“Yes, yes, yes,” she repeated, but only to keep from saying the opposite.
“I couldn’t help kissing you ten years ago. Thank God I was able to restrain myself from pursuing you then. But those restrictions no longer apply. We couldn’t nurture the attraction between us then, but we can now. I want to. So do you.”
“No,” she denied, then gasped when his hands slid up her sides. “No, please, Grant, don’t touch me there.” But it was too late. His hands closed around her breasts. His lips were at her cheek, emitting hot, unsteady gusts of air. His chest was a bellows expanding and collapsing against her back.
Belying every protest she had made, she flung her head back against his chest and covered his hands with her own. He kneaded her gently. “Harder, harder,” she begged with a desperation that, when recalled, would cause her to cringe with mortification. But at the moment all her actions were governed by her senses and their clamoring need for him. Frantically her mouth sought his over her shoulder as the pressure of his caress, under the urging of her hands, increased.
With remarkable discipline, he freed his mouth and turned her in his arms. His fingers interlaced with hers and he positioned their hands on either side of her head as he moved forward to trap her between himself and the bookshelf. She was a willing captive, meeting the smoldering glow of his eyes with her own.
For heart-racing, thunderous moments they only looked at each other. Desire, savage and primitive, crackled between them. Their raspy breathing echoed in the empty stacks.
When he finally lowered his mouth to hers, her lips were parted and waiting. He whispered her name a heartbeat before their mouths came together. He stroked the lining of her mouth delicately with his tongue, and matched the movement with his fingertips on her opened palms.
Giving in to an irresistible urge, he lifted his mouth free of hers and kissed her palms, imitating the way he had kissed her mouth in the soft, receptive center of each. She inclined her head to the side as he administered the erotic caress and moved her lips and nose through the unruly thickness of his dark hair. His tongue probed the sensitized hollow of each hand until she was near sobbing with want of him.
Kissing her lips again, he rocked from side to side, rubbing his chest across her breasts. The nipples hardened instantly, revealing her desire to him.
“Yes, yes,” he whispered. Gradually he pulled back to see her better.
He unknotted the sleeves of her sweater from around her neck and moved them aside. With agonizing slowness, his hands combed down her chest to her breasts until they covered them completely. Her nipples tingled in the heat of his palms. Moving his hands to the sides of her breasts, he pushed them together and leaned down to bury his face in the fragrant softness of her cleavage. He breathed deeply, as if her scent were his life-force.
“I want to see you without anything on,” he said, standing straight once again. “I know you look beautiful naked. You feel … beautiful.” When his idly circling thumbs coaxed a higher level of response from the crests of her full breasts, he repeated, “Beautiful.”
He eased her away from the shelf, kissing her with drugging passion. His hands slid into the back pockets of her jeans and squeezed her bottom, drawing her ever closer to his hard virility.
“Put your hands under my sweater.”
Sliding her hands up from his waist to the middle of his back, she splayed them over the hard, smooth muscles. “You’re warm.” The words were caught by his open mouth. His tongue flicked at the corners of her lips and over her dimples.
“Touch my front.”
She hesitated only an instant before moving one hand around to his chest. With tentative movements encouraged by his ardent kiss, she explored the hair-dusted skin of his stomach and chest. His breath hissed through his lips.
“I want to be inside you,” he said on an agonized sigh. “Deep. Surrounded by you.”
She answered his sigh, tangling her fingers in the thatch of hair whorling around his navel, and meeting the fervency of his kiss. Provocatively he moved against her and she reciprocated.
At first she thought the blinking lights were only a product of her fevered imagination. Simultaneously they realized that it was the signal the library would be closing within five minutes.
Shakily, breathlessly, they backed away from each other. He captured the hand beneath his sweater and massaged the back of it as he pressed it over his skin. When he extracted it, he brought it to his mouth and kissed each fingertip.
“We’d better go,” she said hesitantly when the lights blinked again.
Hastily they went back to their table. She slipped on her shoes while gathering up her study materials. They hurried down the two flights of stairs. They were laughing at their exertion when they reached the lower floor.
“Mr. Chapman, I see you almost got locked in …”
The woman’s voice trailed off as she saw Shelley beside Grant. Shelley recognized her as the woman who had attended the political-science department meeting with Grant, the one who had laughed at his small joke, the one who didn’t seem able to tear her eyes away from him.
She took in their flushed expressions, their dishevelment. No doubt obvious, too, were Shelley’s pouting, well-kissed lips, where she felt the wonderful sting of whisker burns. The professor’s smiling expression puckered into one of prim censure.
“Good night,” Grant said hastily and propelled Shelley by the elbow toward the door that an attendant was waiting to lock.
“Good night, Mr. Chapman,” the woman said in an accusatory tone.
Shelley wished the ground would suddenly open up and swallow her. Confused by the sensual excitement of the moment, she had temporarily allowed herself to forget what a relationship between them would look like to anyone else. Now, as she was sent crashing back down to earth it all came back. Such a liaison was out of the question. She would look cheap. People would see her as a new plaything for the errant professor. He would be shunned by disapproving colleagues.
As soon as they gained the parking lot in front of the building she set off toward her car. “Good night, Grant,” she said, pulling her arm free.