Kissed (30 page)

“Oh God,” I gasped out in an airy sigh, and Carmichael looked over his shoulder toward Keegan, who was now walking toward us.

I hurried toward him too, meeting him halfway. He stared down at me, and I stared back, neither of us saying anything.

“You must be Keegan.” Carmichael stepped up next to me, holding his hand out for Keegan to shake.

Keegan cleared his throat, still looking at me for a moment longer. “Yes,” he finally said. “And I’m guessing you’re Professor Carmichael?” He shook Carmichael’s hand.

“I am. Thank you for the email. I’m glad you reached out to me. I hope you don’t mind, but I gave a copy to Gabe.” He nodded to my hand, where I still clutched the paper.

Keegan studied me for a moment, his eyes drifting down to my death grip on the paper. “No. I don’t mind.” He looked back at Professor Carmichael, his brow flinching. “Uh…” He seemed nervous. “How did it go?”

Carmichael shrugged. “We’ll know by the end of the week.” He looked between Keegan and me for a moment. “Well, I have class in a while, so I’ll let you two get back to it.”

I nodded. “Thank you…very much. I appreciate everything.”

“Of course.” He started walking away, but he paused and turned back. “Keep working on getting caught up on your school work. I don’t want to see you fall further behind while you’re waiting for a response from the panel.”

“Okay.” I watched after Carmichael as he walked away for a moment, and when I looked back at Keegan, he was already studying me.

“I need you to come somewhere with me.” His voice was quiet. He’d not touched me once, and given his body language and the space between us, he didn’t intend to at the moment.

“Where?”

“Chicago.”

Chapter 19

Keegan

SHE
was silent as we drove, and she still held tightly to the piece of paper in her hand. Her focus shifted slowly around at the passing scenery, always returning to me. I eventually reached over and took her hand, and her lips pulled up subtly when she glanced at me.

I’d made a decision not to touch her yet, at least not until she understood what was happening. I certainly wasn’t going to be kissing her. Things could get out of control quickly with us when they got physical, and I needed this to be a bit more simple and straightforward than that.

But I needed at least this—her hand in mine as I drove.

“I’m sorry.” We’d made it halfway to Chicago when she said it, and her voice was quiet.

“About what?” I glanced at her, even as my jaw tightened. “Running out on me last Friday and telling me to stay away from you? Or drunkenly coming on to me a few days ago and then kicking me out and telling me not to come back yet again?”

She stared at me, her mouth opening as though to speak before closing again for a moment. “I guess for everything.” She shook her head, looking out the window. “I was wrong to blame you…”

I squeezed her hand. “I made the lion’s share of mistakes early on with us. You’re entitled to a few errors in judgment.”

“I think I’ve made more than a few,” she commented, still looking out the window.

“I’m still here,” I said quietly.

I didn’t miss her farthest hand lifting to her cheek and brushing away a stray tear. She sniffed her nose. “I expected you to be back in D.C. by now,” she commented.

“I have been in D.C.” I didn’t elaborate, and I could see her looking at me in my periphery.

We were silent for the remainder of the trip, but my hand never left hers. We had time to kill when we reached town, and I pulled into a coffee shop. She looked around for a moment.

“This is where you wanted to take me?” Her brow was furrowed.

I climbed out of the car, and she followed. “No, but we have about forty-five minutes until our appointment, and I need caffeine.” I winked at her and then walked inside.

We sat across from each other as we drank coffee. She was being quiet, and she seemed nervous as she looked around and chewed on the inside of her lip.

“Appointment?” she asked after being silent for a long time.

I smirked subtly at her. “Appointment.”

She studied me, still gnawing nervously on the inside of her lip, but she didn’t ask me anything further, and when I stood to leave twenty minutes later, she followed without hesitation. We drove for another fifteen minutes before I pulled to the curb in front of a large old Lincoln Park greystone, and I put the car in park before turning it off. I looked around, scanning the street for the white SUV I’d been told to look for, but we were alone at the moment.

I glanced at Gabe, and she looked over at me. Her eyes were shifting back and forth across mine, trying to figure out what we were doing.

The white SUV pulled up to the curb nearby, and I reached for the door handle, ignoring Gabe’s confusion as I climbed out. I walked toward the woman climbing from her white SUV, and I listened as Gabe closed the car door behind her when she followed me.

“I’m Keegan,” I said to the woman as I held my hand out to her.

She smiled radiantly, and she straightened her shoulders and stuck her tits out. She obviously hadn’t seen the entire reason we were here yet, who happened to be approaching behind me.

“I’m Darla.” She shook my hand, and when Gabe stepped up beside me looking confused as hell, Darla’s attention shifted to her, and she stopped trying to be a sexy woman and started being the competent realtor I expected her to be.

“This is Gabe,” I said to Darla as I placed my hand on the back of Gabe’s neck, letting my thumb stroke down her skin for a moment before I pulled away.

The whole not-touching-her thing was starting to piss me off already.

I started following Darla as she walked toward the house, and Gabe caught up to us, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“As you can see, this is a classic Chicago greystone. Three bedrooms upstairs and a non-conforming fourth in the finished base—”

“Keegan?” Gabe clutched at my hand.

I lifted my finger to my lips, silencing her, and her eyes bulged. “Darla’s trying to tell you about the house,” I chastised her seriously. I wasn’t really being serious, and surely Gabe would figure that out, but Gabe was also clearly perplexed by what was happening.

“I think the porch is simply amazing, personally.” Darla was still talking, and I was doing no better than Gabe at paying attention to her.

We followed her through the front door to the foyer, and I tugged on Gabe’s hand as I headed for the stairs. “We’re going upstairs,” I said to Darla.

“Great,” she responded. “Working our way from the top to the bottom.”

She started to follow us, and I paused, turning back to her. “We’ll be okay on our own. Thanks.”

She stared at me, stunned for a moment, but then she forced a smile to her mouth and nodded awkwardly. I walked up the steps, listening to them creak as I moved, and I released Gabe’s hand, bounding up the last few without her. When I reached the landing, I started peeking into the doors until I found the large master with its tall ceilings and thick original crown molding.

I walked across the room, peering out through the window to the street below, and when Gabe entered moments later, I turned back to face her, leaning against the wide, sturdy window ledge.

She looked around, her focus shifting upward to the same molding and tall ceilings, and when her eyes returned to me, she bit her lower lip. She looked so uneasy, so tense, frightened almost.

“I’m falling in love with you.” I said it simply, and I didn’t even smile. Outwardly I was as calm as could be. Inside was a whole other story. Pulses of electricity started radiating out from my core the moment I’d gotten the “I” out of my mouth, and in truth, I was panicking. She’d pushed me away days before. She’d told me to go home and not come back, and while she’d apologized for that, I had no real proof this was what she wanted. But I thought she did. God, I hoped she did.

Her lips parted, and a quiet rush of breath left her. Her eyes, which had been narrow moments before, suddenly widened until the whites nearly radiated from across the room, and she stared at me as if in shock.

I looked around the room for a moment, and I took a deep breath. “You need to be here for Jessa. I know that.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and her lips trembled. She nodded, and when a tear fell, my throat constricted, and my eyes pricked with warmth and glossed over. No woman had ever seen my emotion the way she had, but then, I’d never shared it so freely as I did with her.

I shrugged. “I need to be here for you.” My voice cracked over my words. “Trust isn’t something I can show you in an email to your professor. It’s not something I can convince you of with words. I’ve tried. The past year of your life has…hurt you emotionally.”

She nodded, her eyes twinkling and her lips pursed in the sweetest small smile.

“Not even our lips can undo the damage of that, not to mention the shit way I started this relationship with you.” I smiled at her. “I almost let you push me away because I didn’t want to hurt you anymore, and…I
was
hurting you.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s not—”

I cut her off. “Yes I was. I let you use me. That was our thing, right? But…” I shook my head, glancing away for a moment. “I was using you. I loved the way you made me feel, so I kept taking it from you, disguising it as this power I was giving to you. But I wasn’t giving you anything. I wasn’t giving you…me, not my life, not my future, not my support and commitment, all the things I’ve come to understand you need to feel safe.”

She watched me, her eyes glossy and beautiful, but she was happy. I knew she was. I could see it in how tightly she clasped her hands together as though barely containing it, barely able to believe it maybe. I was absolutely going to give her what she needed to stay content like this.

“You know, Jessa really made me think about that—your needs. She said she’s always felt safe and secure knowing she has you.”

Gabe’s lips trembled, and she nodded, even as she tried to swallow.

“You’ve done
such
a good job with her. She looks up to you so much, and she knows you’ll always take care of her. But she made me realize that you don’t have that. You’re all alone. Using my body was the least of what you truly needed from me. You needed so much more from me, and I didn’t give it to you. I’m sorry for that.”

She bit her lip, walking toward me, and when she was standing in front of me, I reached out and pulled her closer. She clutched at the front of my shirt, letting her forehead sink to my chest as her shoulders started to shake and she cried. I lowered my mouth to the top of her head, and I kissed gently.

“I want you to have what you need, and I don’t want you to be alone in this life,” I whispered with my lips still touching her hair. “I want to do life together with you.”

She lifted her head, looking at me.

I shrugged. “So I flew to D.C., I met with a realtor, put my condo on the market, and then came home—home being a fairly loose term at the moment since I don’t actually have anywhere to live, and I happen to be jobless.” I smirked, reaching up and brushing a tear away that had almost fallen.

She smiled at me, her eyes shimmering and wet like mine.

“But I
am
home.”

She nodded.

“You’re safe with me.”

She kept nodding.

“And regardless of what happens, I’m going to be here.” I turned her, lifting her to sit on the wide window ledge that hit at my hip height. She parted her knees, and I ran my hands up her bare legs, resting my palms on the tops of her thighs under her dress.

She reached up, running her thumb along my lower lip. Her fingers gripped me behind my jaw line, and she pulled my mouth to hers, pausing before our lips touched. I felt her breath tickling me, and I waited for it.

“Listen,” she whispered.

When her mouth touched mine, I closed my eyes, and I did. I listened. I loved the sound of it—the smacking, the sucking, the subtle wetness of it. I loved everything about the way we kissed. I reached for her, clutching at her cheeks, holding her lips tight to mine as I slipped my tongue into her mouth. I tasted and licked, and she moaned quietly.

When her hands pushed into my pockets, my lips pulled up into a smile, even as I still tried to kiss her. I knew what she was looking for, and I stopped kissing her and leaned back when she pulled the condom out of my pocket.

She bit her lower lip as she looked up at me. “You should own stock in Trojan,” she commented quietly as she brushed a tear from her cheek.

I chuckled. “Being unprepared when I’m with you would be entirely too devastating.”

She laughed then, her eyes sparkling with glossiness and swollen from crying. She was so beautiful.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone, and I took the condom from her, turning it over and over in my fingers as I considered what I knew she wanted. She was watching me expectantly.

“Okay,” I whispered.

I reached under the skirt of her dress, stripping her underwear from her legs and stuffing them in my pocket, and then my fingers fumbled with the button and fly of my jeans. I shoved my pants and underwear down, tearing into the condom packet with my teeth. I slipped it over the head of my cock, and the very moment I’d finished rolling it down my erection, I pulled her legs open wider and tugged her hips toward me until she was teetering on the edge of the window ledge.

I filled her body with one deep penetration, and I grunted quietly when I was fully seated within her.

“Until those stairs creak, it’s just the two of us. Now hang on. This is going to be fast and rough.”

She grabbed the back of my neck as I slammed into her again, and she cried out, clapping her free hand over her mouth as her eyes widened. I set a harsh and pounding pace, jolting her body with every deep thrust over and over again. I braced my hand on the windowpane behind her shoulder. The fuck was furiously fast, incredibly deep, and maddeningly erotic, and within minutes, she came hard. She was still covering her mouth, and I listened as she groaned and cried out loudly into the palm of her hand. Her other hand was still gripping the back of my neck, and her fingernails dug into my skin. I let loose the very second she finished, throwing my head back and staring at the ceiling as I focused on coming without screaming.