With the drink in his hand, Warner pointed back and forth between Bishop and Pen. “Aren’t you, like her stepdad now, or something?”

  Penelope, who had been practically sitting in Bishop’s lap, slid away from him.

  “Her guardian.” Bishop didn’t hide the unfriendliness in his voice.

  “But I’m eighteen now,” Pen added.

  Warner looked from Bishop to Pen, a leering smile spreading across his face. “Ah, I get why you’re way out here and looking for privacy. Doesn’t look quite right, does it?” He stepped closer and lowered his voice, talking to Pen. “He’s the father figure, and you’re barely old enough to do all the grown-up things he keeps asking you for?” Warner winked again and nodded, as if he was in on the secret. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Warner, you need to walk away.” Bishop’s voice held a clear threat, and he curled his free hand into a fist on the table.

  “Hey, don’t worry. No judgment here.” Warner held up his hands, and his drink sloshed onto their table, instantly darkening the tablecloth. The man was clearly drunk.

  He slurped at his cocktail, making eye contact with Pen when he licked the spilled liquid off the heel of his thumb. Then he tilted his head toward Bishop and stage-whispered, “I like ‘em young too.” He gestured with his chin over his shoulder to a table, but Bishop couldn’t see well enough to discern who sat there.

  Penelope cleared it up for him. “Hey, I know that girl,” she said, surprise in her voice. “She’s a freshman. She’s in my class.”

  “That’s right.” Warner gave Pen a sly look, that he must have thought was charming. “Old enoug
h to take to bed, but still young enough to put over your knee and spank.”

  Pen nearly knocked over the water glass she’d been reaching for. She clapped her hand over Bishop’s under the table and squeezed fiercely, as if she knew he was about to do something that would get him arrested.

  “That offer for extra credit still stands, Miss Sullivan.” Warner tipped his head again toward his table. “Your friend Miss Galston over there was really struggling, but now that she’s agreed to one-on-one tutoring sessions, she’s well on her way to an A plus.”

  Penelope’s hand shot up to smack onto Bishop’s shoulder as he began to lift from his seat to maim the man in front of them. “Don’t,” she demanded. “I don’t want our night ruined.”

  Reluctantly, Bishop lowered himself back into the booth, his head nearly ready to explode.

  Warner appeared surprised. “My mistake. I didn’t realize you two were serious.” He raised his glass as if in a toast, then laughed, pointing at Pen’s empty glass. “No wine? You’re kidding. He won’t let you drink? That’s rich.” He picked up the wine bottle and checked out the label before replacing it in front of Bishop. “I’ll leave you two alone, but Miss Sullivan,” he dropped his voice as if intimating a private thought, “if you ever get tired of being a good little girl for your guardian-daddy here, you can come by my house and try being a bad little girl for your professor-daddy. I’ll let you drink and do all kinds of other adult things.”

  “Get. The fuck. Away from my table, Warner.” Bishop’s tone was scarily low and even, and the deadly serious warning in his voice must have finally cut through Warner’s drunken fog, because Bishop saw real fear pass over the man’s face.

  He backed off quickly. “Just making a joke, Professor. Just a joke.” He walked away, and Bishop grabbed the wine bottle, practically crushing it in his grip. He poured himself and Penelope a drink this time, nearly to the top.

  “Hey.” She touched his arm. “You don’t have to do that. I respect your rules. He was just drunk. Don’t let him bother you.”