Professional Development (Benchmarks)

by Kate Canterbary

  "What the fuck does that mean?" I shouted.

  "Just that you always have a story about the amazing things you did at Dartmouth," she replied. "Is there a quota? Like, you have to mention your alma mater three times per day or they'll revoke your preppy boy card? Or are you worried I'll forget? Contrary to your peculiar opinion, people who attended state schools do have long-term memory. I won't forget, Drew."

  Snow and ice bit at the side of my face as I pushed the key into the lock. After some jiggling and twisting, the door creaked open. As promised, the space was a wreck but it was dry and relatively warm.

  I kicked the door shut and dropped the bags. "You better not fall over when I put you down."

  She released her hold on my coat. "I won't."

  "I'm not picking you up if you do." I was absolutely picking her up. Anywhere, anytime.

  "I'm not asking you to pick me up. You didn't have to pick me up back there. I would've been fine, you know."

  "You say that…" With my hands on her waist to guide her, I bent to set her on her feet.

  She leaned back against the door, her face stung red from the cold. "And I meant it. I know you think I'm completely incapable but I do know how to get up when I fall down, Drew."

  Tara stared up at me, her dark eyes wide and her lips parted, and a violent shiver rattled through her. It killed me to see her like this.

  I could fix everything else for her—I could deal with the protocols and scheduling issues she loathed and unjam the copier and anything else that gave her trouble at work—but I couldn't stand here, helpless to do anything but watch while she shook with cold.

  "You're the one," she continued, "who thinks it's necessary to rush in and toss people over your shoulder because you think it's your place to instruct them on how to live. Maybe if you offered people a hand when they fell in the snow rather than carrying them through a blizzard and taking away their ability to do anything at all, you'd understand the difference."

  A growl rattled in my throat. "Is that how you see it? That I don't understand the difference?"

  "I don't think you want to understand."

  I pivoted, paced the length of the room without concern for my snow-caked trousers or the disarray of furniture. I barely noticed and I didn't care because Tara thought—she actually thought I wanted to fold her into smaller and smaller pieces until she was barely anything at all, like a note passed between seventh graders.

  Fuck my life.

  Just…fuck my life.

  Why did it have to be this way? Why did we have to exist on the same side of the coin yet stand diametrically opposed at all turns? Why couldn't we see each other without the fog of war hanging heavy between us?

  I didn't know and I wasn't certain I could keep doing it. This hurt. Every single day, it hurt.

  When I watched her fingers slide through her hair as she twisted up a bun, I ached to bat her hands away and curl those strands around my fist.

  When she took off her shoes, I had to sit on my hands to keep from dragging her feet into my lap.

  When she doused teachers with her special blend of optimism and enthusiasm and get-it-done, my jealous heart hammered against my ribs hard enough to make me gasp.

  This fucking hurt.

  And now, with her wet and cold and angry because she didn't want me plucking her out of snowbanks, each moment stung like a sucker punch.

  I couldn't bear it.

  I couldn't stand this, not any longer. I couldn't protect myself by simply hating her because it wasn't enough. If anything, I'd traveled the circumference of hate and built an uncomfortable home for myself on the antagonistic asshole edge of love.

  I couldn't tell her that. For as much as I wanted to tell her everything, I couldn't tell her anything. Because I did, I loved her. But it was too tied up with resentment and denial and a firewall of hostility to be the kind of love anyone shared.

  I shook my head as the icy wet of my clothes finally registered alongside all the other miseries in my life. "I understand more than you think."

  "Oh, really?" she challenged. "Let's hear it, Drew. Come on. Explain to me why you think it's necessary to hobble me at every turn. Explain why it always has to be your way, why I'm always wrong, why I'm never good enough for you, why—"

  "Not good enough?" I interrupted. "That's what you think, Tara?"

  She pressed her palms to her face, muttering, "Oh my god." Then, "You literally remind me every single day that my expectations aren't high enough for teachers and students." She flung her arms out, sending snow and water flying off her coat. "You criticize my education every chance you get. You tell me, in every manner you can find, that I am not good enough. So, yes, Drew. That's what I think."

  Yeah, I really didn't know how to admit—or recover from—my mistakes. That was one of the many side effects of being an academically gifted kid.

  Around the time your math teacher started using your exam as the answer key, your ability to believe you might not have all the answers eroded away. It also meant you grew into an adult suffocating under the weight of your own perfectionism and fear of not being good enough.

  "I mean—Tara, please—just try to understand—it's not, that's not—" Because words were entirely useless and it seemed I might actually crack in half if I didn't, I reached for her, my hands cupping her cheeks, and I pressed my lips to hers.

  For a second, she didn't react. And in that second, I was convinced she was going to toss me into one of those snow drifts.

  But then, she curled her hands around the front of my coat. When she didn't knee me in the balls or take a swipe at my jugular, I accepted that as an invitation to flatten her against that door.

  It was mad to imagine but maybe we didn't truly hate each other. Maybe we were both camped on the fringes of love and hate—at least sexual chemistry and hate—and waiting for the other to fire the first shot.

  Was that it? Was it even possible? That we'd spent all this time circling each other, tormenting each other, spiking barbs at each other—when we really wanted to tear each other apart in bed?

  When I was wrong, I was really fucking wrong.

  I plucked the beanie from her head and unzipped her coat, all while treating myself to the sweetness of her kisses. I didn't grant myself a moment to consider what I was doing or how it was certain to wreck my life in the process.

  I just wanted this minute where we weren't trying to kill each other and I had the good fortune of touching her. I'd deal with everything else later. If I could have this right now, everything else could wait until later.

  I shoved my hands under her sweater, groaning into her mouth at the joy of bare—but alarmingly cold—skin. "You need to get warm," I said. "Let me do that for you, baby."

  "I'm not your baby," she whispered, her fingers busy opening my coat and peeling it down my arms.

  "Right now, you are."

  "Not if I say no," she replied.

  That stopped everything. I put more space between us than my body appreciated and flattened my hands on the door over her shoulders.

  Staring down at her, I asked, "Is that what you want? To say no?”

  She glanced up at me, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip. "I'm not your baby."

  "Okay." I nodded but maintained the breath of distance between us. "What else?"

  Tara stabbed a finger at the room. "If you want me—"

  "That is not a question," I murmured with a pointed glance at the tent in my trousers.

  "—then you need to earn me."

  "You're talking to a classic overachiever. You better believe I can earn you." I hooked my arm under her ass and carried her across the room. The bed sat at a haphazard angle in the center of the room, but there was nothing I cared about less than its location. The only thing that mattered was getting on it—and staying there. "I'm going to get you so hot, I'll be able to lick sweat off your skin."

  "That is revolting," she said as I pried her boots off and chucked them over my shoulder. Tho
se goddamn boots. "Never once in life has that been sexy."

  "And yet you'll enjoy it when I do it." I crawled up her body, yanking the blankets out from under her as I went and cocooning us under them. I dropped my weight onto her and found her lips again. "You'll let me do that, Tara. You'll let me and you'll love it."

  Chapter Eight

  Tara

  "You'll let me do that, Tara. You'll let me and you'll love it."

  Such a Drew thing to say. He didn't even bother asking the question. Once again, he'd decided how it was going to be and issued the memo announcing it without bothering to consult me.

  Oh, and I was on my way to naked while he made those decisions—and Drew Larsen was the one actively involved in getting me naked. How the pinstriped fuck did that happen?

  As best I could recall, there was my graceful dive into the snowbank followed by a rant about Drew's great big bossy boss tendencies and all of that was capped off with a kiss that rendered everything else in the world irrelevant.

  There were his lips, his tongue, his beard, his hands—and I wasn't worried about my job, wasn't busy loathing him, wasn't even frigid and soggy anymore.

  I was a woman-shaped throb of desire and Drew promised to fulfill those desires for me. All I had to do was figure out what I wanted—and let him give it to me.

  It was more than consent, it was more than the sex, the orgasm, the intimacy of it all. It was accepting that kiss he gave me, the one that knocked all sense and reason from my head, served as a time-out, a truce.

  I just didn't know if I could accept this cease-fire after he'd made my life a living hell for years. We hadn't been rivals for this trip or the past month—it'd been months and months and months of snapping and snarling and cutting each other down.

  Could a kiss really wash it all away? Was I willing to let a kiss wash it away?

  "Say yes," he whispered to my neck. "Please, Tara."

  Part of me knew this was a terrible idea. Another part of me knew it was the only idea.

  "Maybe," I conceded, my lips pressed to the sharp line of his bearded jaw. "But don't get any ideas about bossing me around. Don't think you're going to explain any of this to me. In fact, I'm going to fuck the arrogant bastard out of you."

  He reached between us, flipped open the buttons at my waist, and yanked my pants down. "Seems like a big goal, Miss Treloff. You sure you're up for it?"

  "So. Fucking. Arrogant." Those words were barely over my tongue when he fisted my panties and ripped them down the middle.

  He didn't deserve the triumph of the desperate gasp that move garnered and when his hand slipped between my legs, I couldn't stop the next gasp.

  "You don't always have to fight me." He pushed two fingers inside me and we groaned in unison when his thumb met my clit. "You could just shut up and let me destroy you, Tara."

  Never had anyone spoken to me the way Drew did—in and out of bed.

  "Yeah, I could let you do all the work," I said as the sounds of his belt unlatching and his fly unzipping buzzed over my skin. "But we both know you only concern yourself with your needs when you do that."

  He leveled me with a glare before pulling my sweater over my head and tossing it aside. My bra followed, then his shirt. There was nothing left between us—nothing but some low-simmering animosity.

  "You're so fucking wrong," he whispered as he lowered his lips to my nipple. He gave me two teasing licks and then a bite that felt like a brand. He stroked his cock over my folds, his breath shuddering on my breast. He leaned into me, his throbbing length right up against my opening, and said, "I'm gonna show you how wrong you are."

  "This isn't one of those situations where you need to narrate everything, Drew," I said as his thumb worked my clit hard. "I understand you like the sound of your voice but—" Holy fuck, the head of his cock was so thick. Ridiculously thick. Abnormally thick. That wasn't his dick. It had to be his arm, a knee, maybe a tree trunk. "Ohmygod."

  He bit my nipple again, chuckling. "What were you saying?"

  That fucker.

  "That you're spending an unusual amount of time talking."

  He gazed at me for a hot, heavy minute as he stroked his cock at my entrance. "Tell me right now if I need to get up and tear my bag apart to find a condom."

  "Prepared, are you? Did you expect to get laid at this conference?"

  He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "No, Tara, I did not expect to get laid at this conference," he replied, condescending as ever.

  Why did I feel a laugh bubbling up in response rather than my usual annoyance? Why couldn't I be irritated instead of mildly charmed? "So, you always have condoms with you?"

  A growl snapped out of him as he continued stroking himself. "It's just something I have on hand in my travel gear, like a stain remover pen and Band-Aids. Is that all right with you?"

  He tapped his erection on my clit and yeah, I wasn't above begging to end this debate and feel that monster inside me. "Tell me if you've been tested recently."

  "I have." He bit the other nipple and everything inside me became simultaneously much tighter and much looser. "All clear."

  "No condom," I said, even if it wasn't my best moment.

  I was on birth control and up-to-date with testing but insisting on condoms was Single Girl 101. I knew better but I just didn't want to let him go—and that realization was even more complicated than the ones involved with kissing him or getting undressed.

  He glanced down at me, his brows pinched together and his lips in a firm line. "That would be amazing but are you sure? You're comfortable with that?"

  Drew Larsen was a lot of things and I'd bemoaned all of them. Now it seemed I had to add respectful and considerate in bed to the list.

  Goddamn, this guy. It would've been so much easier to hate him if he was an across-the-board asshole.

  "I am and if you don't mind, I'd like to get started on fucking the arrogance out of you," I replied.

  Drew's lips curled up in a sunrise smile. "I'm quite confident this will only make the situation worse."

  I reached up, raked my fingers through his beard. "We'll see about that."

  His hips snapped forward the second those words passed my lips and the bed creaked beneath us as he pushed into me.

  He was so much larger than I expected, and my mind tuned out everything but the heat pumping through my body. He was breaking me down, thrust by thrust, and I wanted to break him too.

  "God, baby. You feel—fuuuuck."

  "Not your baby."

  I couldn't do that, not even while his cock hit spots that made me cross-eyed and it was likely I was drooling all over myself, and I'd probably have a pronounced limp tomorrow.

  I could fuck him and I could enjoy this night and I could figure out how to go deal with this mess tomorrow but I couldn't be his baby.

  "Please, fuck, Tara," he groaned. He sounded almost…sorrowful and broken. As if my refusal to give him every last corner of me was hurting him. But that couldn't be right. "Please stop fucking fighting me."

  I wanted to protest, to explain that we fought as a matter of course, but that would have required me to speak words. I was capable of moans and babble, and nothing more.

  And I didn't think I could handle it, not when it was possible I was breaking down with him.

  He continued slamming into me, panting and gasping and growling, and whispered, "Just let me give this to you." I nodded, too lost to form words, and his teeth scraped over my neck. "Is it possible to worship someone and wreck them at the same time? Do you feel that?"

  I nodded again, and he growled as he pumped into me. His fingers moved to my clit and this was what he meant by wrecking me. There was no way I could live through this. These sensations—his cock, his fingers, his lips, his roared release—they took me under.

  As if he knew I needed something to keep me from falling apart, Drew tangled his arms around me and held me while I gasped and shook. He stayed inside me, pulsing and throbbing and making me wonder w
hether my skin was actual fire, and he marked my chest and neck and mouth with kisses.

  Minutes passed before the stars faded from behind my eyes and reality pushed to the front of my mind.

  "What did we just do?" I whispered.

  "I don't know," he murmured against my neck. "But I want to do it again."

  "Yeah." I could've argued this point. Could've told him it was a one and done situation. But that would've been extremely silly because we were naked and stuck here for at least twelve hours more. To think we'd pass that time without making good use of this bed was hilarious. "I didn't expect quite so…much from you. Your cock is, like, insane."

  He lifted his head, his lips tipped up in a half smile. "In a complimentary way?"

  "Maybe," I hedged. "I'm not positive but I think some of my internal organs have been relocated to accommodate all that, ah, insanity of yours."

  Drew skimmed a hand down my torso, stopping below my belly button. "That's fair since your pussy melted a significant portion of my brain. I've blacked out all of logical positivism."

  "That's fine," I replied. "You didn't need it and you won't miss it. I, on the other hand, probably need to retrieve my organs. Or something like that."

  Nodding, he dragged his fingers over my tummy in swirls and circles that sent hot tingles through my body. "That does seem like a priority." When I murmured in agreement, he continued, "Have you warmed up?"

  I gripped his wrist, flattening his hand on my skin. "How do I feel?"

  Without blinking, he rumbled, "Hot as fuck."

  There was no stopping the blush that reddened my cheeks. "Does that answer your question?"

  "It's cute how you're fishing for compliments now." He rubbed his knuckles over his beard. "And you call me arrogant."

  "That's because you are," I said with a laugh.

  "Is that all I am? Arrogant?"

  I gave him an impatient frown. "Didn’t I just say nice things about your dick? Like, really nice things? And didn't I just enjoy that same dick in a very major way?"

  "So…I'm an arrogant dick to you?"