Obsessive Temptation: A BWWM Romance Limited Edition Collection

by Peyton Banks

  You can keep telling yourself that, but it doesn’t make it true.

  “Yeah, okay. I’d buy that if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re the only one of my lecturers I’ve been down on, and who has come so hard on my face she’s begged me to stop. You’re most definitely the only one whose sweet pussy I’ve had wrapped around my dick, the memory of which I’ve been jerking off too so much I think I may have carpal tunnel. And I’m sure I’d remember if there were any other lecturers I’d been sexting with to the point where after reading one of my messages, they’ve had to conduct an entire lecture with wet panties, clasping their legs together so they don’t come. And what abou—”

  “All right, all right. You don’t need to remind me. I was there.”

  “Okay, so you look like you need cheering up, and lucky for you, I’m here and making people feel good is my super power. Plus, I know just the place to go and things to do to drown your sorrows.” I couldn’t keep the grin from my face at the thought of what I have in mind.

  “Seriously, Luke, I’m not in the mood. I just want to go home and find enlightenment in the bottom of a bottle of Shiraz.”

  “Great. I love red wine.” I hated it. “Let’s go.”

  “What? No. I meant alone.”

  “Sorry, but no. Friends don’t leave friends alone when they’re in a funk like this.” Ugh. I needed to stop and try to walk away with some shred of dignity, yet I just couldn’t bring myself to leave.

  “Jesus Christ. I don’t have the energy for this right now. Get in the car before someone sees you.”

  Dignity intact—kind of—I jogged around to the driver’s side of Natalie’s Miata, and hopped in.

  I sat down and barely had the door closed behind me before she’d peeled away from the lot like a getaway driver, turning the music up full blast. Clearly talking wasn’t on the agenda, so I kept my mouth shut and watched the world go by at breakneck pace. I’d had no idea she was such a speed demon, and the thought—and vaguely terrifying experience—gave me an instant adrenalin boner. It was hot AF.

  I shifted a little in my seat, trying to ease some of the pressure on my dick from my pants, and looked up to catch her glancing at my crotch before snatching her eyes back to the road, thank God. I’d always said I wanted to go out with a bang, but I’d had more of a bedroom situation in mind, not a painfully hard boner in a high-speed crash. I didn’t miss the tell-tale way she shifted in her seat as she stared straight ahead, which made me even harder.

  A little while later, we pulled into an under-cover parking garage I assumed to be in Natalie’s apartment building. Not that she’d said so, or in fact, had said anything throughout the entirety of the journey. She screeched to a halt in a parking bay, and before I’d engaged my brain enough to ask any questions, was out of the car and making her way to the passenger-side door. She yanked it open quickly and spoke to me like a sergeant major corralling wayward troops.

  “Out.”

  I opened and closed my mouth like a guppy, but didn’t move.

  “For the love of God, Luke, will you get out of the fucking car? Please.”

  I’d only ever seen her so direct and determined when she was calling me out for being late on the first day of school, but damned if the sound of her voice ordering me around like that didn’t go straight to my balls. Once I engaged my brain again I was out of my seat slamming the door behind me, and crossing in front of the parked car in record time.

  Natalie walked toward me, quickly closing the small gap between us, then tiptoeing to press her lips forcefully to mine in a fierce kiss. I kissed her back equally hard, my excitement making it difficult to hold back—not that I wanted to, and clearly neither did she. Within seconds she was undoing the button and fly of my jeans, reaching in to palm my dick. I squeezed her wrist, stilling her hand, and pulled my lips away from hers, looking her directly in the eye.

  “We going inside? If not, this is happening right here.” My voice was hoarse, as though I was out of practice speaking.

  She didn’t acknowledge what I’d said with words, just stared at me intently for a moment, before walking backwards to the hood of the car and lifting herself gently onto the warm black metal. She maintained eye contact, her intense facial expression morphing into a small wry smile, and a raised eyebrow seemed so say “Do you dare?”

  Challenge accepted, Dr. Patterson. And then some.

  I took a large step to face her, returning her unspoken question with a small nod and at the same time pushing her skirt up her thighs, nudging her legs open. I noted again that she was wearing stockings, but no panties. Was she trying to give me a coronary? I finished the job she’d started, pulling out my stone-hard dick. I looked around the darkened lot. Though we were clearly alone and in one of the more secluded corners, there was still a chance that someone could come in at any moment.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded quickly, biting her bottom lip and letting her head fall backward.

  I loved that she had figurative balls that way. After witnessing her mad driving skills, followed by public sex, I was starting to see her in a completely different light.

  I wanted to tear off her shirt so I could watch her tits do their thing as we fucked, but instead I pulled out my wallet, and grabbed a condom, wasting no time in rolling it on. When I was done I pushed inside her in one slick move, settling one hand on the top of her thigh, the other around the base of her neck, squeezing both tight as I thrust into her. It was fast and furious. The irony of that fact after the crazy drive was not lost on me.

  I teased her a few times, pulling out just as we were on the brink of coming, removing my hand from her butt and pushing two fingers inside her, gently circling her clit with my thumb. When she started to squirm against me, I slipped my fingers out, swapping them for my dick. Rinse and repeat. Until I tried to pull out, but Natalie bent her legs behind my butt locking them at the ankles, using her toned thighs to keep me pressed deep inside her.

  We came together, hard and loud—she showed no concern for who might see or hear us, so neither did I. She was the one who had to live among the people in her building, not me, after all.

  20

  Natalie

  As we came down from our highs, Luke pulled the base of my neck gently, bringing my eyes back into focus with his before raising the fingers that had been inside me to my lips. I opened my mouth, letting him slip his fingers inside, sucking greedily, and savoring the taste of my own arousal on his fingertips.

  Fuck. That was hot as shit, and screwing on the hood of my car was a total first. With Luke being so much younger, I thought I’d been there, done that, and had a whole closet full of personalized T-shirts to prove it, but I kind of loved the idea that we’d shared something I’d never had with Doug. I pushed the reasons why that even mattered to me to the far corner of the vault of my mind, locked the door, and threw away the emotional key, pulling my thoughts back to the moment.

  Luke removed his fingers slowly, bringing his mouth softly to mine, kissing me lightly and with a reverence I hadn’t felt from him before. Though he still had his hand gripped to my throat—another first, and so hot I almost passed out—the kiss was tender and delicate, in stark contrast to how roughly we’d ground together moments earlier. I put the reasons behind his gentleness back in the same vault and buried the key deep inside.

  I could have stayed there having him kissing me like that all night, but I knew I had to the one to break the spell.

  “Let’s go inside, or I’ll be too tempted to resist going again, and we’ll get sprung for sure.”

  As we walked reluctantly across the lot, hand in hand, I rubbed at my neck gently. There would be bruises there come morning, but I gave zero fucks—the thrill of having him hold me that way, claiming my body, had turned me on beyond belief. I didn’t care if I had to wear scarves for months, I was down for us doing that whenever he was.

  I shook my head hoping to shake the thought loose. There was no “us” and there de
finitely wasn’t going to be more parking lot sex, or any sex for that matter. I’d caved in to our desire because I was weak and vulnerable, after opening the divorce paperwork. At least, that was the story I was telling myself, though there was as a small voice in the back of my mind screaming otherwise. I shut her the fuck down, and led Luke up to my apartment.

  We got just inside the threshold before we were at it again, tearing each other’s clothes off as we headed down the hall to my room. But when we got there, things were different. We made love instead of fucking. For the first time it was unhurried and sensual. We took our time getting each other off, maintaining eye contact, communicating as much with our eyes as with our bodies.

  Afterward we lay nose-to-nose, wrapped in each other’s arms, Luke tracing patterns up and down my spine with his fingertips, me playing with the hair that the nape of his neck. For the life of me, I didn’t know why, but I found that spot on him sexy as all hell.

  “So are we going to talk about the elephant in the room, or just fuck like it never happened?” He was pissed, but I wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “We weren’t ‘just’ fucking a moment ago. At least, I wasn’t. I can’t speak for you, however.” A person would have needed to be deaf to miss the note of accusation in my voice.

  “Sorry, poor choice of words, but it was than that for me, also. I know we both felt it. And nicely deflected, by the way. Are you going to answer my question?”

  “What elephant?”

  “Oh. So you’re going to act like I didn’t find you bawling your eyes out in your car, before?”

  “No, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And then you want to accuse me of only being in it for the off-the-charts amazing sex?” Fuck. He had me there.

  “Touché. Okay you’re right. I sighed heavily, steeling myself for what I was about to say.

  “I got my final divorce papers in the mail. I had missed a letter from my lawyer telling me they would be on their way, so it was completely out of the blue, and just kind of threw me for a loop, that’s all.”

  “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Getting the paperwork? Making it official. Is that not what you wanted, or am I missing something here?

  I hesitated a moment, I wasn’t quite sure why.

  “Wait. You’re glad about being divorced, right? Or is all of this”—he removed his hand from my back to wave it between us—“just a rebound thing? I mean did you do all this today, just to get back at him?”

  What?

  I pushed myself up to sitting abruptly, anger shooting through my veins at lightning speed.

  “Are you for fucking real right now? You were there earlier, right, feeling what I felt, seeing what I saw? After all that, how can you even ask that? I mean just for starters, who in their right mind would contemplate something as complicated as us, just on the rebound? Not to mention that what we have, whatever that is, has been going on since way before that stupid paperwork came through.” I gulped in some much needed air, trying to calm down.

  “Do you think I’ve been avoiding you because I’m on the rebound? How about lying to you and more to the point, myself, for Christ’s sake, about my feelings for you? Is that a rebound thing too? Maybe when no matter how hard I try, I can’t get thoughts of you out of my mind, can’t just erase your texts and block your number like I know I should; maybe that’s typical rebound behavior, also, yeah?”

  Luke was staring at me slack-jawed, and I could totally understand why. I’d surprised even myself with my revelations, not the least of reasons being I’d had no intention of spilling my guts that way before the words were tumbling from my lips like boulders down a mountain in a landslide.

  “Shit.” He nibbled on his bottom lip thoughtfully, rising onto his elbows so that our eye lines were level.

  “You got that about right.” I was rapidly beginning to wish I’d played my cards closer to my chest.

  He spoke again after a brief pause. “Take the day off tomorrow and spend it with me?”

  “Huh?’

  “We can go the park, have a picnic, maybe. You work too hard. Take a sick day and chill with me.”

  “You mean like that scene from Pretty Woman?”

  “Yeah, exactly like that.”

  “You know that’s one of my favorite movies of all time, for all the wrong reasons, despite the smaltz and total lack of critical credibility, right?”

  “I know.”

  “But do you also know that I think that’s the most underrated scene in the whole movie?”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  “It’s basically at the point at which Edward fully realizes he’s falling in love with Vivian.”

  He nodded again.

  “And in our scenario, which one am I, Vivian or Edward?” Like I really needed to ask.

  “Well, let’s see. You’re older and more conservative than me, with a respectable career. I live a way more unconventional, wild life, and my work can be kind of sketchy. You’re kind of uptight.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but I silenced her with a raised hand. “And I am too, but in a totally different way. But the biggest clue is that, like Vivian, I’m already there as far as how I feel about you is concerned, and have been from the start, whereas you’re more of a slow burn. So, you do the math.”

  21

  Luke

  In the end, Natalie took not just the following day off, but the day after that being a Friday, she decided to spend that with me as well. Though being the honest “play it by the rules” kind of woman she was, she phoned the Dean and explained her situation with the divorce. In the end she took the days as personal leave rather than pretending to be sick, like the rest of the world would have.

  Apart from gigs and rehearsals, and me returning to the apartment I shared with Arlo to grab fresh clothes, we spent four blissful days together like a real couple, until she returned to work the following Monday.

  We went to the park for our picnic, like I’d suggested, but instead of reading Shakespeare, like Edward did for Vivian, she would quote me scenes from her favorite movies in between marking papers. Because, like her movie twin, she truly was a workaholic who could never quite fully switch off from work, no matter how much fun she was having.

  We spent the vast majority of our time in bed, fucking, napping, and snacking as well as fitting in a few movie marathons. She introduced me to the world of French New Wave cinema, and we binged classics of the genre until our eyes were square, fucking, napping and snacking between each one. It was intellectually enlightening, physically stimulating, and emotionally challenging.

  I never wanted it to end, but knew it would all too soon. How it would end, for “us” if there was even such a thing, I was entirely unsure. I knew what I felt, and to an extent what Natalie felt, but how the whole thing would play out was hard to predict, and pretty much out of control. Though I hated the fact, Natalie was clearly the one holding all the cards.

  On Sunday night, the dread of the coming week and the future in general really started to set in. I had a knot at the base of my stomach—it was as though a physical ball made up the complex mix of emotions I was feeling had settled there like a rock at the base of a riverbed. I tried to focus on the positive—just having an incredible a woman like Natalie in my life. Someone who was so far out of my league it wasn’t even funny, but who for some reason saw something in me I wasn’t even sure I saw in myself. A woman who’d done the virtually impossible—occupied a space in my psyche I thought would only ever belong to Marnie. Unfortunately, those things didn’t stop the doubts from creeping in.

  “Luke?” We were lying spread-eagled on the bed, coming down from an intense lovemaking session. I felt weird even thinking that phrase—making love, but this was definitely way more than screwing or fucking. Come to think of it, since we’d had the whole Pretty Woman chat days earlier, each time had been more intimate and emotionally charged than the time before.

  “Yeah?” We were
splayed on our stomachs, heads turned toward each other, and I was trying desperately to read her face, wanting to gauge what she might be about to say before she went ahead and said it. I’d been gently stroking her body with my fingertips, loving that a rash of goose bumps would erupt where I touched, but I held everything still, including my breath, waiting for her response.

  “I can practically hear your mind turning over as you lie here. Your thoughts are loud.”

  “I know. They are to me, too. I guess I know that in a few hours’ time we go back to reality, but at this point I don’t know what that reality looks like.” The unasked question was obvious in my careful choice of words. The ball was in her court, and we both knew it.

  “I’m not Edward.” Her voice was level, giving no real clues to her meaning.

  “What?”

  “Pretty Woman. I’m not Edward Lewis. I mean I’m not Vivian either, but I’m definitely not him. He didn’t know what he was feeling, or what he wanted until way late in the game. I knew. I always knew, but I thought it was the wrong thing to want, you know?” She looked at me uncertainly, nibbling on her bottom lip.

  “So I pushed those thoughts and feelings aside. But that’s not the same as not having them or not recognizing them. I’d like to believe I have a lot more emotional intelligence than that. In fact, what was holding me back was the long and terrifying list of reasons why contemplating what I was contemplating and feeling what I was feeling was such a very bad idea.”

  “Yeah, but the thing is, that list can be ten miles long, and the whole thing can be eclipsed by just one good reason.”

  “I still don’t know if you’re right about that. I just know that the more I thought about it, the more I was plagued by the feeling that love and relationships shouldn’t come with a laundry list of concerns and caveats, but that’s the only way we can even think about moving forward together.”