Tempting (14 page)

Displeasure was like a lightning bolt over his face: there and gone so quickly I nearly didn’t see it. “Richard Easton.”

I flicked my eyes to Nathan, registered the same look of “fuck me” that must have been on my face. And then I turned back to Richard Easton and held out my hand. “Nice to see you again,” I said softly.

He held my hand in his and finally acknowledged Nathan next to him. “Nathaniel, is Ms. Morello one of your students?”

Nathan nodded, didn’t meet my eyes. “She is, sir.”

Richard turned back to me. “And how is it, being under the tutelage of my son?”

If I had been drinking anything, I would have choked. His son. His fucking son. No wonder Nathan looked like he’d swallowed razor blades.

“Um, would you like a drink?” I asked, completely avoiding answering his question.

“Coffee, with a little cream.”

I noticed Nathan stare down at his own cup, the same order as his father, before I busied myself making his order. Richard and Nathan spoke to one another as Richard placed cash on the counter for the coffee. Over the sounds of the coffee maker, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I took the opportunity to watch Nathan squirm under his father’s questions.

As I handed Richard his cup, I heard him say, “Are you going to visit Diana? Your anniversary is coming up.” I was so focused on the way Nathan’s face paled that I nearly missed what his father had actually said.

I watched as Nathan put an arm on his father’s shoulder, steering him away from the counter.

Who the fuck was Diana?

M
aybe she didn’t hear
him.

Maybe she
didn’t hear
him.

I was sure I answered him at some point, said something ambiguous, trying desperately not to look over at Adele, even though I could see her frozen in my peripheral vision.

Five minutes ago, I hadn’t thought it possible that I could be derailed from the abject panic at my father knowing her, and realizing that she was a scholarship student. It definitely sharpened the forbidden edges of our—whatever the hell we were calling this—thing.

But God, I hope she hadn’t heard what he’d said about Diana. Then I wanted to pull my heart through my chest, possibly use a hacksaw to do it. Because it was only four days away from the anniversary of her death—one of the largest failures in my life. The one that pressed bricks of cement down on my skin every time I thought about it.

And I hadn’t thought about it once over the past week. Some sort of horror must have eclipsed my face, because my father paused, giving me a strange glance.

“Yes, sometime this week I’ll go, I’m sure.”

Adele gave a soft clearing of her throat, and my father reached for his coffee with a smile. I don’t think I’d ever gotten that kind of a look. He rocked back on his heels, one of his tells that he was mildly uncomfortable. When he opened his mouth to say something, I gestured to a table.

“I was about to sit; would you care to join me?”

We both stood there, so close to Adele, my heart hammering in my chest.

“You’re asking me to join you,” he said slowly. I could feel her stare, searing into my skin like a brand. I was probably sweating. “Son, the day will pass like it always has. No need to rehash a tragic accident.”

Shit. Damn. Fuck. Fucking shit. And then like a fucking idiot, I stole a glance over at Adele, and her mouth was hanging open. When I snatched my eyes away from her and back at my father, he was justifiably confused.

“I don’t particularly need one of my students hearing this, sir.” I didn’t know if I said it softly enough so she wouldn’t hear. I could barely hear past the rushing in my ears. This was exactly what I did not need, on top of everything else.

“Ahh, of course, of course.” He gave another polite smile to Adele. “Good to see you again, Miss Morello. I hope you continue to do well in your studies.”

“Thank you,” she said in an uncharacteristically small voice. “Good to see you, too.”

Not waiting to speak to him again before he turned to leave, I walked to a small round table by the brick fireplace as he walked past, out the door. I kept my profile to Adele, not wanting to face her directly. Pulling a notebook out of my bag, I stared unseeing at the lined page. She knew my father. And she probably knew something about Diana. Neither one of those things had anywhere to go in my brain in order to process.

“Are you finished with your cup?”

I looked up at Adele after quickly glancing around to make sure no one was looking. The shop was fairly empty, a student sitting on the opposite side, paying us no attention. Only one other girl was working with Adele, and she was nowhere in sight.

For the first time since I’d met her, she looked unsure. Her fingers were tightly woven together in front of her apron, and the look on her face made me want to snap the handle off my coffee mug just so I would have something to stab myself in the eye with. It was curiosity mixed with just a little pity. But on the edge of that was a mulish jaw. This girl was done with me yanking her around.

“You know my father.”

“That’s not why I came over here, and I think you know it.”

I heaved out a sigh, abso-fucking-lutely not willing to bring up Diana first. “Well, we’ll need to discuss it eventually. You being a scholarship recipient makes a huge—”

“You have a
wife
?” she interjected, whispering harshly. “Or girlfriend, I don’t really know. I just know there’s something pretty major that you’re not telling me.”

For a moment I wondered whether my face looked as weary as I felt. Pretty major. Yes, it was pretty major. It was also a massive understatement. And not a single word of defense crossed my tongue. Just pictures, memories and nightmares that always hovered at the edges of my sleep.

“Just tell me something true, Nathan.” When I looked at her again, her eyes were huge and pleading. She was so young, with moments like that highlighting it for me. At that age, would I have been willing to make that kind of request, the kind that could so easily be rejected? “Please,” she whispered.

I drew my thumb across the calloused skin underneath the ring finger on my left hand. Adele immediately honed in on the movement and narrowed her eyes.

“I was married. But I’m not anymore.” She lifted both eyebrows.
And?
I could practically hear her saying it. My brain raced, trying to loosen the iron fisted grip that had been over my tongue for the last almost four years. Something true, that’s all she was asking. “It’s hard for me to talk about this, Adele. To anyone.”

She moved to sit, but stopped herself, looking back over her shoulder. Her coworker still hadn’t returned. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s not that,” I reassured her, rubbing a hand down my face. “She … Diana. That’s my wife. She, well, she … died. In a car accident, years ago.”

Simplification and omission. They were the grayest of areas when it came to lies, weren’t they? No part of that was a lie. Not a single word. But the way her face fell, the way she looked at me just a little bit differently, that was exactly why I never wanted to talk about this.

“I’m so sorry, Nathan,” Adele moved to touch my shoulder but I shook my head. The door to the back room swung open, and the other girl working resumed her place behind the cash register.

“How long do you work tonight?” I asked, almost desperate to change the subject.

“Until eight.”

I nodded, starting to file the items on the table back into my messenger bag.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

“Here? Yes, Adele. That’s it.” I stood, looping the handle of the bag over my head. “I don’t like to talk about her. It’s too hard. And I’m especially not going to do it in your workplace, where anyone we know could walk in.”

She relented, standing back a step after grabbing my still full coffee cup off of the table. “I can respect that.”

“Thank you,” I said, and made sure she could see that I meant it, dropping my chin so that our eyes held for a few seconds longer than they should have, considering where we were. My skin prickled, that chain that hadn’t seemed to drop, the one that had shackled us together since that first night, it tightened along the whole length of my body. With a quick glance behind her, I reached forward and slid my fingers along the inside of her wrist. Her eyes fell shut, and I took a step back, not trusting myself any further. “Have a good night, Adele.”

She didn’t look at me when I walked away, and once I was out the door, I didn’t look back either.

N
othing felt right
, nothing felt clear. Not how I felt about Adele, about the fact that she knew about Diana, that she knew my father, albeit not very well. I must have sat at my dining room table for two hours, staring at the blank wall across from me and sifting through my sluggish thoughts.

I wanted her, that I knew. Physically, definitely. Emotionally? That was murkier. I didn’t want to talk to her about Diana. I didn’t want to talk to
anyone
about that, so I was just keeping Adele on an equal playing field with the rest of the world’s population. If I owned a dog or a cat? I wouldn’t tell them, for fear that the animal race might suddenly evolve and gain the ability to speak. I wasn’t looking for marriage or children or any of that. It wasn’t something I needed after losing it once.

But she was smart. She was tough. And she’d trusted me enough to show me her biggest vulnerability: her relationship with her father.

I nodded my head, and grabbed my phone, where it had stayed silent on the table while I processed.

F
inally pushing
myself away from the table, I moved through the kitchen in search of something resembling a meal. While I munched around some cold lo mein noodles, I researched Adele’s scholarship.

The Margaret Phillips Memorial Scholarship was awarded to a handful of girls based partly on academics. They’d have to maintain a 3.7 GPA, be working toward a major in journalism, literature or creative writing, and be unmarried. All of those checked boxes afforded Adele half of her tuition, all of her books, no room and board, which explained the small, humble apartment.

I smiled a little reading through Margaret Phillips’ bio.

Margaret arrived in Boston at the age of 18, with no family to support her. As an unmarried woman in the 1940’s, she had to work twice as hard to get through college, finally graduating with her degree in literature. She went on to become a high school teacher, and spearheaded many community efforts to support women who were pursuing their education. For years, she was vice president of the Boston chapter of the National Organization of Women. She established this scholarship in 1998.

Yes, Margaret Phillips would probably like Adele, scraping her way through school with a giant chip on her shoulder. There wasn’t much I could find that spoke to personal misconduct, and how that might affect her maintaining the financial support being given to her.

There was a soft knock on my front door. Wiping my hands on a dish towel, I looked through the peep hole and couldn’t help but grin. Adele had pulled the black hood of her sweatshirt up over her head, and with the blond strands coming out the sides, she looked exactly as young as she was. Maybe younger.

“Come on in,” I said when I opened the door. Her smile was tentative, but she attempted one anyway, looking behind her before I closed the door, the darkness of the sky cloaking her arrival. “How was work?”

She smiled, taking the hood down and running a hand through her hair. “Boring as hell. Is that why you asked me over here?”

“No,” I conceded with a wry smile and gestured to the couch.

After she’d chosen the seat closest to her, I sat far enough away that I’d have to stretch to touch her. Adele lifted a thin eyebrow briefly at that, then settled back into the cushions, turning to face me with one leg tucked underneath her.

“I didn’t realize you were here on scholarship.”

“Ahh, and the picture is becoming clearer.”

“Adele.”

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes down into her lap for a few long moments. “I knew I wouldn’t get any help from home with my tuition, not if I planned on majoring in writing. And I just don’t want to be one of those people saddled with student loans until I’m thirty-five.”

Which was only one year older than me. I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat. I felt ancient, and the knowledge of our thirteen year age gap made my bones creak under my skin, like they’d suddenly adjusted to my line of thinking.

“We have to be
careful
, Adele.”

“Careful doing what, exactly? Last time I walked out of this door, it sounded an awful lot like a
sayonara, thanks for the orgasms
kind of goodbye.”

I actively chose to ignore that, probably because I couldn’t disagree with her. It had. “If we get caught, even from anything we’ve done up until this point, I don’t want you losing that scholarship.”

“Would you lose your job? If we did?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “The Easton name is pretty well-entrenched here. My father and I might not get along, but he’d never let ‘the family legacy’ get tarnished by a scandal. Trust me.”

He’d done a damn fine job of it so far.

Adele shifted, moving forward a couple inches. When she hesitated before saying anything, I just waited. If she pushed about Diana, it would clear up a lot of my questions. I wasn’t going there. Not now, maybe not ever. But she stayed quiet, and oddly enough, I found myself unable to be silent.

“I wouldn’t lose my job. But you could definitely lose your scholarship. My father wouldn’t be able to, or frankly might not want to, intercede on your behalf if we were discovered. We have to be smart here, okay?”

Adele moved one hand forward so slowly that I couldn’t look away. No doubt about it, she was giving me an opportunity to back away. To get off the couch. To tell her to stop.

I didn’t want to tell her to stop. I wanted another hit of whatever it was she was injecting into my bloodstream. When she wrapped her strong, supple fingers around my hand, I dropped my head back onto the couch.

“I don’t know what we’re doing, Adele. I don’t know how to stop, but I don’t know how to not worry that this is such a hellishly stupid idea.”

Her hand traced up my forearm, and through the cotton of my shirt, I could feel the heat of her palm. I kept my eyes closed, because everything was heightened. I could smell her next to me, coffee clinging to her, hiding her normal scent. The place that her hand smoothed up against felt like a concentrated pulse, just one large zing of electricity that I could never attempt to contain.

On the side of my neck, her breath warmed the skin. Then her lips touched the spot under my ear in the most innocent of kisses.

“You worry too much, old man,” she whispered, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “No one will know.”

“You can’t possibly know that.” Shit, my voice sounded rough.

Her tongue dragged around the shell of my ear, and my cock was seriously attempting to punch through my slacks. I kept my hands fisted at my sides, not wanting to interrupt whatever fucking amazing thing she was doing.

“We can be careful, be quiet about this.” The sharp edges of her teeth caught my jaw and my mouth turned toward her in reaction. Her responding chuckle was lazy and low. Suddenly, her weight pitched to the side, toward me, and she settled herself on my lap. “In fact, I think I should show you just how capable I am of being
quiet
.”

When I opened my eyes, her face was only inches from mine, her hands bracketing my head on the back of the couch. I slid my hands up her legs and her sides, curving my palms around the hard bumps of her rib cage.

“You have much more to lose than I do. Are you sure about this?”

The smile she gave me in return was so sweet, so unguarded that I smiled back. We kissed that way, not dropping the sides of our lips at first, not wanting to break those expressions of happiness.

Finally, she caved, tilting her head and opening her mouth to mine. Her tongue swept against mine in one long, wet stroke and I groaned, tightening my hands around her. I stood, and she squeaked into my mouth, but wrapped her legs tightly around my waist. Adele wound around me like a python, and we kissed all the way up the flight of stairs.

Once I cleared the top step, I hesitated, pulling my mouth away from hers.

“How about we shower that coffee smell off of you before bed?”

“We?”

I nodded, took her lower lip in between my teeth and tugged while I walked us into the bathroom.

After I’d lowered her so she could sit on the bathroom counter, neither of us spoke. I tested the water with my hand, her eyes boring into my back, as tangible as a bullet through my skin.

She’d unzipped her sweatshirt already, and I stilled her hands before she could remove the shirt underneath.

“Let me.”

And she did. Every inch of skin that I uncovered, I tasted or smelled. The thin, hard line of her collarbone felt like steel under my lips. The slope of her shoulder held some of that scent that I’d come to love so much, so I lingered there a little longer than I’d planned.

Adele let out a soft whimper when I finally slipped her shirt completely off.

“You’re supposed to be quiet,” I gently reminded her, no heat present in my tone. She nodded, dropping her forehead to my shoulder so I could reach the clasp of her bra more easily. With the shower running behind us, the air was wet and heavy, steam curling around our bodies while we curled into each other. The straps of her bra slid down her upper arms and caught when she held the cups to her breasts, the heavy skin and beaded nipples still partially hidden behind the lace.

I lifted her up so that she had no choice but to stand. Lowering myself to my knees onto the cold tile floor, I placed a slow, open-mouthed kiss on the skin just below her belly button. The room was so warm now, almost stifling in its heat, but she shivered, goosebumps pebbling her stomach.

Adele toed off her shoes, and I peeled her pants down her forever-long legs, my mouth following down the toned flesh of her thighs. Once she was uncovered, bare before me save her underwear and the almost-falling-off bra, I stood, digging my hands into her hair and tilting her face up to me.

We traded languid kisses, just moving our lips over and over. Her hands made quick work of the buttons on my shirt, only slowing their movement as she tracked down my chest, lingering over the clenching muscles of my abs. Each drag of her fingers made me want to move faster, touch harder, dig into her skin.

But I didn’t. There was some unspoken agreement we’d made coming up here together. A shift in the way our bodies wanted to move, wanted to feel and be felt.

Finally, I used one finger to pull the bra off of her completely, taking the tip of that same finger to smooth over the tight flesh of her nipple, making small, slow circles around the edge. Her hips shifted toward me and I pressed back, letting the painfully stiff length of my cock grind against where she wanted me most.

My pants were gone with two quick movements of my hands, and hers slid my boxer briefs down over my ass so I could step out of them. Adele went to take off her own underwear, but I stopped her.

“No,” I said, stopping her hands and pulling the lace back into place over her perfect, perfect ass, “leave them on for me.”

She smiled and turned to pull open the clear glass door the shower. Instead of following her, I stayed and watched while she stood under the steaming water, tilting her head back to wet her hair. The water sluicing down her body made her shine, every inch of her flesh covered now. Her eyes stayed closed, and her hands followed a light path that mirrored the one I’d taken earlier. Slowly circling a nipple with one finger, trailing down her flat stomach to the skin under belly button and dragging back up again.

I fisted my cock and tried to even my breathing, but it was impossible. No man, no mere mortal could stand where I was standing and look at her and not feel like the weak fleshly beings that we were. Just by being there, she was giving me everything I’d been missing, been deprived of for years.

I released my cock, let it bob back up, and entered the shower. Running my hands around her hips to embrace her from behind. When she relaxed into me, her hands folding over my arms, the simple comfort from her made me want to fall to my knees.

So that’s exactly what I set about doing.

Using my hands, I turned her so she faced me, not kissing her the way her upturned mouth begged me to. Instead I lightly pushed her back so her shoulders met the tile of the shower wall. She shivered again, the hard surface behind her probably still colder than the sultry air around us. When I used my hands to cup her ass and tilt her hips out from the wall, realization lit in her cat-green eyes.

Gripping the bar mounted into the tile next to her, Adele shifted down the wall a fraction at the same time that I sank down onto my knees. I leaned my forehead against her stomach, letting the hot water pound against my back. She wound the fingers from her free hand into my hair, smoothing back the strands in a gesture so sweet and so soothing that I almost wanted to weep.

I mouthed the skin along her abdomen, licking the water on her flesh into my mouth. When she angled her hips toward me, I smiled, trailing a hand up her leg, curling it into her inner thigh. I traced my hands over the wet lace of her underwear, using my hand to curve over her pussy, rubbing the fabric into her clit with my palm.