Saint and Scholar (19 page)

“Did you change your mind about wanting to make love to me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay, because I worried your Catholic guilt had kicked in. See, guilt is the part of Catholicism I don’t subscribe to.” She pulled her camisole up from the hem and over her head.

He fell to his knees there at the bedside. “Fuck, Carla, don’t do this to me.”

She stood and unfastened the button of her linen shorts. “Do what? Want to be touched?” She unzipped them and let the shorts fall to the floor as she made her way around to the bedside in only her underwear. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her thighs and pulled her closer.

“I’ll worship every inch of you,” he said, pressing his lips against her panties where her thighs joined and taking in her spicy scent. His arousal was immediate. “Jesus.”

“So, do it.
Please
.”

“Carla, I…”

“
Please
.” The urgency in her voice was so thick, the longing on her face so urgent. He couldn’t deny her. Not completely, anyway. He looped his thumbs through the sides of her panties and pulled them down without once breaking her gaze.

* * * *

Carla was overwhelmed by sensation, paralyzed by emotion. Here was a man–very near a stranger–who knew just when to tease, just where to touch. She felt like some simple creature with an instruction manual printed on her skin, for the way he meticulously worked her over.

Grant wasn’t the kind of man who dove in and did his perfunctory licks and crawled on top of her ready to seal the deal. He seemed to be making a study of her body, dancing the pads of his fingers so lightly up her thighs that she shuddered and tried to close her legs in some sort of backward reflex.

He hooked an arm around the backs of her knees and dragged her bottom down to the edge of the bed where he knelt and parted her thighs yet again.

When his touches stopped, she gazed down her torso to find him staring at her face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pushing up to her elbows.

He nudged her back down. “Waiting on someone to knock on the door and interrupt.”

They listened to the silence. Every single one of her muscles seemed to coil in anticipation as he paused with his hands on his knees. He seemed perfectly calm.
Too
calm. Too comfortable in his own naked skin.

She nudged his ribs with her heel. “You’re killing me.”

He made no verbal response and merely complied when she laced her fingers through the back of his hair and drew his face so close, he had no choice but to lick or get out of the way. He licked, and it was divine, but…

“Grant, I’m not made of glass.”

He growled and lifted her legs over his shoulders, wrapping his arms around her thighs. “You’re going to feel like it in a minute.”

Right
.

She put her head back and closed her eyes as his tongue zigzagged down her slit and lapped around her entrance. He stretched her swollen nub away from her body between his teeth. The gentle abrading made her clamp his face between her thighs. Undeterred, he put his lips where his teeth had been and worked one arm free of her legs’ vice hold. A single digit probed her, followed by a second trying her out for size.

When he scissored his fingers inside her and increased his suction on her clitoris, she gasped and loosened her thighs as she tried reaching down and pulling him up to her. He didn’t budge. He gave her hands a kind shooing and pushed her by the belly so her back was against the bed once more.

He brought her near the brink repeatedly, sucking, flicking, nipping and generally giving her toes reason to cramp from curling.

She dug her nails into what she could reach of his biceps. “Grant…
please
!”

He pulled back an inch and blew a tickling breath on her drenching sex.

She dug deeper. “Damn it!”

He chuckled and unhanded her legs to slowly stand. “What were you saying about glass, love?”

“You’re an awful person,” she said, even as she scooted back, hooked her feet around his waist, and urged him down onto her body.

He climbed onto the bed between her parted legs and held himself up on his arms over her, staring down with that damned smirk. “Am I really awful?”

She gave him a forceful, ineffectual pull downward, but he relented anyway and lowered himself. His lips touched first, then she felt the weighty hardness of his shaft teasing at her entrance. She tasted herself on his lips and tongue and her arousal reaccelerated.
That’s
what she wanted: him inside of her. She wanted to be brought, finally, with her legs wrapped around his back.

His thrusts weren’t forthcoming. She pulled her mouth free of his and begged, “
Please?
”

“Are you taking anything?” he whispered before kissing down her neck toward the breasts he hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to. The scruff of his two-day beard gave her sensitive skin an erotic sort of tickle. She wanted even
more
sensation.

“No.
Please
.” Clamping his torso between her thighs, she angled him back up so his face was over hers, his tip at her opening once more. He didn’t move again until she opened her eyes to see the conflicted look on his face.

What’s he thinking?

She didn’t have time to ponder it further because he drove himself into her all at once. The intrusion made her gasp as she’d underestimated how his girth would feel inside her, touching everything at once.

He just lay there on top of her for a moment. The end of him pressed against her cervix with the tip of his thumb mashing against her clitoris. “Fuck, I’m not going to last,” he said. The ends of his curls tickled the side of her face.

When she could find her voice, she whispered, “So don’t last.” She laid light kisses down his jaw. “Just bring me.”

He slid out and forced his way back in with a bit more ease with a grunt.

She moaned. “More of that.”

He flattened himself against her for one more scorching kiss before saying against her lips, “Ride me. It’ll be a bit more gentle for you.”

“I don’t want gentle,” she said even as he unstraddled her.

“Yes, you
do
, because if it’s not gentle now, it’ll be the last time for a long while.” He rolled onto his back and eased her down onto him.

She closed her eyes and smiled with contentment as he kneaded her nipples between his fingers.

“You do realize I’m not wearing anything, love?”

“Mm hmm. It’s okay. You’re the only one.” She leaned over and sucked his plump bottom lip between her teeth as he took it in stride and worked his hips up and down. “Just throw me off when you’re ready. I trust you to pull out.”

* * * *

Carla thought if she died then and there she wouldn’t care. She had no desire to extricate herself from their spooning position, even to clean up the wet stickiness he had deposited at the apex of her thighs. What they were doing was risky, but she didn’t really care. He had awakened her by twining his legs with hers and taking her from behind on their sides. She didn’t care if she was a mess. She was so blissed-out, it was like she’d taken some sort of drug she didn’t want to come down from. Grant’s dick obviously administered a sedative.

“I could get used to that,” she said.

He repositioned behind her.

She rolled onto her back to see him sitting up and stretching his arms over his head. The muscles in his abs pulled and drew attention to the diagonals pointing down to what hid beneath the sheets. Her libido sparked once more, and she averted her eyes from his body. She had appointments to keep, and as lovely as getting trapped beneath his body sounded, she’d come to Ireland for a reason.

“Well, I hope so. I want lots of kids, so that sort of necessitates a lot of shagging, huh?” He gave her a knavish wink and leaned back against the headboard with a smile.

She propped herself up onto her elbow. Surely this man–this
scholar
–wasn’t a
breeder
who wanted a bunch of kids back to back. The idea sent a chill of panic through her, though she couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps because she’d never considered that a possibility for her own life? “How many is ‘lots’?”

He shrugged and reached over to the nightstand to pick up his phone. He scrolled through his missed calls. “At least three. Maybe four.”

“
Four
.”

“Tentative. If one and two are little hellions, I reserve the right to change my mind, but I like the idea of them having a bunch of siblings. Childhood was lonely for me.”

“And when do you see yourself starting this brood?”

He chuckled and put his phone down. “I’m not doing it by myself, love. Nature doesn’t work that way.” He pushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears. “Why the face?”

“Having a bunch of kids sort of gets in the way of having a career. Especially
that
many.”

“Well, it makes sense for one parent to be at home, love.”

She pulled her face back from his fingers grazing her cheek. “I assume since you’re tenure-tracked you mean
me
being the one at home.”

He seemed far too calm.

She sat up, yanked the sheets up over her chest–although that cat had already been let out of the bag–and gave him a nasty glare.

“Yes. That’s my plan, if you’ll have me. Get you here so we can get married and settle in.”

“And have a kid immediately?” The marriage part didn’t bother her so much. Hell, with what they’d spent the night doing, she’d probably already shot herself in the foot.

He shrugged. “Whenever it happens, love. I’m not going to get much more stable than I am now.”

“And what about me? What about
my
career?”

He turned off the side of the bed and strode nude toward his duffel bag. She tried not to get distracted by his muscular rear. It took a lot of willpower.

“You’d put it on hold until the kids are all in school.” He sounded so casual about it–as if that was the way it would be, no questions asked. After fishing around in his carry-on bag, he found a toiletry case and headed toward the bathroom with it. “I’m going to shower and shave. You want to join me?”

“No, actually, I don’t.” She wrapped the sheet around her body and stomped over to her pile of clothes. “I’ll shower in
your
room.”

“Did I offend you somehow?” He leaned against the doorframe with a blasé expression on his face.

She wanted to slap him. He didn’t even
care
that she was frantic. Maybe his crazy was leeching out again.

“I didn’t peg you as a chauvinist. You’re as bad as my brothers!”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I love you, I really do, and I respect that you don’t agree with my family-planning goals, but I beg that you meet me on this one. It’s important to me.”

Her face flushed, but for once it wasn’t from embarrassment. The Bruce Banner was coming out. “And you won’t compromise? It’s big-ass family or nothing?”

He stepped into the bathroom and ran some water in the sink. “How would that compromise go, love?” he asked around his toothbrush. “You keep pushing it off another year and another and what? I don’t want to be old with regrets. I don’t want to be like my parents and have a twelve-year-old and think maybe we should try for one more, but then it doesn’t work out. You can’t go back and have the kids later. You can always go back to work.”

“You’re absolutely right, Grant. I
can
go back to work. I’m going back on Monday. In America.”

He spit and shut off the water. “For fuck’s sake, Carla. You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.” He stood in the door and gave her a dark look.

“So, I should just concede and obey?”

“No, love, I’m not asking you to honor and obey. I’m saying you should get over yourself.”

She stood there for a moment, staring at the naked Adonis agape and agog, then found her wits. “Get over myself, huh?” She grabbed her backpack, picked up the other room key, and stormed down the hall. Maybe little Meg was right about the professor.

Chapter 13