“Am I supposed to call you a good boy?” Alex reached back and pulled open her desk drawer where her box of condoms lived.
“Clever girl.”
“You knew that.” She pulled her T-shirt over her head and unhooked her bra.
He pulled off his own shirt before drawing her against him again. Instead of taking her down into another breath-stealing kiss, he simply stared at her, grazing his fingers down the side of her face. “You’re so beautiful. I was afraid I’d lost you.”
She had no words. The way he looked at her filled her with wonderful emotion, but she couldn’t compose a single sentence to tell him that.
Whatever he learned looking at her face seemed to be the response he needed because he picked her up and carried her to her narrow bed, laying her down before kneeling beside her. He kissed down the center of her torso, working open her jeans. Standing, he pulled the jeans off her. Then he removed his own, slipped on a condom, and stretched out beside her. Skin on skin, Alex twisted toward him and hooked her leg over his hip. Holding her gaze with his own, he slid inside her. She clenched her teeth as the sweetness of it overtook her.
“It’s okay.” Marc whispered, setting a slow, easy rhythm. “You don’t have to hold back.”
“Hold back?”
He thrust hard, forcing a moan out of her. “Just like that. We don’t have to be quiet.” He braced his hand in the small of her back, increasing his rhythm.
Her breath came in short gasps as she buried her face in the curve of his neck. One arm was wrapped under his body, and she clutched her fingers trying to find purchase on his skin. He shifted up on his elbow with his hand under her head, looking down at her like she was priceless. The slight change hit a new spot when he thrust, sending another crackle of electricity through her. She bit back a startled cry. He pulled her leg higher. She threw her head back struggling to stifle herself, but this time his every motion was exquisite. The feel of his heavy breaths across her shoulder made her aware of his harsh grunts. Someone would hear him. Someone would know.
When she looked at him, he was staring at her. Drinking in the sight of her. A breathy gasp escaped her. Then another. Then a strangled moan. With each sound, his motion became more urgent until she was matching his loud moans. He rolled her onto her back, thrusting hard and desperate, forcing helpless cries from her. Their bellies slid together, slicked with sweat and heat. Her legs locked around his waist. “Marc,” she yelled.
He pounded into her so hard the bed clanked against the wall. “Now, baby, scream.”
Alex arched, the scream boiling up from her toes, unraveling her whole being as it went.
Marc shuddered and stopped, panting. “I knew you were a screamer.”
Ugliness rolled through her like a dust storm. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not.” He eased onto the bed beside her. “You always keep yourself from making any noise when we make love. You don’t have to do that with me.” He cupped her breast letting his thumb brush across her nipple. “I appreciate loud, so you can be who you are.”
The ugliness vanished. He wasn’t ridiculing her. He never had. “You can be yourself with me, too.”
“I planned to. I’m not good at being anyone else.”
“Like Jason.”
He propped himself on his elbow. “What?”
“You said something about Jason writing a brilliant ballad. You’ve mentioned him before.”
“I’ve had a long day, and I’m too tired for you to be smart right now.” He stretched out beside her again and closed his eyes ending the discussion.
At least she wasn’t the only screwed up person in this relationship.
Chapter 11
This bed had to go. Being this close to Alex was great, but every time he moved, he worried he was going to hurt her. He opened his eyes to watch her sleep. She hadn’t brought up Jason again. After they napped, they’d made love again, and then she’d cooked some ramen because neither of them wanted to go down twenty flights of stairs or lose this private eyrie where she could scream.
He smiled. She was a screamer, and she had some wicked talent for sex. Last night when they made love at midnight, it was magic. Damn good thing she had that box of condoms.
She stretched and twisted toward him. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“We have to go out today unless you want to eat ramen or Chef Boyardee for breakfast.”
“Pack a bag, and we’ll go to my hotel where the elevator works.”
“I don’t care as long as the bed works.” She nuzzled her cheek against his chest.
“I can’t have you dying of starvation now.”
“I suppose not.” Alex kicked her legs free of the sheet they were both entangled in and climbed off the bed. Standing in the middle of the room, she scrubbed her hands through her hair and then leered over her shoulder. “We could take a shower. There’s no one here to walk in on us.”
Marc stretched. “No, thanks. I’m still enjoying the smell of you on me. Maybe later.”
She shrugged. “Your choice. I think we should go talk to Carla today. I’d like to get it over with. Plus, if we’re at your hotel, Roger won’t be able to hunt me down to pitch another hissy fit.”
“Hissy fit?” Marc crossed the room so he could wrap his arms around her from behind. “You spent too much time with Ida this summer.” Parts of his anatomy were waking up eager to continue last night’s fun.
She reached up and behind to put her hand on the back of his head. “No, that I come by naturally. I did spend summers down there when I was little.”
“You’re still little.” He nipped her shoulder.
The phone started to ring.
“Hold that thought.” She slipped away.
“Just ignore it.”
“Like you would.” She picked up the handset of an ancient brown phone hanging on the wall. “Hello? Who? What? Yes, I hear them.” She reached into a small metal chest of drawers and pulled out some underwear. Marc decided it would be wise to get dressed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“What’s going on?”
“Screaming in the dean’s office. Genesis said Dr. Meyer called Roger in to talk to him this morning first thing, and now Diana is there, too, and I could hear them yelling through the phone.”
Marc dragged his shirt over his head. Yesterday’s clothes, charming. Down twenty flights was easier than up and Alex went for the English building at a flat run.
“I didn’t know what to do!” Genesis squealed as they came through the door. A boy, presumably Jeremy, stood to the right of the hall listening. “Dr. Meyer had me call Dr. Visian yesterday to come in for a meeting first thing, and then they started yelling, and Dr. Visian looks like he slept in his fruiting car. And then they had me call Dr. Gregor to come in immediately, and all three of them are screaming, and I heard your name so I looked your dorm phone number up in the department directory.”
Genesis had followed Alex to the door of the dean’s office, but stopped when Alex opened it. What to do? Stay out here with the kids or follow her in to where he didn’t belong. Alex glanced back, catching his gaze, as she crossed the threshold and shook her head. Problem solved. Genesis retreated to reception and lingered on the left of the hall. Marc paced between the door and the couches below the window. Outside the sun shone and people carried on as if the world hadn’t ground to a stop. From the dean’s office, Marc could hear the occasional word or name. Impropriety and plagiarism were popular. So was Melanie Finch. He didn’t hear Alex’s voice at all.
They hadn’t made any plans beyond breakfast yet. He’d thought he would find out what she wanted to do over eggs and bacon. Stay here and finish her degree or transfer to a school in L.A., or chuck it all and go to Italy. He’d been hoping for chuck it all so they could spend some time alone together before he had to subject her to the gang back home. They were going to be some fun now that he’d fallen
in love at first sight, chased a woman across the country, and been documented all over Twitter searching for her. The band’s forum was going to be a nightmare. Italy might be the only place to hide.
The screaming subsided. Marc leaned against the wall, toying words through his mind and tapping out a rhythm on his leg to pass the time. Genesis and Jeremy drifted away from their listening posts to get their work done, but they both kept looking back at the hall.
A blonde came out with Roger right on her heels, saying something about not telling anyone. He shot Marc a murderous look. Marc went to the mouth of the hall to wait for Alex. She had to come out. Where the hell was she?
The office door opened and Alex stepped out. She turned back, nodded, and came down the hall. Her face was pale. “Genesis, can you cancel all of the dean’s appointments for the rest of the day. He’s going to be leaving shortly. He’s not feeling well.”
“No fricking doubt.”
“And he’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention what happened here today. Either of you.” She shot a look at Jeremy. “There’s no need for anyone to know who was here, what was said, or what volume it was said at. If it goes around, the dean will have a fifty-fifty idea of who blabbed.”
“We won’t say a thing to a soul,” Jeremy said.
Nice to know he could speak. Marc followed Alex out of the office and turned her toward the parking lot outside where his rental sat from yesterday with three tickets fluttering under the wiper blades. Alex pulled them out and ripped them in half.
“Don’t I have to pay those?” Marc asked.
“What are they going to do, put a hold on your transcripts?” She climbed in the passenger side.
Marc slid into the driver’s seat and plucked the torn tickets out of her hand. “Just the same. Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“This university is Peyton Place, and I don’t care if I ever associate with these people again.”
The words alone would have sounded so promising if it weren’t for the dead tone of her voice. “So are we going to Italy?”
“I promised the dean I would finish my master’s. He’s going to be my advisor.” She turned to him and her expression could have made Miss Mary Sunshine cry. “There is no way we can keep this under wraps. My master’s defense is cancelled and then my advisor is changed to the dean of the school, and Melanie is still dead. It’s all very fishy. This is all my fault.”
“I thought you said Melanie jumped out her window during Christmas break.”
“She did because Diana threatened to break up with her.”
Marc started the car. “I think you need to start at the beginning.”
“Diana was having an affair with Melanie, who was her assistant. Apparently, Melanie had written all or most of Diana’s published papers for the past year and a half.”
“That’s criminal.”
“I wrote several of Roger’s.”
Note to self: keep mouth shut with the judgmental announcements. That didn’t constitute lying, did it?
“Anyway, Diana tried to break off the sex side of the relationship because she thought her husband was onto them.”
“Her husband?” Damn it, what happened to keeping his mouth shut?
“I told you, Peyton Place. Diana told Melanie at the end of fall term that it was over between them and asked her to finish a paper over break.”
Marc clenched his jaw. He pulled to a stop at a light.
“I know. That’s fucked up, right?”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“Melanie didn’t finish the paper and jumped out her window. Somehow Roger knew about this, and when I ended it with him, he went to Diana and told her she had to give him Melanie’s thesis or he would tell the dean.”
“About her and Melanie or about Melanie doing all her work?”
“One, the other, both. Wouldn’t matter. Any of it could destroy her career.”
“I thought you told the dean that you plagiarized the paper by accident.”
“I did, but Roger assumed I had told Dr. Meyer the whole truth when I went to see him yesterday so he went in this morning guns blazing. He tried to throw it all on Diana, which was why she got called in. Now, all the dirty laundry is out. And it wouldn’t be if I hadn’t opened my big mouth.”
Marc’s stomach clenched. “How could you think any of this is your fault?”
“Because if I had just kept my mouth shut and gone through with the defense, I could have had my master’s by”—she checked her watch—“about now, left for wherever with you, and everyone could have gone on with their lives.”
“Their screwed up, highly dysfunctional lives. Honey, you have to listen to me on this. These kinds of things are never hidden forever.” He put his hand on her thigh. “You’ve got teachers messing around with students, and students writing papers for teachers. Two people are cheating on their spouses, one opposite sex and one same sex just to make things equally unfair. Nobody was treading a gray area here. You didn’t cause it, Alex. You got sucked into it, and you’re a big damn hero for putting a stop to it.”
“Where are we going?”
“My hotel.”
“I need to talk to Carla.”
Right now? “I figured you’d need a break between her and that scene in the office.”
“No.” Alex folded her hands in her lap. “I need to get this over with, and I want to tell her before Roger does.”
“You think he will?”
“He’s going to have to come up with some reason for this morning’s summoning by the dean.”
“How would she know about it?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Genesis called Roger’s house yesterday and left a message.”
Hadn’t she exacted a promise from Genesis and Jeremy to not say a word? How reliable was that going to be? “She didn’t—”
“No, but she did say that Dr. Meyer wanted to see Roger first thing in the morning. Roger said that he and Carla got into a fight about it last night. That’s how he ended up sleeping in his car.”
Somewhere in the area a woman was coping with the fresh news that her husband had been cheating on her. Not good. “Tell me where to go.”
Alex was stiff and quiet, only speaking to tell him where to turn. This was too much for her to cope with. The shit that fucker Roger put her through had been enough, but add this other bizarre wrinkle with the dead girl and the other cheating professor, and it was elevated beyond the average. Rock stars were supposed to be wild, and these people were putting Touchstone’s party days to shame. When they were crazy, they’d had Sandy’s very firm hand keeping them out of trouble, even if it meant threatening to quit managing the band, and they’d had each other to share the weight. He glanced at Alex, staring out the windshield and obviously not seeing the tree-lined street. Roger’s wife deserved to know, but was it fair to make Alex do it face to face? She was young, and she made a mistake, but being the whistleblower had to be punishment enough. Just because he wished somebody had told him about Dez didn’t mean he had the right to force Alex into total disclosure. It was pretty brutal. Roger’s wife was dealing with the truth, but his first priority had to be Alex. “Honey, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
He reached across the seat and tried to take her hand, but her fingers were so tightly laced together that he couldn’t separate them, so he settled for resting his hand on her thigh. “There are other ways than telling her in person.”
“But this is the right way. I was sleeping with her husband for three years. I need to apologize.”
Three years? Three years? Marc swallowed his shock. The amount of time didn’t matter as much as the fact that she’d ended it. Still, three years? “I understand the desire, but this is a much bigger can of worms than either of us anticipated.”
“That’s a cliché.”
“What is?”
“Can of worms. Turn left at th
e next intersection.”
“It’s an appropriate cliché. If you really have to tell Carla, let it go a day.”
“By then Roger will have sold her on whatever lie he’s cooked up to cover this.”
“Whether she believes you or not isn’t the point. All you need to do is tell the truth, and you could do that in an e-mail.”
“There’s a VCS rental truck in Roger’s driveway.”
There was a truck with a familiar logo backed across the lawn to the porch of a brick house on the right. The front tires were sinking into a flowerbed of bright pink and white flowers along the driveway, but the rear tires were on the concrete walk so the truck wasn’t stuck. He pulled into the driveway. Alex jumped out before he got the car in park.
“Carla?” She climbed the steps to the porch, but hesitated at the corner of the truck. “Carla?”
Marc bounded up the steps behind her. Who knew what this woman might do or be doing with a truck in the middle of her yard?
“Alex, is that you?” A petite reddish blonde came out of the kitchen, blowing her nose. “You heard?”
“Heard?”
“Roger was having an affair.” Carla sobbed and wiped her W. C. Fields red nose again. “My family was right. They told me not to marry him. They told me if he’d cheat once, he’d cheat again, but Diana Gregor? We had dinner with her and her husband. We all went to Disney World together last summer.” Carla threw her hands up in the air. “I was probably babysitting her girls when she was screwing my husband. They were probably necking in the It’s a Small World ride while we were in the boat in front with the kids.”
“That’s pretty unlikely,” Marc muttered. Alex elbowed him.
“So you’re leaving?” Alex asked.
Carla sunk down on a camel back sofa facing the fireplace, and Alex sat next to her. Marc leaned on the arm of a chair so he could dive in and pull the two women apart if he had to. Hell having no fury like a scorned woman and all. “We were out to dinner last night, and when we came home the sitter gave us a message from Dr. Meyer. He wanted Roger in his office first thing this morning on some allegations of plagiarism and impropriety. Plagiarism? Can you believe it? I asked Roger, and he had to confess.” Carla wiped her nose again. “I just don’t understand. I tried to be everything Vanessa wasn’t.”
Waiting for a Girl Like You Page 18