Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (2 page)

Just what would happen if she went home with him?

“You wouldn’t really do that, would you?” she breathed as he ran his tongue over the top of her breasts.

“Do what?”

“Carry out your…
threat
.”

He tilted her chin and gazed down at her. “That wasn’t a threat,
ma cherie
; it was a promise.”

“So you weren’t joking?”

His pupils narrowed. “Do you see me laughing?”

“No, of course not. I just didn’t think you meant it. Not really… But
if
you did, how would you do it?”

“I meant every word,
ma
cherie
. If you came home with me, the first thing I would do is peel those leather trousers from you and make you stand in front of me in your basque and panties.” He tugged at the ribbon on her bustier, revealing even more of her cleavage. “Your soaking-wet panties.”

Carla began to dissolve. “Thong. I’m wearing a thong,” she whispered.

“Even better.”

She closed her eyes as he slipped his hand between her legs.

“And
then
?”

“I would put you over my knee and strip your panties down.” He crouched down and ran his hands slowly down the sides of her thighs, circling the bare flesh of her ankles.

“Oh God.” She hardly dared breathe or ask what came next. What she wanted from him and didn’t dare name. “I… I…”

“Don’t you want to know what happens next?”

“Yes, I do, but I’m…scared.”

His fingers encircled her ankles like shackles. “I can understand that. You
should
be a little scared with what I have in store for you.”

She felt like she had a brick in her throat, but she squeezed out the words. “I want to know too. Tell me before I change my mind.”

Standing up, he pulled the front of her bustier away from her breasts and inserted two fingers, tweaking her nipple sharply. “Oh, at this stage, it would be much too late to change your mind, because you would be held down firmly while I tanned your lovely, insolent arse.”

His other hand was between her legs, and he pressed the leather seam of her trousers against her clitoris. The pressure of leather on her damp sex sent her into orbit. Good job he held her up, or she knew she’d fall onto the tiles.

“No. Oh no.”

Why she was saying no when she meant
hell, yes
with every bone in her body, she didn’t know. She was too far gone as waves of sensation built in her sex, taking over her last scrap of rational thought. “I’m afraid so, and I guarantee you would not have a comfortable journey home or be able to concentrate on your work the next morning, whatever it is.”

“And then…”

He rubbed her clit through the leather. She gripped his biceps, clawing at the silk with her fingers, sliding into oblivion.

“Then? Then, I think, I would take the most enormous pleasure in ripping that basque from your incredible breasts and fucking you senseless.”

“Oh!”

She came harder than she’d ever come before, the massive space disappearing into blackness. Her clit and pussy rippled. When she opened her eyes, he was holding her against him and whispering soft endearments she didn’t understand, and he was still rock hard against her. She reached up and touched his hair, shaking her head in disbelief as she came down from the glorious aftermath of her orgasm. He was the first man she’d been with since Stephen, and now he was the only man who knew her deepest, darkest desires. She had to know who he was and look into his face. She had to see the man who had aroused feelings that were more powerful and primeval than she’d ever imagined they could be.

She had to find out his name, phone Elena, and take it from there.

“Who are you? I have to know.” She reached up to pull off his mask.

“No!”

His hand clamped down on her wrist, and her bag fell to the tiles with a clatter. His face creased in anger and shock. Oh God, she’d made a terrible mistake, but he let go of her wrist just as quickly and pushed his mask back into place.

“I’m sorry. I said there were rules, and I almost broke one of mine just then.” His voice was soft, his eyes held the deepest regret, and Carla knew it was too late. “Being with me would only end in tears, and that’s why you should go home.”

“I only wanted to know your name.”

His words were backed with steel. “Out of the question.” He glanced at his wrist. “The cabs should be here now.”

Before she could formulate a coherent reply, he’d headed for the front door. She scooped her phone and keys into her bag and scuttled after him just as two black cabs drew up.

“Wait until I’ve gone, then take this lady straight home,” he told the driver of the rear vehicle, handing over a bunch of notes.

“Hey! You don’t have to pay.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

He climbed inside the first taxi, and as Carla tottered down the pavement, his cab window slid down. “By the way, in future, distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes,” he said.

She dimly recalled the quote and was amazed he’d even used it at all. “What do you know about Dr. Johnson?”

He laughed. “Not as much as I’d like to, but I do know that it wasn’t Dr. Johnson who said it. It was Thoreau. Now, good night.”

It was the equivalent of slapping her horse’s rump to send her cantering off into the night. As the cab lurched into the London traffic, Carla sank back against her seat, breathless. She should be glad to have escaped. It had been madness to provoke a man like that, yet she felt strangely bereft. If he’d wanted to take things further, he would surely have given her his name and number so she could have checked him out.

She squirmed in her seat, and desire tugged low in her belly at the memory of his kiss and his warning about breaking his “rules”. My God, he’d actually threatened to put her over his knee, and he’d been furious when she tried to unmask him. What kind of guy did that? What did he mean that being with him would only “end in tears”? If he was teasing her and hinting at what he had in store for her, she was not only ready for but excited by that.

Yet…she had to face the fact that even if Elena had vouched for him, he still had an air of danger that would keep her on edge every moment she was with him.

And driven half-crazy with lust.

London flew past in a neon blur as the cab took her farther and farther away from him. It didn’t matter now. It was too late. She would never see him again, and any exploration of her desires would have to go on hold. In a few weeks’ time, she was due to start her English course at Oxford, and the prospect of meeting anyone with whom to do that in a college full of hormonal teenagers was out of the question. One thing was for sure—there would certainly be no Zorro there, just a pack of crusty old dons, geeks and misfits like herself.

Chapter One

Seven months later

St Cuthbert’s College, Oxford

“Carla! Have you heard?”

Carla heard Emma Hartley-Woore’s call from the other side of the quadrangle at St Cuthbert’s College. It was the first day of her summer term, and she’d hoped to spend a few minutes reviewing the poems they were due to discuss in their forthcoming tutorial. It was sod’s law that her bike had had a puncture en route from her student hostel, and she’d had to wheel it half the way. Now Emma was here, there was no chance of a quiet moment.

She waited by the door to the Great Hall to give Emma a chance to catch up.

“Well,
have
you heard?” Emma gasped.

Carla had to smile. At nineteen, Emma was like Tigger on speed. “Heard what?” she asked.

“About Dr. Bhide!”

“What about her?” Carla’s stomach lurched at the mention of their pregnant tutor’s name. “Oh, please don’t say she’s lost the baby.”

“Oh God, no. Nothing like that, but she is in the John Radcliffe. She got something called preeclampsia, apparently, and she’s been confined to bed until the baby arrives.”

“Poor Dr. Bhide. I didn’t know anything about it. When did you hear this?”

“First thing this morning. We all got an email from the senior tutor. Didn’t you see it?” asked Emma, clearly frustrated now.

“No. I came straight out without checking my laptop. I do hope Dr. Bhide will be okay. I guess that means she won’t be teaching us this term. Oh, bugger. I was hoping she’d be here until we’ve finished our summer exams.”

“Well, she won’t be able to from a hospital bed. If you haven’t seen the e-mail, you won’t know the
biggest
part of the news.”

Carla had only just processed the fact that Dr. Bhide, their patient, caring tutor, would not be there to steer them through their exam period. Carla might be in her third term at St Cuthbert’s and, at thirty-four, a mature student in every sense of the word, yet she was still a freshman where her university experience was concerned. Going back to a local high school to finish her qualifications, then winning a place at Oxford had been a huge deal for her, not to mention arriving here as one of the oldest students.

Emma was about to explode. “Well, don’t you want to hear?”

“Of course I do, but I’m still recovering from the shock of losing Dr. Bhide. What’s the big news?”

“You are not going to believe this, but…” Emma paused for dramatic effect. “Professor Lemaitre is back!”

Carla paused too, in total confusion. The name meant nothing to her. “Who?”

“Alex Lemaitre. He’s the senior English tutor at St Cuthbert’s. He’s supposed to be on sabbatical writing a book and a script for a TV series, but he’s agreed to come back to teach us this term.”

“Oh. I see.”
Lemaitre…
It did ring a bell, albeit a very faint one. “I didn’t know. What’s he like? Ancient? Crusty?”

Emma regarded her in astonishment. “What? You mean you haven’t Googled him yet? He’s the whole reason I applied to St Cuthbert’s. I was devastated when I heard he was taking this year off. Now I think I’m going to wet myself. He is absolutely the hottest thing on the planet. You mean you really don’t know anything about him?”

“I’ve heard his name…” said Carla, unwilling to add that, unlike Emma, she had had more pressing things to do before her entry to St Cuthbert’s than cyberstalk all the college staff. She’d spent most of the period before she’d come up worrying if she could ever keep up with the workload or the pressure of studying at one of the world’s most demanding universities. She had thought about Zorro, of course. The dark, disturbing stranger had occupied her thoughts many a night—and day—when she should have been reading her set texts.

Emma’s mobile rang, and she snatched it out of her bag. “Oh shit. It’s my mum, and I daren’t talk to her now. We have precisely two minutes to get to the professor’s room. From what I’ve heard from the second years, he absolutely
hates
people being late.”

“So what defines a work as erotic? What differentiates it from being pornographic?”

Carla had been in the tutorial for at least twenty minutes and couldn’t recall a thing anyone had said, let alone give a lucid response to the question asked by the man opposite her. He sat in a battered tub chair, his legs spread wide, with a tattered hardback open in his lap. His smoky gaze burned into her as if he wanted to drag out her soul, rough it around a little, hand it back and expect her to carry on as normal.

“Carla? Can you give me any kind of definition of the two?”

His words penetrated the silence, and Carla had only one in return. “Um?”

He wore no mask now, of course, just a pair of rimless glasses that should have been über-geeky but only made him look like a Ray-Ban model. His black hair flopped over one side of his face rather than being slicked back, and his tan had faded during the winter. As for the black jeans and silk shirt, they’d been replaced by worn Levi’s and a pale grey sweater, but Carla would never forget that sinful mouth or his exotic accent or the sensual shock he’d delivered to her heart and body in the shadows of the stairwell.

“Would you like me to repeat the question?” he asked.

“Oh no! I do understand the difference. I think it’s, um…probably the context…and the emotion. Erotic literature is designed to stimulate the emotions as well as other things, whereas pornography is um…probably meant to be…” she stammered.

Alex glanced at her over the rim of his specs. “Go on.”

She flicked a tongue over her lips. “Um…purely masturbatory?”

Carla knew without looking that the half-suppressed giggle from her right was Emma and the snort of derision from the left was another student, Gideon.

“Masturbatory?” His expression was deadpan, his tone matter-of-fact. “That’s a very intriguing definition and one that I want you all to consider as we discuss some poems that have been described as both erotic and pornographic. Now, let’s start with some verses by John Wilmot Rochester. I’m sure you’ve all been studying them before the tutorial, ready to talk about them with Dr. Bhide for this term’s Forbidden Texts course, so they should be familiar. Emma. Can you read ‘A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover’, please, and then share your thoughts with us?”

Emma glanced at her book demurely. “Of course, Professor Lemaitre.”