I caution myself to calm down as I stride across the restaurant. She’s staring at me, her eyes getting wider with each step I take, making it impossible not to think about how her captivating expression will change when I slide my hand up her leg, higher and higher until I’m pushed right up against her soaked sex.
“Um, can we help you?”
I was so obsessed with staring at her, I didn’t even stop to think how strange this is. I’ve walked across the restaurant like a man possessed, and now her date is staring up at me, his boyish features pinched.
I smirk, laughing softly, at the ridiculousness of this situation. But her text was pretty damn clear.
I glance at Autumn – I’ll never forget her name – and see that she’s pleading silently, willing me to make up some excuse.
But what the hell can I say?
Creative writing has never been my strong suit. I’ve always been an essay or non-fiction book sort of man.
But the situation is taking shape now.
My woman wants rescuing from this date.
“Your mother asked me to come get you,” I say quickly before the pause becomes downright ludicrous.
Her face goes blank for a moment, and then she starts to rise to her feet. I wonder if I’ve said something wrong. It’s the way she looked at me just then. Like somebody had punched her in the gut.
“I better go,” Autumn says.
“That’s fine,” her date responds. “But please leave your half of the bill.”
It takes a lot for me not to grab the little fucker and give him a shake. He’s losing the most attractive, mouth-watering woman, any man would be lucky to have dinner with. And he doesn’t give a damn, acting like it’s no big deal.
With Autumn standing, it’s even easier to appreciate her gorgeous figure, with her dress molded to her delectable curves, my fingers twitch as I imagine softly gliding my hands up her thighs and over her hips – and then gripping, hard, to let her know who she belongs to.
Fuck.
I need to calm down. Now.
“Sure, of course,” Autumn says, taking her handbag off the table. “It’s, uh… I only have my card. I guess we should call somebody.”
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I take out a few twenties and lay them on the table. The idea of Autumn struggling for money makes me want to roar or hurt someone. But there’s no one to hurt, and bellowing in a restaurant will probably freak Autumn out more than she seems to be already.
“Thanks for that,” she says once we’re outside. “I can pay you back.”
She pulls her coat tighter around herself, and I resist the urge to take off my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.
As far as she knows, I’m just the celebrity history professor who gave a talk to her class a few years ago. She doesn’t know how my heart started to palpitate in my chest the moment I laid eyes on her, a shy teenager with her books clutched to her chest. She doesn’t know how difficult it was for me to keep my gaze away from her ass, her smile, her blushing cheeks.
Her beauty, her sexuality, they pull me in with the same force.
I want to fuck her and then lie in bed with her afterward, talking about history, as I stroke my fingers through her hair.
I warn myself to stop, to slow down. I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe that I was here, within two blocks of her, right where she needed me, for a reason.
I can’t believe that. It makes no sense.
“I guess I should explain,” she murmurs.
Without discussing it, she leads us down the street, presumably to her car. I follow beside her, struggling not to place my hand against the small of her back. It would feel so natural, my hand laid there proprietorially, letting every passing stranger know she belongs to me.
I chuckle. “I was just around the corner, buying some printer paper when I got this text… I didn’t recognize the number, but it seemed serious. So I went to check it out and—”
“You were just around the corner?”
I smirk. “I know. What are the chances, right?”
“I didn’t mean to send you the text,” she says softly.
Her voice is enough to make me dream up countless scenarios. I imagine the way she’ll breathily sigh as I strip her of her panties, the way her breath will catch when I push down against her sopping pussy, the way she’ll gasp and giggle when I get down on one knee…
No, no, no.
I can’t let my thoughts go there. She’s a stranger.
But ever since I saw her three years ago, similar thoughts have struck me.
I found the woman of my dreams and she slipped through my fingers.
I’ve given myself countless reasons why it could never work. Our age gap. Maybe she has a boyfriend. There’s literally zero percent chance she feels the same way I do, that she has this same primal and inexplicable need to claim me the same way I do her.