“Mine too.” I tilt my head as I study him. “When did you decide to ask me out?”
“I wanted to right away, but I had to find out about the professor-student dating rules.”
I grin. “You looked up the rules before you asked me out?”
“Uh huh. Then I figured if you agreed to go to the museum lecture, it would mean you didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“I was so glad you asked me.” I rub my hand over his leg. “I had a big crush on you.”
“I know.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You know?”
“Why else would you knock the other girls aside whenever I walked in?” Dean looks rather pleased with himself.
My mouth drops open. A flush scorches my cheeks. “I did not knock the—”
“You sure did. And you think I didn’t notice the chocolates or the extra cookie you’d put on my plate? Or the time you gave me a box of shortbread and told me it was a free sample?”
Now he looks downright smug. My face feels like it’s on fire. So much for trying to be subtle.
“Yeah, well, I… I mean… you know, keep the customer happy and all that,” I mumble.
“Oh, you kept this customer happy, all right.”
He’s grinning in earnest now, and I can’t help smiling. He reaches for my waist and pulls me so that I tumble on top of him. He pushes his hands into my hair, stroking it away from my face as he presses his lips to mine.
Then there’s lovely kissing that makes my pulse pound. Every time Dean kisses me, every time he looks at me, I’m reminded of how right I’d been in allowing him past my defenses. In deciding that he was the one to whom I could open myself. In knowing that he wouldn’t flinch.
I press my hand to his erection beneath his pajama pants and rub against him. A mutual, unspoken agreement descends between us, as he eases me to the side and slides his hand between my thighs.
I spread my legs apart to give him access, squirming when he runs his forefinger along the edge of my panties, slipping beneath them just far enough to tease.
“Don’t you want to know why I wanted you?” I ask breathlessly, losing focus for an instant as he trails his fingers lower.
“I already know.” He moves his lips down to my throat, licking the hollow where my pulse is throbbing.
“You do not.”
“Uh huh.” He strokes his thumb up my cleft. “The professor thing got you all hot and bothered.”
He’s not far off, so I don’t bother to argue. I gasp and sink back against the pillows when he thumbs my clit and slides his mouth down to my breasts beneath my nightgown.
“And your suit.” I fumble to slip his pants lower so I can touch his exposed cock. It springs warm and hard into my hand. “I thought you looked… amazing in your suit. And then at the lecture, when you started talking about… oh, God… when you were standing there… with that… I was… what were you talking about again?”
“Monastic architecture and sarcophagi.” He tugs lightly at my nipple with his teeth. Sparks fly through me. I tighten my hand on his shaft and begin to stroke. “Also monastic scribes.”
I spread my legs wider. Part of me wants him to yank my panties off me, but I like the feeling of the damp cotton against my folds. Plus his fingers are doing such delicious things down there that I don’t want him to pause for anything else.
“Did they have sex?” I pull back a little to look at him, faintly curious beneath my arousal. “The monastic scribes?”
“Some of them said sex was the root of… fuck, Liv, tighter… of other sins.”
I swirl the pad of my thumb over the head of his cock. “But they had sex even though they were monks?”
“Probably. Some of them were certainly obsessed with it.”
“Oh, that sounds wick… wicked.”
“I’m sure it was.”
Then his lips cover mine and we’re kissing hot and deep. He slides his finger over the outside of my panties, rubbing the fabric into my cleft, and I moan against his mouth and wiggle my hips around to try and make him stroke deeper.
I move my hand up and down his cock, and then the urgency builds higher and we both start groaning and thrusting toward each other harder and faster. Our legs get tangled together, and I rub my breasts against his chest to ease the aching tingle in my nipples. Our tongues slide together, two of his fingers slip inside me, and then one flick of his thumb and I gasp his name and clamp my shuddering thighs around his hand.
I stroke him faster as his body quakes with his own release, and it’s all pulsing vibrations and heat and salty sweat. And somewhere in the midst of the slick pleasure, I wonder when everything became so comfortable with Dean, when I’d lost my inhibitions and discovered that being sexy could be so breathtaking, so satisfying. So easy.
Maybe there hadn’t been a moment of discovery at all. Maybe, with Dean, it had just always been like this.