Her breathing rasped faster, and her slightly wavering exhalations were the only sounds that reached him. She was excited, and it turned the airwaves and the miles between them into a blank canvas. Jarod could show her anything, make her feel anything in the vast space. All he needed was her permission. The taped interviews leaped to his mind. There was one that had put a breathless hitch into her questions. He wanted to rekindle that spark of curiosity.
“Tell me about the interview with the woman who worked for the dial-for-sex line.”
Silence was still her only response. He pushed ever-so-slightly more.
“You were intrigued. I could hear it in your voice. Have you ever had phone sex, Nora?”
“No.” Soft as a summer breeze, that single word vibrated with heated consent.
“Will you let me talk dirty to you? Consider it intensive research if you like. You can be honest. You don’t have to hold back. No one will ever know. It’s just you and me.”
“Research? I’ve already told you I’m not a good subject.”
“I promise it will feel good. Let me touch you, sweetheart. Tell me what you want.” He let his voice drop to a sensual growl. “Talk dirty to me, Nora.”
For a long second there was nothing. Bracing for her refusal, Jarod closed his eyes in regret. Then he heard a mattress creak and the rustling of blankets. She was getting into bed. His eyes popped open and his balls tightened.
“I’d like…I’ve never had anyone…”
“Tell me. I’ll do anything you want. Tell me how to please you.”
“Oral sex,” she blurted.
The next wavering inhalation came from his own lips. “Oh sweetheart, I’d love to go down on you. How do you want it, slow and sweet or fast and hungry?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Jarod’s cock pounded, heavy and hot. He slid his sweats down and wrapped his hand around his shaft, pumping with his eyes closed, picturing her spread before him. “Slow. I’d open your legs and kiss the inside of your thighs. You’re already wet for me.”
Jarod’s back arched into the next rough squeeze, wondering if that was true, if Nora was as wet as he was hard.
“You smell sultry, intoxicating. One lick, just one, shallow, just enough to tempt myself. So good.”
“Oh.” One tiny shuddered word. Gasoline on the fire.
“I need another so I lick again, just outside, just a bit.”
Ragged and fast now, she panted as he described exactly how he wanted to taste her. Twice he’d had to stop jerking himself or he’d have come already. This was the hottest, most wildly exciting thing he’d ever done with a woman and, damn, she wasn’t even in the same room.
Something hitched in his ear, a sigh maybe. It provoked images of Nora doing exactly what he was doing. “Nora, are you touching yourself?”
He actually heard the elastic snap of a pair of panties. “No!”
The denial was too swift and he groaned. “Do it, sweetheart. Slide your fingers around your clit, pretend it’s my tongue.”
“Are you? I mean…touching?”
“Yes. Picturing your pretty pussy. Can almost taste you.”
“Oh God, James. I’m so close.” A soft whimper made his cock strain. Damn, he was close, too.
“Can you come like this, Nora?”
Please, please say yes.
“Only like this, alone. Never with anyone else.”
The revelation, the confession shocked him. She could come with him. He’d show her in person, one day. “Touch yourself for me.”
“I’m doing it.”
“Tell me what you’re doing. Show me, sweetheart.”
“I’m stroking my…clit…two fingers…light, fast…I’m so wet now. My fingers feel so good. I wish…I wish it was your tongue.”
Jarod could almost feel the slicked silk of her in his mouth. “Me, too. Taste it, Nora. Tell me what you taste like.”
“That is so bad. Okay, hold on.” She grumbled, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and he smiled. That made two of them. The phone banged and then she came back on the line. “Okay, I…Kind of earthy and salty. Not bad. I never thought…This is so hot.”
He wanted her under him, wanted to smell her, taste her. Pure lust deepened his voice. “I’m hungry now, Nora. I don’t want to be gentle anymore. I want to take your entire pussy in my mouth, feel your hard clit on my tongue, lick inside you, taste all that sweetness.”
“Yes, James,” she moaned.
His wrist whipped and his fantasy took flight, describing sucking her, nibbling, plucking at her until her muscles tensed and she cried his name. It wasn’t his name that pealed across the phone, just a whimpered growl and the barely audible liquid brush of her fingers which sent him over the edge. Thick, hot come splashed his belly and he ground out her name, back arched, teeth gritted in release.
He gulped for breath. He could barely swallow air and, when he got enough to speak, his voice rasped with a darker, deeper edge. “God, Nora, that was good.”
“Yeah.” Hushed embarrassment softened her words and he shook his head.
“No, do not feel dirty. This was nothing to be ashamed of.”
“James, I don’t even know you and I…You—oh God.”
“Listen to me. We did nothing wrong. Please Nora, don’t shut down on me.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. Human biology, remember? I just tossed in a little good old-fashioned stimuli.”
A low feminine giggle loosened the knots in his muscles. “Yes, you did.”
“You’re not broken, sweetheart.”
“This doesn’t happen in real life, James.”
“It does. You’ve just never had anyone hit the right buttons.” Reaching for the tissues, Jarod grinned as an idea stirred in his languorous head. “Can I call you tomorrow? Please.”
“Yes.”
“Sleep well, Nora.” Jarod flipped the phone shut and let it drop to the floor.
Holy sweet fire of hell. That had been incredible. He popped off the couch, tossed the tissues in the trash and cleared his phlegmy throat. He grabbed his allergy medicine with a grin. If this worked out, he was buying that damn cat a lifetime subscription to
Catnip World.
Flipping open his laptop, he clicked to start his Wi-Fi connection and sent a silent prayer upward for overnight shipping.
WEDNESDAY Addendum: 11:43 p.m.
Pulse rate: 141 BPM, temperature 100.1, breathing erratic.
Needed a very, very cold shower.
THURSDAY 12:00 Noon
Fitful sleep—vivid dreams, highly sexual in content.
Pulse increased. Temperature 99.3.
Today—lunch with J. R.
I pictured his face when “James” called.
What does this mean?
Nora closed her notebook and tucked it into the inside pocket of her coat. A brisk wind whipped her hair into her eyes and she raised a hand to brush it aside. A voice cut through the dry air.
“Nora!”
Jarod Reed strode toward her, the wind wreaking havoc with his own hair, making it stick up at odd angles. His hands shoved into his coat pockets, he squinted against the grit in the air. He looked slightly rumpled, slightly rushed and…cute. An expectant grin curved his mouth and a low warmth suffused her.
This doesn’t happen in real life, James…or does it?
She’d admitted to her accidental seducer she didn’t get stirred up by men in the real world. So why had she thought of Jarod when James had growled all of those delicious things into the phone? Why did she think of James when Jarod looked into her eyes?
“You’re not broken, sweetheart.”
A rush of boldness rose. Nora hopped down from her perch on the half wall and, as Jarod neared her, held out both her hands. A confused quirk angled one brow but a pleased light sparkled in his eyes behind his glasses. He pulled his hands from his pockets and enfolded both of hers in his warm grasp.
“Mmm,” Nora sighed, “it’s cold out here. Your hands feel good.”
He flushed slightly. His fingers flexed around hers and he pulled her into him, wrapping her in corduroy and…yep, the slight scent of dried leaves. The casual yet oh-so-intimate embrace heated her blood until her skin tingled. He propped his chin on the top of her head.
“You’re freezing. You should have waited inside.”
Nora pressed her cheek into his chest and inhaled deeply. This was not a scrawny chest but one with solid muscles. The arms around her shoulders were not thin, chicken-winged arms but knotted and bunched slightly under his jacket. She felt safe, protected and more than a little turned on. The low warmth kindled slightly higher.
It was a good thing that thick layers of clothing separated them or he would feel the tightening of her nipples. She closed her eyes and hummed lightly. “I was fine out here. I like to people-watch.”
He rubbed his cheek against the crown of her head. “Are you hungry? Should we go in?”
She nodded. He pulled away but grabbed for her hand as they turned to the café. She laced her fingers in his and let him lead her inside. They chose a booth in the far back of the café, set aside in a small nook that afforded some privacy from the student-packed room. Jarod’s glasses fogged up. He took them off and polished the lenses with a paper napkin. A waitress took their orders for coffee and burgers.
He has really, really beautiful eyes.
Jarod put his glasses back on, leaned back in his seat and smiled thoughtfully at her.
“What?” Nora shrugged out of her jacket and lab coat.
“There’s something…different about you today.”
Nora smirked and folded her garments into the empty space beside her in the booth. She held up her hands, palms out. “No pepper spray.”
Jarod laughed and Nora’s gaze dropped to his mouth. His lips were full, the lower fuller than the upper. She thought suddenly of her conversation with James last night and wondered what Jarod Reed was like in bed. Would he whisper sweet, pretty words? Would he growl and bite? Did that straight-laced tweed go down to his bones or was there a naughty professor lurking under that oxford shirt?
“Nora?”
She startled, pushing the thought aside with a blush. What was happening to her? Jarod didn’t look like the type to revel in the blatant hedonism that James had…that she had with him. Nora blinked. She was seriously getting her worlds mixed up here. She was with Jarod, so she shouldn’t be thinking of James. And last night, with James—the rumpled professor should not have made any kind of cameo in her brain.
“Sorry, I’m really tired. I barely slept last night.”
The waitress returned with their coffee. She dropped two cream containers beside each cup then hurried away. Jarod nudged one of his to Nora’s side of the table and busied himself adding a single cream and two sugar packets to his cup. “So how’s your day going? Any more luck on the paper?”
Nora finished tipping the last of the creamers into her cup and sipped her coffee experimentally. His subtle sweet gesture made the coffee perfect. “Some. I know what I want to say, it’s just hard to focus nights when I’ve worked all day.”
And when velvet-voiced men call me and talk me to orgasm.
Jarod raised his cup and nodded. “I know what you mean. I crash almost as soon as I get home. I think the New Hampshire air sucks the energy from the body.”
Nora wrapped her hands around the cup, grateful for the heat and the distraction. “Where’s home?”
“I have a place outside town. It’s a rental, but it’s great. You?”
“I have an apartment that’s really close. I can walk if I want. My parents live nearer to downtown.”
“You didn’t want to stay with them until you were finished with school? You could have saved a lot of money.”
Nora shook her head. Her bear of a father and petite apple-cheeked mother were the very picture of middle-class Americana, but…
“No amount of money was worth me living at home. I mean, they’re great, but I just turned thirty. I grew up here. Autonomy is a hard-won thing in this town.”
“Thirty. Wow. I feel like I’m cradle-robbing here.”
Nora snorted. “Right, you’re not exactly ancient, Professor.”
“Almost a full decade older.”
“I’d like to think I’m not the typical thirty-year-old. I mean, if you were twenty and I was ten, we’d have a problem. But as mature adults with similar interests, I see no problem with our ages.”
“Logical and lovely.” His murmur was like buttered rum, rich and decadent. “So what do your folks think about your staying here and teaching at the old alma mater?”
“Mama just wants me to find a nice boy and settle down. Dad knows with certainty that no man is worthy of his princess.” Jarod chuckled as she shuddered exaggeratedly. “Don’t get me wrong. I love them but I have to live my life for me.”